Party Planet Review
Release Date: December 12th, 2017
Developer: Mastiff
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Price: $39.99 Nintendo eShop and exclusivly at GameStop
It seems mini games have always done very well on Nintendo systems. Mario Party on the N64, Wii Play on the Wii. The Wii had too many to list here; most of them shovelware titles and not good. When I saw Party Planet was coming to the Switch, my mind went straight to “here comes the shovelware”. But after spending some time with the game, it is far from shovelware. While not perfect, it does a great job of giving you exactly what you would expect.
Party Planet has 30 games (18 multiplayer) but most are locked behind progression at first. You unlock games by earning gold, silver and bronze scores in available games. Luckily many of the games can be played single player or against the CPU so you can unlock games without have to get two or more people together to play. Still this could be frustrating to some who have kids that want to play all the games without having to work on getting higher and higher scores or might find some of the available games hard or just not fun.
With 30 games, not every one of them will be gems. Most are very fun; some just felt like games you remember playing before. Alien Balloonists (Balloon Fight), Meteors (Astroids), River Defense (Luxor). Now this isn't a bad thing; the games like this are well done and easy to play without a learning curve and they are single player. Other games like Super Vegan Anaconda, which is pretty much snake, and Frost Hockey, which is air hockey, are ok, but like most of the games they are more fun with more than one player. Some of the games are total chaotic fun with 4 players and this is where many of the games shine.
Graphics pretty much look like flash games. It's not always a bad thing, but don't expect anything ground breaking. Music is also pretty generic. I feel this is something that could have been done just a little better.
Overall, it is mixed bag of games. Some good, some not. Some of the good ones are clones of old games, which isn't bad since they are done well. At $39.99 it may be a hard sell, but if you are looking for a party game for game nights and you are a Switch owner this one is worth a look.
Pros
- A lot of the games are fun
- Many are 4 player
- Also enjoyable solo
Cons
- Hit and miss game quality
- Music and graphics are OK
- $39.99 price may be too steep
Thanks to Mastiff for proving a copy for review!