Mosquito escape minigame not included
(This
review is spoiler-free!)
To this day, I’ve played every installment
in the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games series. It’s been a few games since
I’ve actually bought one, but I usually rent them for a weekend just to see
what’s new. Then, a week later, I forget basically everything that was in the
game, and move on with my life.
I thought that it was going to be the
same old story with this year’s installment, with Mario and Sonic arriving at
the 2016 Rio Games. But boy, was I ever wrong. Not only are the games
unmemorable, but this time they’re also really bad.
Let’s start with the good. This new
game boasts the largest roster of playable characters in the series history, so
you can really choose anyone you like. The problem is that a lot of them are
locked, and I couldn’t figure out how to unlock them for the life of me. It’s
too bad, because I was really looking forward to trying out some of them. Secondly,
the game looks really good. Nothing mindblowing or game changing here, but for
a minigame collection, it’s impressive.
Some of the minigames are pretty good
as well. Rugby and soccer/football feel like a sort of dumbed-down version of
the Mario Strikers games, and they can be a little too easy to win for my
taste. Still, they’re really fun, and if you miss the days where we’d get a
Mario sports game what felt like every other month, I’d highly recommend them.
Boxing and gymnastics are also good, just for how silly they are. I never
thought I’d see Bowser and Dr. Eggman dancing together, but here we are.
As for the rest of the games, each and
every one of them feels like a complete disaster. Motion controls have been
removed entirely, replaced by the excitement of quick-time events and button
mashing. Hooray.
Nearly every game can be summed up by
this: mash the A button to win, and then press B sometimes. That’s it. And
there are several games that follow this model, including the 100-yard dash,
swimming, triple jump, equestrian, the list goes on. Needless to say, the game
becomes a slog really fast.
At first I thought that this game
would just be boring at worst, but it gets even worse. I don’t know if it was
me, but there were times when the controls seemed really unresponsive. I still
don’t know what happened during the triple jump. I pressed all the buttons when
they told me, but I failed every single time.
Dream Events, another staple of the
past games, have also been removed, and that’s a shame. Those were always the
best parts of the original, as it let you leave the realistic Olympic setting
and explore the more wacky worlds of Mario sports, complete with items and
hazards. But no, in the Rio Games it’s Olympics or nothing. Without that random
element, and alongside the boring controls, each minigame grows stale
alarmingly fast.
If you’re looking for a minigame
collection to play on the Wii U, I’d say save your money and buy a used copy of
Mario Party 10. If this is what the future of the Mario and Sonic series is
going to be, I think I’ll be jumping off this sinking ship pretty fast.
FINAL SCORE
3/10
Bad
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