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Much better than its predecessor!
I'll be honest: I liked Game Party 1, even though the controls were awful (Ping Cup was completely unplayable and Darts was frustrating at best). I liked the variety of games which were perfect choices for a motion-controled console, but it just wasn't developed well and wasn't my top choice for parties.
Enter Game Party 2. I felt a bit silly buying a game that I already had the majority of (GP2 contains all of the games from GP1 plus some extras) but I read a preliminary review from a gaming website and decided to give it a try. The controls are greatly improved. Still not perfect, but at least I feel like where I aim is where I'm (generally) going to land. Aim in GP1, and you'll probably hit somewhere else entirely.
GP1 had many, many pages of characters to choose from. GP2 doesn't have as much of a variety, but you can create your own custom player and save your stats. I'll actually pick up GP2 and play by myself, which I never did with GP1. Too frustrating. By obtaining tickets, you can purchase new things for your characters to wear; I haven't gotten that far yet since the games I played the most didn't offer tickets. It's nice that you can obtain tickets even while playing with friends, something that most games do not offer.
There is also a tournament mode in GP2 which is great if you have more than 4 people who want to play (up to 16, depending on the game). There are a lot of ways to conduct the tournament, such as loser goes home, an actual brackets advancement, and so on. Depending on which one you pick (we did a winner takes all), you can choose how many rounds (3, 5, or I believe 9) before the winner is declared.
The thing I disliked the most about GP2 gameplay was how it was arranged. Perhaps we didn't have the right settings (we cancelled out of a tournament to play individual games, so maybe it was still stuck on tournament mode), but there were just 3 of us and it was forcing 2 of us to be on a team and the other person to play solo. I would have preferred for each of us to have our own scores. Another bummer was the number of games that required you to throw underhand; we switched between games just to give our arms a rest!
Now for the games. There are 11 total, all of the ones from GP1 plus some new additions.
- Darts: Again, thanks to the improved aiming function, this game is playable. I really enjoy it. The venue where you are playing changes, so it's nice to be somewhere other than the pub in GP1.
- Skillball: Venue is a little sharper, and again the aiming helps, but it's still pretty straightforward. (I am a fan of the version on Carnival Games, so I'm used to a different style.) However, you can roll more than one ball at once, so long as the other one is on its way to falling in a hole, you can toss another ball. Since this is timed, it's however many points you can get before the buzzer sounds, rather than having 6 balls and seeing how many you can score. In that regard, I wasn't actually trying to get in the 100 slot and was just trying to throw as many balls as I could.
- Shuffleboard: It's quite a bit better than GP1, again because of the improved engine. We had a lot of fun playing this, and there are other options (first to 15, first to 21, and same for a version called curling which is arrange like a bullseye). I like it in real life, and this is a great substitute.
- Ping Cup: Wow, this is probably the most improved game. In GP1, this was virtually unplayable. It was so hard, I never played it. So when we decided to try it out in GP2, I warned everyone how frustrating it was. To my surprise, it was easy and pretty fun.
- Hoop Shoot: Again, my view of this is colored by Carnival Games, but it was okay. I landed only two baskets, so I was apparently doing something wrong. With a little practice, it can be fun, just tiring for your arm!
- Trivia: As with GP1, I just don't get this game, and the instructions are still not helpful. I tend to skip over it.
- Quarterback Challenge: The onscreen instructions helped me understand what was going on, and once I figured it out, it was enjoyable. Basically, you're trying to throw to your (yellow) team mates to advance and score a touch down. Throw to the wrong player, and you lose points. Whoever has the most points at the end wins. It takes some practice.
- Puck Bowling: This was amusing. It's similar to shuffleboard, except you are hitting the bowling pins at the end. Picking up a split is virtually impossible, so you have to be spot on with your aiming (and again, it's easier than if this game was on GP1). Very straightforward.
- Lawn Darts: Try to land inside the circles to score points. It's hard to tell where your dart will land based on the camera angle, so you just have to get used to the motion of throwing underhand.
- Horseshoes: This was frustrating at first. We couldn't score any points. Of course, a refresher on how horseshoes is actually scored helped us, and we were doing much better by game's end. Underhand throwing again.
- Bean Bags: I was really looking forward to this one, and it wasn't as great as I had hoped. First, it's played indoors, which was strange to me. But the board you're throwing to has different designs. Also, your throws don't seem to upset the bean bags that have already landed which makes it a bit less realistic. It's hard to knock your opponent's bags off. On the other hand, points don't cancel out so I guess there's less of a reason to do so.
Game Party 2 is a good addition to your Wii party game collection. It's not perfect, but it provides enough games that people are familiar with to be enjoyable, and the changes over GP1 make it a much more worthy purchase.
[Wednesday, November 12, 2008]
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