Guilty Party
The Butler in the Study with the Butter Knife?
Posted September 7, 2010
Party games aren’t particularly well received by the gaming press, likely due to their general lower age range and depressingly monotonous mini-games. Disney and developer Wideload Games is likely trying to reverse that stigma with the release of Guilty Party, a who-dunnit mystery title that offers a board game style of gameplay mixed with mini-games. The main narrative follows the Dickens, a group of detectives that always has to battle their arch-nemesis, Mr. Valentine; their Moriarty so to speak. These detectives have to solve mystery after mystery to get to Mr. Valentine. The presentation, while appealing to a younger demographic, has plenty of material for an older crowd and the developer does a great job of balancing the game for entire families to play.
The game is split into two modes, the Story Mode and the Party Mode. Story mode is designed to introduce you to the family and basics on how the game is played. It’s broken up into six chapters and can be knocked out in a handful of hours. In order to advance through Story mode, you essentially work down a list of physical attributes in order to discover who the culprit is. Remember playing Guess Who with those little flipping faces? The concept is identical, but with a higher quality of clues to work through. You can interrogate suspects to work through the clues and spend your in-game tokens to learn more about the case.
Getting clues ties mini-games into the mix. The player is thrown into a mini-game to discover the clue. This can be anything from searching a room or moving the Wii Remote around to remove a disguise or give someone the evil eye. Unfortunately, the mini-games are the worst part of the game. They are geared towards the youngest players and the majority of games are fairly pointless. There’s a way to increase the difficulty of the mini-games, but it certainly doesn’t increase the entertainment value.
The player also earns Savvy cards that offer bonus tokens for clues or instant transportation to other rooms. These are best saved for a time when the evil Valentine decides to mess with you. Often times, you will be locked in a room or lose a stack of tokens to Valentine just to make the game more interesting.
The Party mode is designed for multiple players, either co-operatively or competitively. Co-op mode is helpful for kids, but playing against a few other players is highly recommended. Mini-games are created by random and players can basically screw with each other by locking players in rooms, stealing their tokens or bluffing out players with fake responses. It can also be very frustrating the other players that get the brunt of the punishment. That being said, they can do the same to you and often do. Party mode is really where you are going to get the replay value out of the game, ideally because the suspects, clues and mysteries are completely randomized at the start of the game.
Despite the precedent set by party games of past, Guilty Party seems to buck the trend and deliver a genuinely entertaining experience; especially for families gathered around the Wii. I can see this type of game being played after Thanksgiving dinner with the family, the same type of family that digs into board games after stuffing themselves with delicious turkey. I can’t really recommend it for the single player mode alone and the many of the mini-games are miss the mark, but it’s pretty fantastic for groups of 3 or more. You can feel safe picking this one up before Turkey Day to play on the Wii with the family instead of another round of Twilight: Scene It.
Discuss This Game on Our Official VGT Forum
The game is split into two modes, the Story Mode and the Party Mode. Story mode is designed to introduce you to the family and basics on how the game is played. It’s broken up into six chapters and can be knocked out in a handful of hours. In order to advance through Story mode, you essentially work down a list of physical attributes in order to discover who the culprit is. Remember playing Guess Who with those little flipping faces? The concept is identical, but with a higher quality of clues to work through. You can interrogate suspects to work through the clues and spend your in-game tokens to learn more about the case.
Getting clues ties mini-games into the mix. The player is thrown into a mini-game to discover the clue. This can be anything from searching a room or moving the Wii Remote around to remove a disguise or give someone the evil eye. Unfortunately, the mini-games are the worst part of the game. They are geared towards the youngest players and the majority of games are fairly pointless. There’s a way to increase the difficulty of the mini-games, but it certainly doesn’t increase the entertainment value.
The player also earns Savvy cards that offer bonus tokens for clues or instant transportation to other rooms. These are best saved for a time when the evil Valentine decides to mess with you. Often times, you will be locked in a room or lose a stack of tokens to Valentine just to make the game more interesting.
The Party mode is designed for multiple players, either co-operatively or competitively. Co-op mode is helpful for kids, but playing against a few other players is highly recommended. Mini-games are created by random and players can basically screw with each other by locking players in rooms, stealing their tokens or bluffing out players with fake responses. It can also be very frustrating the other players that get the brunt of the punishment. That being said, they can do the same to you and often do. Party mode is really where you are going to get the replay value out of the game, ideally because the suspects, clues and mysteries are completely randomized at the start of the game.
Graphics
- The Guilty Party visuals are colorful and playful. The level design reminds me of Taletale’s games like the Sam & Max series or Strongbad and it works really well for this style of gameplay. The background design, while cartoonish, is just as detailed at the character models. Several of the mini-games don’t look particularly great though, especially in SD.
Audio
- The voice acting is really where the audio excels. The character voices are actually humorous at times and all sound like fairly professional actors / actresses. The music in the game is also top notch, particularly the main theme song.
Conclusion
Despite the precedent set by party games of past, Guilty Party seems to buck the trend and deliver a genuinely entertaining experience; especially for families gathered around the Wii. I can see this type of game being played after Thanksgiving dinner with the family, the same type of family that digs into board games after stuffing themselves with delicious turkey. I can’t really recommend it for the single player mode alone and the many of the mini-games are miss the mark, but it’s pretty fantastic for groups of 3 or more. You can feel safe picking this one up before Turkey Day to play on the Wii with the family instead of another round of Twilight: Scene It.
Discuss This Game on Our Official VGT Forum