Game Party 3 (Wii) Review

Mini-game collections have become standard on the Wii, with all sorts of games coming out looking to take advantage of the Wii Remote in a family-friendly manner. If anything is proof of this, it’s Game Party 3, the third in a series of game collections for the Wii and continuing a chain of some of the worst rated games on the console. Despite such poor reviews, the Game Party series has still sold millions around the world and has lead us to this next instalment, Game Party 3.

The third party of games is quite similar to the first two, including all of the 11 game types found in the first two games plus 8 new modes totalling “19 Hit Games” to play. The games vary a bit, but like the first games they’re all based around simple indoor activities such as Darts or Billiards. The locations range from household activities to arcade games, and sporting types such as Croquet and Mini Golf, but none of them are really very exciting or offer anything exceptional beyond other mini-game collections.

The game leads straight into a menu after picking a game type where a player can choose or create their character with a few options of hair, face, shirts and pants. Unfortunately, there’s no right combination to make your character not look like a reject from a first generation N64 game that’d give Max Payne’s static squinty face a run for his money. You can also choose gender, create a name and pick left- or right-handed which is at least one decent feature.

Most of the games are pretty bland. Even the Whack-a-Mole game (cleverly titled “Smack-a-Troll”) is unexciting as a bland game of waiting and timing with no aiming required. Most of the games have a variation to pick where, for example, the scoring system is changed or something is altered, but this does nothing but pad out the menu with more options of the same stuff. Most of the games are very simple which is probably due to the difficulty of controlling anything requiring aim. The motion controls are shocking when used in the majority of games, requiring the most frantic and over-exaggerated movements to get a response while also over-responding to the slightest and most structured movements.

Games like Puck Bowling, Darts or the exciting sport of Curling are all a chore with terrible motion controls. Fortunately, you can position and aim your shot a bit with the D-pad, but it still doesn’t make for the feeling of having no real control or aim over your shots. The only way to get a decent response and aim is to really twist the Remote on a swing which is horribly uncomfortable.

If terrible controls aren’t enough to break a motion-based mini-game collection (which it is), the game seriously falls behind in presentation as well. The music is cheesy and repetitive, bringing out that synthesized ringtone feel with cheery tracks that play on loop and have no real structure or aesthetic value but simply get annoying.

Graphically, there’s nothing to see here either. The character models look poor with no detail, creating some pretty jagged-looking block men like some grown-up outcast from a MySims game. It’s nice how the locations can vary for each game depending on the category, so there are arcades, sporting venues and a home environment that actually look quite decent.

Unfortunately, it’s everything else in Game Party 3 that’ll hold back the experience, specifically the controls. When you’re making a motion-based mini-game collection, you’d think that’d be the first thing to focus on, especially as it’s now the third iteration of one of the Wii’s best selling franchises. But it’s obvious that the number of games was the main focus here, resulting in the “19 Hit Games” you’ll find here today. Sure there’s a lot, but when none of them are any good, what’s the point?