Muppets Party Cruise
Score: 70% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: TDK Developer: Mass Media Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: Since most of Muppets Party Cruise takes place in the form of mini-games, the graphics take on many different forms and usually aren't the main focus of things. For the most part, the characters and the environment are in 3D, though you usually won't be looking too hard at them. What you will see will usually be too fast paced to really be worthy of note. The visuals make up for this by packing most of the screens with colorful effects and familiar objects of the old Muppets TV show. The voices are equally as familiar, though some of the main characters, like Fozzie and Kermit, sound a little lame. The music also seems uninspired in places, but generally fits the cruise-liner theme of the game. The effects are the best part of the sounds, as they accompany the visuals nicely.
Gameplay: Muppets Party Cruise can best be compared to games like Fusion Frenzy or Mario Party. It's basically a kind of board game on your video game console. Jam-packed with nothing but mini-games, Muppets Party Cruise encourages multiple players to sit around a console and duke it out via said mini-games. There are plenty of games available, including some remakes of classics arcade games that had to have their names changed. Beach Speeders, speed bingo, shuffleboard, and throwing tomatoes at the heads of your opponents are some of the other zanier games. Unfortunately, most of the games are feeble attempts at keeping your attention for a couple of minutes. Some are genuinely fun, like the one where you race around the desert in go-carts and bounce beach balls into goals. Others, which consist of most of the mini-games, just fall short of the mark and don't do much to entertain. You can opt to either play these games individually, with you and some friends picking out which ones to play, or you can take to the more in depth interactive board game where you and some friends play a longer version of the whole game on various decks of the cruise boat. Each player picks his or her Muppet and each in turn walks around the deck of the boat. On your turn you get a certain amount of spaces you can move, and you can walk over bonuses, into teleporters, or into doors that take you to the mini-games. The winner of the mini-game gets a point in the color of the door they walked into, and once somebody has all four colored points, they win and everyone advances to the next level.
Difficulty: Most of the mini-games are intuitive and inherently easy. However, when you are about to begin, you get a brief description of what the game is and then are thrown into the fray. This actually makes things more fun at times because some of the games come straight out of left field and leave everyone guessing as to what to do. Picking up the knack for each game isn't hard, but if you're facing someone who's played it even once before then you'll be at a serious disadvantage.
Game Mechanics: As each mini-game is relatively easy to master, it is obvious that the controls would be as simple as possible as well. Most games require the use of only a couple of buttons, with the rare ones making use of anything over four. The interactive board game for a long-playing experience is the most interface intensive thing in Muppets Party Cruise. People and things are moving constantly on the board, and it's easy to lose track of where everything is. Scattered around the place are cruise credits, which can be used to buy points for a mini-game before you start playing. These can also be stolen if somebody walks up next to you on the deck and wins a game of rock, paper, scissors. Muppets Party Cruise makes a noble attempt to bust into the party game genre, but ultimately ends up hitting an iceberg. Playing the interactive board game will let you unlock more mini-games, totaling 30 in all, but most just aren't that much fun. There are a lot of familiar Muppets and scenes from the shows, but they don't really feel like their good old selves. It is, however, a solid game and the interactive board game could be something special if it was tweaked a little bit more. If you're really a party game nut, check out Muppets Party Cruise. Otherwise, you'll probably want to stay on dry land and watch this one float by.
-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications AKA Andrew Horwitz
Mojo! Red Card 2003