Lights, Camera, Party!

Lights, Camera, Party! is a collection of mini-games bundled up into a game show environment. The game blends mini-game action found in similar titles like Wario Ware and mixes it with all your favorite game shows moments.

The game follows main character Gus Pacho, the Studio Owner of APE TV. One of the studios’ satellites has smashed and destroyed the home of the Funzini family and as a consolation; Gus invites the Funzini family to stay on studio property. The catch, the Funzini’s must now participate in a variety of television shows for the grand prize – a house of their dreams.

The story mode is where the bulk of the playtime will be had. Choose one of the five characters (you’ll have to eventually complete the story mode with all five characters if you ever want to see all 50 mini-games), each a member of the Funzini family, and play through waves of mini-games in order to build your the Funzini dream house. The characters have no bearing on the games or the story itself, so it really doesn’t matter who you choose.

The mini-games themselves are your standard motion-controlled fare: swing at this, rotate that, move it up to do one thing, down for another, etc. Honestly, there's nothing really inspired or unique that you haven't seen before in another form in some other mini-game collection, but at least the motion controls perform well. Because it's PlayStation Move, they incorporate some forward and back movements -- such as twisting blocks to be pushed into the properly shaped holes -- so it's not just a lot of waggle (though there is plenty of that, too).

As you play through, there's a decent amount of competition to be had, as players can try to beat high scores on different events. However, the announcer will begin to get on your nerves. Even as you fail an event completely, he'll claim that you're "one step away from victory" despite completely screwing up. Also there is no single-player option, other than the game's challenge mode.

The game is meant for families to and play while having fun and laughing at the funny faces and variety of mini-games, all while frantically passing the one controller back and forth to each other. However, because there's not a lot of games unlocked at the start, once you unlock a good number, though, you shouldn't see too many repeats, as there are a total of 50 mini-games in all. Because there are only five avatars, when playing with more than five people, you'll also end up having many folks using the same character for their profile. Again, not a huge deal, but a bit more variety would have been nice.

Lights, Camera, Party! is not a bad game. What it does, it does fairly well, and the art style looks neat. However, despite the graphics and accurate gameplay, the collection falls into the problem all mini-game collections have: repetition, which leads to boredom. Once you've completed several mini-games, you may not be willing to unlock the rest. Passable? maybe...

Marco Cecilio, NoobFeed