A good, old-fashioned block party
Ever since its arrival on the game scene in the late 90s, Mario Party as a series has found success with both casual and veteran gamers alike. There's something for everyone in the genre--skill-based mini-games, luck-dependent turns, and last-minute victories stolen from the jaws of defeat. It's no wonder then that multiple mascot-oriented franchises in the past have taken aim to dethrone the Mushroom Kingdom's top plumber as master of ceremonies, king of parties.
Despite decades of games under the property's proverbial belt, LEGO hasn't quite delved into Mario Party's territory before. Until now, of course, with the latest in the massive and illustrious LEGO line of games: LEGO Party! Playing similarly to Mario Party to feel familiar while also offering some clever twists to the formula to distinguish itself from its main source of inspiration, LEGO Party offers enough fun to rock your block off.
No doubt players familiar with virtually any entry of Mario Party will find themselves comfortable with LEGO Party. Studs are the game's version of coins, studs are used to purchase Golden Bricks (taking Toad's traditional old place as Star-giver is Mr. Gold), which are the game's version of Power Stars. The player with the most Golden Bricks by the end of the game is the winner.
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| Golden Brick? Don't mind if I do! |
One of the key changes to the Mario Party formula is that mini-games, a popular mainstay of any party game worth RSVPing to, don't happen at the end of every round. Instead, they initiate the start of every round. Not only does placement in these mini-games offer studs, the currency of LEGO Party, but it also determines the order of turns in each round unlike Mario Party where the turn order is stagnant once it's determined at the beginning of the game.
Mini-games start each round of turns, and it's up to the four players to choose which one is played. There are four tiles: three with different mini-games on them, and one tile that selects a random mini-game. The tile that has the most players on it after the countdown ends is the mini-game played. In the event of a tie, one of the games chosen by players will be played at random.
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| Do your LEGO Party civic duty and vote on the mini-game you want (or the one your opponents hate) at the start of each round. |
Thankfully, the 60 total mini-games within LEGO Party are mostly winners, too. Really, the only mini-games that stand out as less than stellar usually involve controlling rockets, which unfortunately, there are a handful of those. The rockets don't feel good to handle, nor do they make for anything other than frustration for the most part. Additionally, one of the mini-games, though totally non-rocket-related requires outside knowledge of art to successfully win--or at least be good at guessing. Either way, if you discover a stinker of a mini-game type, you can use the accessibility menu to shut the category off entirely. While I would prefer being able to turn off individual mini-games instead of categories, it's nice to have some options there all the same.
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| In Gra-feet-i, cover the most area in your paint color by walking over it before time runs out. |
I've broached about the weaker of the mini-games in LEGO Party's varied collection, but for every one mini-game that stands out as arguably annoying or ho-hum, there are at least two or three that absolutely rock and rule. From piloting helicopters in an auto and side-scrolling course of rings to fly through for points, to drilling holes in a grid-based iceberg to trick and trap your opponents into falling off, to taking turns riding and rolling on a giant bowling ball across a lengthy, wavy track to knock over pins, the mini-game options in LEGO Party are indeed mostly winners.
[Speaking of mini-games, be sure to check out my video of the TOP TEN LEGO PARTY MINI-GAMES!]
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| Turn your miniature maze around by walking over it to pour the beakers of your color into the tank. Just be sure to avoid the bombs! |
Aside from the mini-games that play out as free-for-all matches, landing on a Battle space introduces a Team Battle. As you can probably guess, these are two-on-two battles featuring an exclusive lineup of mini-games. What you might NOT be able to probably guess is that each Team Battle awards the winners with individual Golden Bricks. These no doubt can shift the tide of a game in a swift fashion! Just be sure to cooperate well with your teammate, or else you'll lose out on the Golden Brick opportunity!
Speaking of spaces, there are plenty of other space types apart from Battle spaces in LEGO Party. Variety IS the spice of life of the party, after all... or something to that effect. At any rate, from spaces that bestow or steal studs from the player, to Lucky spaces where players spin a roulette to determine their reward, to Power-Up spaces that grant a random Power-Up item to a player, there's a lot of discoverable variety to be had.
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| Thankfully, Ted, chance is the one deciding this for Player 3! |
Power-ups are wonderful additions to LEGO Party, and these are basically just items from Mario Party 2 and beyond, but these have various uses to them. They can be used to benefit the player or utilized to mess with other players. From multiplying the number of spaces they roll, to adding five spaces to their roll, to switching positions with another player, to transporting them to a specific space (whether that be to a Battle Space or Mr. Gold himself), players can use Power-Ups strategically to put themselves at an advantage or other players at a disadvantage. Up to three can be held at a time by an individual player.
