Mario Party 8- A really cheesy game collection

I bought this game because I heard it was fun, and I knew many people who were fans of the older mario party games and were looking forward to getting this. I bought this because I had some money to "burn" and I saw it in the store. I decided to just buy it.

When I turned on the game, I had to sit through a stupid introduction that involved this clown guy talking to you (by "talking" I mean saying gibberish and the screen "translating" it into text.) You have to sit through this EVERY time you turn the game on. It's not that long, but still it's annoying. Then I saw there was a "game tent" and a "Party tent" I went to party tent, and was suprised, and at first disappointed by the way the game works.

The "Board game" mode

The board game has 4players. If you are playing by yourself or with less than 4 players, those spots are filled in by the computer. You each "roll" dice by doing a "punch-up" motion with your controller to stop a turning number. You move ahead that many spaces. Then it's the next player's turn. There are spaces that give you coins, take away coins, summon Donkey Kong (the "good guy" who gives you coins, a free star or whatever) or Bowser (the "bad guy" who takes your coins or a star away)

The problem is that in the board game, particularly if you are playing by yourself, once you roll you have to wait for the other players, and just sit and watch. It will actually even give visual cues/instructions on using the controller in certain situations to the computer players. It takes forever for you to regain control. Dont play the board game by yourself- you'll be "board" out of your mind :) sorry I just couldn't resist.

After each player has had their turn, a game is randomly selected from a spinning wheel. When the wheel stops a screen comes up with buttons to explain the rules, controls, and even a "practice mode" (where it wont matter if you lose or win, it wont give anyone coins) and then a start button.

The games themselves range from 4 player games, 1 player vs 3 others, and 2 vs 2. There are many different types of games here.
There are driving games, shooting games, and flying games, as well as many others. I cant cover all the games here, so look elsewhere if you want a more detailed explanation of the games on this disk.
In the board game, players collect coins and/or stars. Whoever has the most of whatever is the main goal wins. Some boards have stars as the goal, others you have to reach the highest number of coins by the time the game ends (It's based on how many turns are taken, which you can adjust before starting)

Some games are actually quite fun. There are a number of them that don't use motion controls, but rather holding the controller like a traditional game pad and pressing buttons "the old fashioned way" However, there are too many bad games. There are several that require you to be overly precice with the controller (like the clock game where you have to stop turning the controller EXACTLY on the line) and also some games are too hard to control (like the racing game, which is a cheesy, dry, bare-bones version of mario kart where the controls REALLY STINK!) and some games that are just no fun to play.

I believe this is just a mario version of Carnival Games with a board-game-twist added to it. the games can be played by themselves but a lot of the games stink. I don't play this anymore now that I have some better games for Wii.