Born from the same womb that carried cult DS hit Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ, Family & Friends Party brought with its birthing high expectations, hopes that it would grow up to surpass its older brother's accomplishments.
But the new WiiWare title, essentially a poor man's Mario Party (despite costing 1000 Points, more expensive than most of WiiWare's other party games), fails to live up to those expectations, disappointing alland resulting in holiday dinners ruined by embarrassing, drunken tantrums with Family & Friends Party yelling at its parents, "I try, and I try, but nothing was ever good enough for you. Nothing ever made you love me like you love him."
Barcelona-based developer EnjoyUP caught many shoot'em-up fans' attention with Zombie BBQ's unconventional premise and enthralling art design, but none of that creativity can be found with this latest title. The game's host, a wide-eyed character wearing a bow tie and riding a hovering vehicle that looks like Bowser's Clown Copter, hardly talks, except when providing long-winded explanations for simple minigames, and he's prone to laughing for no discernable reason.
Three modes are offered -- Team Attack, in which you and another player (CPU or human) complete challenges across five categories in 10 turns or less; Triangular Party, designed for three people; and Family & Friends Party, supporting up to eight players split into two to four teams. Online play, though always great to have around to liven up a scene, was not invited to this particular soiree
Eight generic faces are offered as in-game avatars; players can also choose from their own Mii selection, but my console crashed and required a manual reboot when I tried to pick from my own set of custom characters, so I avoided this feature for the remainder of my review. The avatars' bodies are never seen, as they play no active role in the minigames; they seem to simply serve as an indicator for the current player's turn.
Family & Friends Party has no overworld, no board for players to progress through. Instead, minigames from five different, random categories are dropped onto the screen, those categories including a Simon Says clone, Pictionary, a challenge for spelling words backwards, and hangman.
There is also a charades minigame, in which one player has to close their eyes while the other learns what they'll have to interpret. After acting that out, players are asked if they succeeded in this endeavor, and the game, the gullible fool it is, takes your word when you tell it that you breezed through the challenge.
Whether the players are able to complete all the categories or not, at the end of the game, their decapitated heads are placed on a golden altar decorated with colored light bulbs, as if presented for Salome. Zig zags and flowers line the walls, and in the background, one can see a window overlooking a forest of evergreen trees. One wonders about the thickness of the glass and the drop from the window, calculating their chances of survival and measuring it against the advantages of escaping this tiresome party.
