Pros: Kids love it
Cons: Boring for adults
The bottom line: Recommended for elementary school age kids. Not recommended for adults.
Usually my kids wake up on a Saturday morning and it's straight to the cartoons followed closely by, “What's for breakfast”. Not anymore! It's all about Mario Party 8. My husband keeps telling them to play Mario Party on the Game Cube, but they never do. The kids say the Wii version is so much better.

The game is rated E for Everyone and can accommodate up to 4 players. Since everyone plays the mini games, each player will need their own Wiimote. The back of the game shows the Nunchuck, but we've never used it for this game. This is a very long game when it's played with 4 players. You're able to set in advance how many turns you get. We choose the minimum, 10 rounds, which takes us a couple of hours to play.

Playing with Kids
This game has allowed us to have more family time than a traditional board game would have. First of all, there's such a wide range of ages in our family that it's hard to find a board game that will be easy enough for our 5-year-old and interesting enough for the adults. This has worked out very well as a family game. We have just as much interaction with each other while playing this game as we would a traditional board game. That's not to say we haven't had a few melt downs. Dad always wins the mini games. A 5-year-old doesn't really have much of a chance against someone who's been playing video games for decades. Luckily, the winner of the game is not determined exclusively by the mini games. It's our 8-year-old's favorite game. She wants to play it every day, even if it means playing by herself.

Our 14-year-old who is heavy into games does not like the game and would rather look at the walls than play it. He says it's too boring.

Playing as Adults
My husband and I have played the game a few time and enjoy playing this with the kids mostly because it's hilarious to see their expressions and their enthusiasm for the game. The game is interesting enough that we don't mind playing for a little while, but we couldn't play the game nearly as much as the kids do.

We would NEVER play the game without the kids. It's never brought out at a Wii party either because there are plenty of other games more appropriate for adults.

Graphics
The graphics are good, compared to other Wii games but still not as impressive as other systems. That seems to be the standard. There's not too much to the scenery, other than a lot of color. There is music in the background. The graphics are appropriate for the game, but certainly nothing special. The characters are about the most complicated things on the screen. There are plenty of boy or girl characters to choose from such as: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Waluigi, Wario, Birdo, Taod, Toadette, Yoshi, Dry Bones, Boo and Miis.

Game Play
There are different types of game play. The board changes. For example, one board is inside of a train. There are spaces marked out though the inside of the train and on the outside, on top of the train. One of the boards is a sidewalk in a city. I found the different boards to be be cool a cool idea.

The spaces on the board are colorful. Landing on a red space will result in loosing three coins while landing on a green space triggers a surprise event. It would be the equivalent of pulling a chance card in a traditional board game.

Rolling the dice is fun. When it's your turn, the dice will spin above the character's head. Lift the remote into the air to punch the dice.

There are candy stations along the way that allows the player to buy special powers in candy format. Some things you can buy is multiple dice blocks, legs of springs, a vampire to steal coins, etc.

We sit down for the majority of the game and stand up to play the mini games which makes it more interactive than a traditional video game or a board game.

Mini Games
There are tons of mini games that are simple and very short. We've played many of them without repeating any games. Some examples would be shooting snow balls, batting at balls, collecting balls in a ball pit, shooting paint balls, decorating cakes, rolling a flag up a flag pole, catching balls and numerous carnival-like games.

The games are very creative and different. I think the controllers really make the game fun. There's a lot of different movements to experiment with. The instructions can be read before playing the game, and practice rounds are optional. Teams are divided depending on what game mode your playing and how many players you have. Some games will have 1 person against 3. Sometimes the players will be divided into two teams. Other times it's everyone for themselves. Winning results in gaining more coins.

Overall
This is one of the few games that we purchased and prefer it over other kids games that we've seen. The kids have already logged many hours of game play on it so it seems to have replay value. I am comfortable with the kids playing this game because it's not addictive like role playing games and there's no shooting. The kids actually get along nicely when playing the game together. I never hear any whining about levels being to difficult to get past either.

My rating is strictly based on the impression that it's a child's game.