Super Mario Party Jamboree

Super Mario Party Jamboree is the best version yet of a formula I've been playing since the N64 days. It is the rare Mario Party that earns its board-game structure instead of using it as padding between minigames. Motion controls are back for anyone who wants them. My group mostly just mashes buttons anyway. Jamboree throws over 110 minigames at four players, and most of them hold up after a dozen replays, which was never a given with this series. It landed just behind Wonder because dice-roll randomness that makes Mario Party fun with friends can also make it maddening if your table takes winning seriously. For a laughing, no-stakes group, this is the best the format has ever been on Switch.

My wife isn't a gamer, but give her a Joy-Con for a round of Mario Party and she turns into someone who remembers exactly whose turn it was to steal her stars. Jamboree is the best Mario Party has been in years: bigger board variety, a genuinely deep pool of minigames, and rounds that rarely drag past twenty minutes. It scales from four grumpy teenagers to a full table without anyone needing to learn real skill, which is the whole point of a party game. The 20-player online mode exists, but nobody in my group has ever opened it. This is a couch game, and a great one.

Mario Party finally fixed the thing that made the last few entries feel thin. Jamboree has more boards, better minigames, and enough mode variety that you are not doing the same thing for three sessions in a row. I played an evening of this with my kids and wife, and it was one of those rare cases where nobody wanted to stop after a single board. The randomness that makes some people groan is exactly what makes it work for mixed-skill groups. A six-year-old has a real shot at winning. That is not a bug. For a game night with people who don't normally play games, this is the easiest pick on the entire list.