The Mario Party series has been around since 1998. The first Mario Party came out on the Nintendo 64 console. There now have been 11 Mario Party games made for a home console since 1998, Super Mario Party being the newest addition.

In this game, just like most of the others, you play against your family/friends on a game board. You have dice that you role, which determines the number of spaces you can move. The different spaces that you land on have different effects. For example, if you land on a green space, you will get 3 coins. The more coins you get the better because you then use those coins to buy stars. The person with the most stars at the end of the game, wins! The thing that makes Mario Party so much fun, is that when everybody takes one turn, you all go into a mini-game round. The game throws you into a random mini-game that you must win to earn the most coins for that round.
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Other than the traditional game play of a Mario Party game, this game has a hub world where you can walk up to different things you want to do. There is a station that is solely mini-games (which is my personal favorite). Also, if you have a Nintendo Online membership, you can play the mini-games online with other people.
 
Price: $59.99 only on Nintendo Switch
Rating: E
Multiplayer up to 4 players

Ahh, another Mario Kart game. How many does that make now? 9 or so, and that is not including the mobile game, or the arcade games. Mario Kart has always been a huge hit, hence all of the different ones Nintendo has made.

This particular one is the newest, and my favorite. I have played all of them except two and for a while I thought the Wii version was the best. That is before I went back and played it after playing the newer ones. The motion controls on the Wii were strange and hard to get used to. Whether you prefer the motion controls or the traditional steering, Mario Kart 8 deluxe has you covered. You can use either steering method!

The Deluxe game is very similar to the plain Mario Kart 8 which was for the WiiU. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has everything Mario Kart 8 does, but more. It has added tracks, added characters, added karts, etc. which explains the name “Deluxe”.

If you have a Nintendo Online account, the online community is still huge for this game. It takes just a few seconds to throw you into a racing group unlike some other games which can take a few minutes to find a group for you. If you are more of an experienced Mario Kart player, the online races usually give you a major challenge, more than the normal races do in the game. If you are just starting out, the traditional races have speed options. 50cc up to 200cc. 50cc is much slower paced which is great for learners.
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Personally, this is my favorite racing game out there. Having played TONS of racing games as a child, everything from Rush, the Need for Speed games, F-Zero, Dirt, etc. believe it or not, Mario Kart is still my favorite.
 
Price: 59.99 only on Nintendo Switch
Rating: E
Local multiplayer up to 4 players

Moving Out is a recent release having just came out in late April. It is a couch co-op game, you may have also heard it being called local multiplayer, meaning you sit in the same room as your friends and/or family and play together. You can have up to four players with this game.

On to the story! There is no real story line to this game like most. You start off by picking your character. To begin with, you have five character choices: A girl, a cat, a toaster, a lizard, and a broken flower pot, all in human form. When you progress in the game, you unlock other characters. After you pick your character, it introduces you to the “story” of the game. You recently got a job as a certified Furniture Arrangement & Relocation Technician… meaning you work for a moving company, but no ordinary moving company. All your boss cares about is getting the furniture the people want moved onto the moving truck. In each level, you have a different house, different furniture that needs moved, and a different time limit. You must get the furniture onto the moving truck in the allotted time. To do this, you will have to throw furniture through windows, over swimming pools, off the second story, etc. You must get creative and find the quickest way possible to do the job.

Be warned parents, you may have some yelling kids while playing this. But all the while they are learning how to work together.

This game has made me belly laugh so hard that I couldn’t breathe, many times, while other times I found myself yelling at my partner “PULL”, “SWING AROUND THE OTHER WAY”, and “PUSH THE REFRIGERATOR OFF THE ROOF”.
 
Price: $29.99 for Playstation 4 and XboxOne
$39.99 for Nintendo Switch
Rated: E

Does anyone remember Banjo-Kazooie, or maybe even Banjo-Tooie? They were games made by a company called Rare for the Nintendo 64 back in the late 90’s. Sadly, Rare was bought out by Microsoft in 2002. Since then, Rare fell apart. In the past five years or so, some of the original Rare employees came together and made a new game designer company called Playtonic Games. Their first released game was Yooka-Laylee in 2017, which is a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie games. Spiritual successor means it has a bunch of the same elements, styles, character designs, and themes, without being a direct sequel or prequel.

Yooka-Laylee got a BUNCH of bad reviews because these game reviewers were unfairly comparing it to the Banjo-Kazooie games, which it is not directly part of. This game was so wanted by fans, it broke the record for the fastest game to reach $1,000,000 on Kickstarter.

Since you now know the background of the game, lets dive into the story and components of the game.
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Yooka-Laylee is another 3D platformer game, which again, means it has a hub world where you can choose which world to go to next and the worlds are 3D. The main two characters are Yooka, a chameleon, and Laylee, a bat. They’re a character duo; Laylee is always on Yooka’s back. You control both characters to explore the different worlds, solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and collect the very important “pagies” which unlock new worlds. They work together to reach Capital B’s office, to retrieve the magical book that the evil Capital B stole.
 
Price: Approximately $20-$25 for PS4 & XboxOne
Approximately $15 digital download for Nintendo Switch
Rating: E 10+