When a notable game is set for a December 22 release it means one of three things. The game is either Christmas themed, it's so good that a million people would buy it on any day regardless of proximity to a holiday, or it's so mediocre that its publisher has actively sought to avoid the limelight by hiding it at the end of the year.

There's not a whole lot of jolly old Saint Nick in Mario Party: The Top 100, and let's just say I don't see it setting any Yuletide sales records either.

I don't want to be too harsh on Mario and pals here, because this is a well-made game. But as a celebration of a great series this is a disappointing effort, and its release timing and lack of marketing push gives me the impression Nintendo knows that.

The Top 100 does a good job of collecting and remastering a large number of minigames from across the entire series, which has been going since the Nintendo 64 era, and many of them are fun tests of your skill, timing, luck or memory. But the game neglects to tie them together in any meaningful way, throwing out a hugely important element of the series. By focusing almost wholly on the minigames, a session of Top 100 tends to become a relentless slog of loading in and out of overly simplistic challenges over and over again.

Past versions of Mario Party have typically offered plenty of different game modes, from the earliest offerings — where players rolled a dice and moved around a board, sometimes triggering minigames that would bring benefits to the winner and penalties for the losers — to the more complex recent affairs. Last year's Star Rush, for example, offered a boss-battle-themed version of the traditional board game, which you could play on several different maps, as well as a more manic mode where you cashed in your points from minigames to buy balloons. There was also a racing mode where you had to play specially designed minigames on a circuit, and a half dozen other game modes that were separate from minigames entirely.

By contrast, The Top 100 focuses on a singleplayer mode where you play through a constant stream of minigames against computer opponents. For a game with "party" in the title, it felt bizarre to play it by myself, and I couldn't really summon the energy to care whether or not I beat my virtual opponents. Gloating and heckling is a huge part of the game, after all.

There is of course a mode where you can choose whichever minigames you want to play, and you can do this against your real friends, but you need to play the campaign to unlock most of the minigames first. There is also a mode resembling the old board game style of play, but it only features one very plain board.

Putting the hundred best minigames of all time into one game is a solid idea on paper, and I understand too the desire to scale back other aspects of the game to put the micro-challenges front and centre, but whenever I play this game — alone or with friends — the fun disappears much more quickly than with other Mario Party games. There's just no hook.

The removal of the metagame also makes the difference between legitimately great minigames and mindless fluff much more stark. While previously a "mash the button as much as you can" game would have been tolerable (hey, it's a chance for the guy in third place to sneak in a win), now it just begs the question of why it's here at all. And while the majority of minigames are fun, there certainly are those you'll have trouble believing are among the best the series has to offer. It's worth noting that the 100 here are only taken from the numbered Mario Party games which were released on home consoles, not from any of the portable outings, which is a bit weird given The Top 100 is itself a portable game.

Mario Party fanatics who have a group of friends they've always played Mario Party with will likely find some nostalgic value here. It's not a very good Mario Party game, but it has the bulk of the best minigames you remember, and they've been cleaned up and modernised very competently.

For everyone else, though, Star Rush is a far superior Mario Party experience on 3DS.

Mario Party: The Top 100 is out on December 22 for 3DS.