As for the boards themselves where all these spaces stand and where all Power-Ups are played, LEGO Party sports four boards known as Challenge Zones. While this may seem like a small amount of boards... well... it sort of is. Sure, you'll want to replay boards multiple times not just to see every event and possible outcome on each board, of which there are many, but you also earn experience points for each respective board upon playing and finishing games. These unlock rewards upon reaching experience levels such as exclusive Minifigures, the player avatars of LEGO Party, and carrots, used to, well, buy more Minifigures from the in-game shop.
That said, three of the boards--or rather, Challenge Zones--I found immensely enjoyable, but one of them, the Space Zone, I found to be a bit underwhelming. The concept is nice, but by the midpoint of each game, an alien pops up, and this results in a long (by comparison to other events in the game), unskippable cutscene that just breaks the flow of the game entirely.
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| In the NINJAGO Zone, a flame-breathing dragon sets fire to the center bridge at the start of every third round, causing any unfortunate player standing there to lose half their studs. |
While the Space Zone isn't the greatest, Challenge Zones like the Pirate Zone, NINJAGO Zone, and Theme Park Zone more than make up for it with lots of fun. They offer different ways to earn free Golden Bricks (such as defeating monsters by properly timing a button press on a spinning wheel in NINJAGO Zone's case), as well as potential to mess over your opponents--which, let's face it, is a huge part of the fun and ruining of friendships in these types of video games.
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| A free Golden Brick? Don't mind if I do! |
The Theme Park Zone in particular is a great pleasure to play on, as Mr. Gold is always in two locations, and always at the center circle of the board at opposite points of the plaza. Each time a Gold Brick is purchased, Mr. Gold's positions switch 90 degrees. In the final turns, Mr. Thief is added--the Boo equivalent of LEGO Party--who players can opt to visit instead of Mr. Gold. With Mr. Thief, who also appears in every other zone in the game, players can choose to steal another player's studs for free, or opt to steal a Gold Brick from a player for 75 studs. Studs aren't hard to come by in LEGO Party, so you can imagine how quickly chaotic games with Mr. Thief's presence can become!
LEGO Party is of course easy enough to play in some good old fashioned local multiplayer mayhem. If you lack four human players, the remainder can be replaced with CPUs of varying difficulties to choose. However, LEGO Party also sports the potential for online play, which is awesome in theory and thankfully in practice, too. A host can set a room code for their friends to join--Super Mario Party-style--and each game saves progress after every round. Cross play is an option, meaning that if you're on the Nintendo Switch with your copy of LEGO Party, but your friends have a copy of the PlayStation 5 version, that means you can still play a game with them. An incredible feature to have!
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| The world was apparently against Player 3 in this vase-busting mini-game. |
On the presentation side of this plentiful party package, LEGO Party shakes things up with the banter of two co-hosts: Ted Talker and Paige Turner. The two offer oftentimes humorous, sometimes even hilarious dialogue between one another, and it really plays to the game show environment LEGO Party presents to players. Occasionally either Ted or Paige will cut themselves off, especially if a mini-game ends mid-sentence, and by the third or so game of LEGO Party, you'll be hearing a lot of repeated phrases, but they seldom grow tiring or too repetitive. The music is serviceable, though aside from main theme (which is a bop) I can't recall a single melody or jingle in the game.
Graphically, LEGO Party is stellar and impressive. Every facet and piece of the environments throughout the game, whether in studio, in the mini-games, or within the Challenge Zones, is comprised of carefully constructed and assembled LEGO pieces. It's like a massive set come to life in this wonderful world and party package. There's occasional slowdown, however, but this affects non-gameplay moments, such as a cutscene showing the construction of a segment of the Theme Park Zone, for instance.
All in all, I'm surprised by how much I absolutely enjoyed LEGO Party. The developers really did a fantastic job with this party game, offering mostly well-crafted boards with relatively fast paced rounds (not looking at you, Space Zone), a colorful and creative collection of mini-games (some stinkers notwithstanding), and plentiful amounts of charm thrown in as well, with that latter part being expected from a LEGO game. The developers are also listening to feedback within the community, such as adding bonus Golden Bricks at the end of games, something that LEGO Party lacked by the time I finished up the Platinum trophy on the game a month ago. All this, plus a budget price, deliver a party worth having for any kind of player, young/old, casual/hardcore, and so forth.
[SPC Says: B+]
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