Review: 10th Anniversary Party

I've spoken A LOT about how I've always felt that the Anniversary Party has been treated as a low priority event.  Up to this point, most of the events in its history have overlapped with - and have been unfairly influenced by - the Halloween Party, perhaps the most incompatible event for a birthday party that CP has ever come up with.  Additionally, the biggest Anniversary Party to date was the third one, which had a staggering four rooms decorated.  Could this year's party finally break the mold?

Well, kind of.  I'm not going to say that I was highly entertained by this party, but I certainly felt it was a big stepup, not just from the last nine years of birthday parties, but also compared to almost every party we've seen in the last two years.

While one could always complain about rooms going undecorated, the amount of rooms that were transformed at this party exceeded my expectations.  There's a good mix of new and old (this applies to items also) and the fact that several party rooms were brought back as well was a nice surprise.  The tour guide mic was a clever idea and so were the robot mascots.  I also found it interesting how CP slightly tweaked older rooms to accommodate games that came after the party that was being presented.

Even though all of that was pretty solid, the party hit some snags when it came to new content.  The Town and Coffee Shop were barely decorated and weren't very interesting visually.  The party hat looks really nice and appropriately unique for the milestone in question, though I wish there would have been a puzzle or a quest around the island to find it to make collecting it that much more rewarding.  The yearbook covering years rather than months seemed a bit useless; if you want to know what happened in 2005 or 2006, why don't you check the yearbook that says "2005-2006?"

In closing, the 2015 Anniversary Party is a solid event.  The hype wasn't there, the activities weren't really there (though kudos for bringing back Santa's Sleigh and having all of the mascots visit....well, except for poor Penguin Band), but there is quite a bit to see and collect.  There's a lot more that could be done, but this is a good start.

Score: 7/10