Sunday 20 January, 2008

Entry #2
Gameplay:
I enjoyed my second round of Mario Party much more than my first. The company was just as great (mostly the same people), but I did not feel as lost in the games. Instead of going down to the Mini-game Stadium, we went to DK’s Jungle Adventure. This board made much more sense to me because we were not going around the same path over and over again. There were intersections where we had to choose which direction we wanted to go, hazards in the form of Browser and rolling boulders, and a clear goal of collecting stars and coins to earn the golden bananas. Even though several of the mini-games were the same as before, I had less trouble with them this time. There was less confusion because I had seen them before and I had a better idea of what was supposed to happen.
In this round, there were only three of us playing so the computer played the fourth role. We still felt like the computer had an unfair advantage even when we made the computer play on a more difficult level, so as a group we decided to gang up on the computer. We always rooted against the computer almost as though a common enemy created a stronger bond between us. Whenever ghosts gave us the option we stole coins and even stars from the computer. We were all very happy when the computer did not finish in first place.

Design:
I found I had problems with the view in many of the mini-games. In the racing game, Slot Car Derby, the view was back far enough so the whole track could be seen, but I found that the avatars were too small because of this and I could not always keep track of which one was mine. The view of the diving game, Treasure Divers, also caused problems because the screen would zoom in only to encompass the avatars. This made it so when a player was diving you were unable to see the location of the treasure chests. It is difficult for players to figure out which way to go because of this. Only when they reached the edge of the screen did the view zoom out to encompass more area. There must be a medium between these two extremes, and I hope I will be able to find it for my game.
With time, two other features of the game began to wear on my friends and me simply because they were always the same. At first, the music is okay, upbeat and almost unnoticed. After a while, however, it becomes annoying hearing the same thing repeatedly, especially when we would take a break and there is no variation. It did not occur to us at the time to put the TV on mute, but it would be nice if there were a wider variation so we would not want to mute it. The animation of moving Toad, on both DK’s Jungle Adventure and Yoshi’s Tropical Island, was the same every time he moved. Both my roommate and I got tired of watching it. It does not take that long to run through it, but it would be nice if there were a way to cut around it. When the game is first starting, there is dialogue between all the characters. If you have heard it before, it is possible to skip by pressing “Start.” It would be nice if there were a feature similar to this for the repeat animations.

This is perfectly acceptable, though a sentence or so of explanation of what the mini-games you mentioned in the first bit actually are wouldn't be out of place. Don't think I'm encouraging you to describe them all, but talking about the differences between the ones you liked and the ones you didn't and how the game contributed to this would be something good for the design section. Even still, this is a fine entry and just about what we're looking for.

Amy Leek (grader)