You can Start the Party. Just wake me when it’s over. While the individual elements making up this party — the mini games — are not that bad, the whole package is.
Start the Party consists primarily of nine pretty decent mini games controlled with the new Move controller in conjunction with the Playstation Eye video camera. Most of the games show you playing the game smacking bugs with a flyswatter or gently pushing falling baby chicks into baskets by using a hand fan. The games do so with the augmented reality effect of your controller being turned into the tool you need to play the game. It’s a pretty cool effect to see yourself holding a flashlight in the ghost game as you zap ghosts, a paint brush in the shape-painting game where your creations come to life after you finish, and trimmers and a bottle of dye as you do the hair of some creepy characters.
The problem with Start the Party, however, is that the games are, well, mini games. They are all shallow trysts with essentially one game play mechanic. Although there are two different single-player and multiplayer modes, they all get stale rather quickly because you are playing the same games over and over. If there are had been more well-executed games, say in the forty or fifty range, this could have been the equivalent of Warioware Move it or the Rayman Raving Rabbids mini game collections for the Wii that would have some longevity and make you actually want to bring it out at a party.
Speaking of the Wario and Raving Rabbids game, there’s also a charm missing from Start the Party present in both those series. The game could have benefitted from a mascot — a goofy, cartoon character with attitude to give it more atmosphere and comedy. Instead, we get a fairly obnoxious radio announcer type, who you will despise after about your third game mode. Although he occasionally says something funny (“Well, it’s the trying that matters . . . kind of . . . “), it’s not enough to give the game any kind of cohesive atmosphere to hold the package together.
There are two single player modes, but you will tire of these quickly. You can play each of the nine mini games individually and compete for the highest score for that game. There’s also a survival mode which throws you the nine mini games quickly in succession for a brief period of time. A few other mini games are thrown into this mode, but they are barely worth mentioning (e.g. waving a surrender flag quickly enough before you are shot). There is a meter on the right that starts at a certain level. When you do well in the games, the meter slowly fills. When you do badly, the meter depletes. When the meter is empty, your session is over. Each time you encounter a game the second time, it is more difficult (i.e. the baby chicks fall faster), and the goal is to last the longest period of time. The problem with both of these modes is, again, that there are only a handful of mini games.
But this is supposed to be a party, right? So, let’s talk about the multiplayer options. In party mode, you can choose to play 5, 8, or 10 rounds. Each round consists of one mini game and the winner can either collect all of the stars or steal stars from another player, or each competing player will get a proportional amount of the stars available. The final round is a timed round, and the amount of time you have to play that round’s mini game depends on how many stars you earned in the earlier rounds. The winner of the final round wins. There is also intermittently a joker round, where a player might be able to paint on one of the snapshots that each player takes at the beginning of the game to represent them or call them a name that will be played each time it is that player’s turn. Hilarious, huh? The party mix mode is not that different from party mode, except that the players get to choose which mini game comes next and there are no joker rounds.
Aside from the general problems discussed above (the number of mini games and the lack of atmosphere), another problem with the multiplayer modes is that they do not, well, feel like a party. Players play the games individually in turn, so you have to sit and watch as each player goes. So, by the time the third and fourth person are playing the same game you just watched two or three other people play, you will no longer be that amused. It would have been great if the game incorporated some modes or games that allowed at least two players to play simultaneously to add a little excitement to the event.
In short, if you’re looking for the great Move-inspired mini game collection for the PS3, I suggest you wait, because Start the Party is definitely not it. Although the mini games are briefly amusing, they are not worth the asking price. And even when you try to party with others, it’s a snooze.
Rating: 
