Mario Party: Island Tour is the 12th incarnation of the series (I refuse to count that weird Nintendo eReader release), but surprisingly the first foray onto the 3DS.
The board-game structure of Mario Party has remained generally unchanged, but the hardware's extra abilities such as tilt, 3D, microphone, touch-screen and augmented reality (AR) allowed developers to get more creative with the mini-games.
As usual, the games can be hit and miss in terms of substance and meaning. A criticism of Mario Party single player in the past has been the "luck" factor where a whole lot of effort can be destroyed in an instant, and Island Party is no exception. Mini-games are usually easy to win against the artificial intelligence (AI), so it seems like the game has to employ a brutal tactic every so often to "make a game of it".
This imbalance irons itself out during multiplayer modes because humans always react differently to AI.
I found myself turning the 3D feature off as it's not used that well unless using the AR feature, in which case 3D can definitely enhance the experience.
