Tamagotchi Party On!
Score: 69% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: h.a.n.d. Inc. Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Board Games/ Party
Graphics & Sound: No doubt, the Wii's reputation as a party machine has many companies clambering over themselves to compete with first party titles such as the famous Mario Party series and the successful Wario Ware: Smooth Moves release. So, fresh on their heels comes Tamagotchi Party On! based on the nineties Tamagotchi pets. For those needing a history lesson, these Tamagotchi pets were digital pets on key chains and you would raise them from hatchlings. All the while you would nurture, feed and care for your digital pet. Now, somehow, we are all here to go to their election. I mean party, wait I am confused. The look of this game is very much early kindergarten. The opening scene and intro sections are all 2-D and look like they were drawn by children. The game itself has 3-D elements when your characters are moving and during mini-games, but the look of the game all gives the appearance of 2-D art. I am not really quite sure exactly what kind of look they were actually trying for. The simple drawing style is highly appealing to the younger eye, but the aim and ideas of the game did not coincide with its childish appearance. This game would have looked about the same on an N64. Prepare to have your last nerve danced on by a marching band. The speech text in this game is accompanied by this grating noise I can only describe as chirping, as line after line of text goes by. The sound effects follow the "cartoony" look and feel, but are equally annoying. I think they were looking for that midi "Old School" feel from the sound track, but it could have been done on one synthesizer in an afternoon.
Gameplay: As you can tell from above, I am a little confused by Tamagotchi Party On!. The aim of the game is very much a page straight out of the Mario Party play book. You and your friends are playing an electronic board game. You roll dice and move accordingly around the board. Apparently in Tamagotchi land, there is an election to be decided. Gain money and popularity to get your self elected. WOW! So the first ideology of what the election process is here is that you need to have money to gain political popularity. No matter how true that may be in semantics, it isn't the way it should be. Ok, so politics aside, it is also supposed to be a party game. When you start off from the very first menu, you discover that the wand has no cursor effect so you use the D-Pad to navigate introductory menus. Not that big of a deal, but it does go against what they have trained players on the Wii to do. So now, you are in the game and playing, earning popularity and money as you go. You discover very quickly that you are not actually doing anything but deciding which way to go. There are very few mini-games to play. Every single game that I actually see here, I have seen in an early Mario Party version with little change. I will give the game one good kudo. The map is huge and you can spend a lot of time not actually running into anyone you are playing with. I don't know how fun the latter part is, but the huge map is very interesting and leads to multiple plays for exploration.
Difficulty: Tamagotchi Party On! is not overly difficult. How difficult can it be to sit there and watch the game be played out before you. Earning popularity and money is a snap and mostly boils down to luck of the draw. When you do actually have an opportunity to make a difference by actually getting to play a mini-game, you will find that the controls are your enemy, not design. There is very poor control feedback from the wand and it makes for a frustrating and difficult proposition to control your character. Complex, multiple button strike interfaces take this game out of the tolerable learning curve of younger players. There is simply too much to do in order to achieve a simple move around a game board for children.
Game Mechanics: As I just said above, the controls for Tamagotchi Party On! are a little frustrating; that is, when you get to use them. There aren't many mini-games, so this puts the game from being an actual party game to kind of just a playable group interactive experience on the order of a "Choose Your Own Adventure." I don't know about you, but I don't have huge, raging throwdowns with "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Maybe that's how you roll, but not in my house. Let me also talk about the heads up display (HUD) for a second, as well. This game "looks" like a game for and to be played by kids. The subject matter of an election and the concept of using money to gain popularity is well enough understood, but the inundated, in-your-face selection screen is quickly overwhelming. It is just too cluttered. This is a good example of too much info to just roll a dice and move. The omni-directional board movement means that even after you get to where you want to go, you now have to hit another key to say you are sure you want to go there. So to sum this up: It is a limited interactive election simulation, carried out by annoying cartoon characters. It has a complex HUD that makes it hard for kids to follow and would overwhelm them. There is nothing original about the mini-games that are there and it just doesn't lend itself to being a party game at all.
-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications AKA Bryon Lloyd
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