Mario Party: The Top 100 Review

Even though I have almost nobody to play with anymore, I still love the Mario Party games.  They’re games of variety, testing skill and mild strategy with ever-changing variables due to its many colorful locales in the Mario universe.  I’ve played a lot of them, but the ones I’ve played the most and actually owned are the original Nintendo 64 trilogy, 6 and DS.

Nintendo seeks to appeal to the longstanding fans of this almost two-decades long franchise with their new compilation of its 100 best minigames from the main games: Mario Party: The Top 100.

This is hot off the heels of the previous game, Mario Party: Star Rush.  I have Mario Party: Star Rush and I really enjoy it.  It has some fun side activities and its main activities are all creative and faster-paced than the other games without losing the core elements of what makes Mario Party fun.  It did however emphasize the (non-boss) minigames a bit less than previous entries, with only a little over 50 as opposed to other games with at least 70.  Mario Party: The Top 100 seems to be trying to invert that.  Instead of prioritizing the main game part and making the minigames around it, they’re now prioritizing the minigames and building the main game parts around that.  That can be a really good idea or a disastrous one.

Top 10 Final Battles #6: Viewtiful Joe 2

Viewtiful Joe 2 is one of my favorite games of all time.  It is the only game I have ever given a perfect 10 out of 10.  It exceeds an already fantastic game in every way including in its amazing final battle.

Context:

With all the other happy ending-controlling Rainbow Oscars gathered and kept safe with Joe's dad Jet, and with the evil-spreading Black Film destroyed, the heroes Joe and Silvia need only one more Rainbow Oscar: the blue one Captain Blue was changed into before being taken by the big bad Black Emperor of Gedow.  That means smashing their way through Gedow's giant moon base full of robots and weirdness taken straight out of the Aliens franchise (as opposed to the first game's villain's Star Wars motif).

At the end of the very long, very difficult gauntlet, the emperor himself sits in wait, ready.

His plans are pretty much foiled by now, since the heroes have the Oscars and his Black Film is gone, but when Joe points this out, the Emperor pulls out his secret weapon.  Apparently it wasn't as gone as they thought.

"The Black Film is unbreakable!  It can never be destroyed completely!"