| Retro Review :: Wario World |
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| Written by Carnage | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 07 March 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Ah, Wario... many a great time we’ve spent together... but what went wrong, eh? You used to be top of the class, A* material across the board. But now you’re just churning out ‘quirky’ microgame collections and you’ve forgotten your roots, lad. Why have you ditched the awesome platforming that made me love you more than that red dude with the ‘M’ on his forehead? Ah well, here’s my review for the last of the great days of Wario... Wario World is the only Wario game on a home console that doesn’t involve you shaving a cat or drinking a midget. No my friend, Wario is here to kick some ass, and he does it pretty damn well. The premise of the game (explained in a CG cutscene that has about as much thought and care put into it as that of making a pot noodle) is that Wario has stolen an ‘evil’ gem that makes all his treasure want to eat him and splits his castle into 4 worlds. So what does our flabby treasure hunter do? He beats the living snot out of all the creatures with goodies in their bellies and collects all his cash back. The problem with that story line is that it implies you’ll be fighting ‘evil’ money and that you’ll be able to beat up dancing coins and bitey gems. But sadly, this concept was overlooked in favour of generic ‘dinosaurs’ and ‘skeletons’. It’s a crying shame, as that idea is much cooler than the bad guys we end up with and it screams missed opportunity. Otherwise, the presentation is pretty good, Wario’s got a hearty vocal range and the menus and such are all well generated and displayed (this is a Nintendo title after all), and the hub world is nicely done.  The graphics are... mixed. At times it’s a colourful, vibrant world filled with creatures grabbing at your goolies, otherwise it’s a bland environment with nothing going on. The game actually looks better when there are more enemies on screen, as it adds life to otherwise life-less levels. Wario himself looks pretty good, but if you look at him for too long you’ll start to see that he seems dead inside. The character model lacks... well, character. Wario is an over-the-top tyrant, a purveyor of evil at its most melodramatic, and Treasure (the real guys behind this project) just forgot this. Nevertheless, levels are well rendered and I’ve yet to see the frame-rate let me down. The core gameplay itself is a repetitive, simple, button mashing delight. I could make a list of a thousand games that are rubbish because of repetitive, simple, button mashing but Wario World wouldn’t be on it. Despite the fact that it’s all very similar and that the only combo consists of mashing ‘B’ three times in a row, at the end of the day the game delivers every punch with a satisfying explosion of colour and yelps. It’s like when you’re watching a cheesy Hollywood film, you know the plot’s garbage, you know the acting’s awful and you know that dialogue is cancerous, but when push comes to shove, the film is just so fun to watch. Wario World just holds up a massive sign saying ‘Big fun over here’ and it happens. The core fighting mechanic is that you tap ‘B’ to punch combos and hold it to dash attack (or if you just want to just dash then reach for ‘R’). Some enemies will require to be thrown after having their brains re-arranged by a hefty fist or two to their ugly mugs, and this is where the game gets really fun.  Once picked up you can do one of three things with the mindless minion. The first, and least exciting, is to throw them. Useful if enemies are in the way or if a button needs to be pressed, but not great for crowds of angry dinosaurs. The second and slightly more exciting is to smash their skulls into the hard stone ground and send a shockwave of damage to the baddies around you. It’s satisfying and a little meter pops up to tell you how many rotations you did before making contact with the ground. The third and final of these ‘mad moves’ (as the game calls them) is a spinning throw, and yes, it’s every bit as fun as it sounds. After Wario grabs the enemy you spin the analogue stick around a couple of times and Wario begins to whirlwind around like a tornado. The damage you can cause in this state is ridiculously satisfying and is also the solution to a lot of puzzles in the game. That’s not to say that the game only consists of these fun, but shallow fighting frolics. It also includes what I can only describe as bonus challenges, though using the word bonus implies that they’re optional, when they’re actually a core part of gameplay. These challenges are like the levels in Super Mario Sunshine, which were good. The little hidden levels that laughed out platforming delight from that particular game make a half-arsed appearance here too. The only problem is that when it comes to platforming, Wario has only one move, jump upwards. No clever back-flips, no u-turn jumps, no wall jumping, just the ability to go 5 foot into air and back down; this means that these sections are either ludicrously easy or soul-destroyingly hard. It mars an otherwise enjoyable experience and lets the side down on all counts. Otherwise, the gameplay is solid, fun fighting and a great stress reliever, providing you avoid the entrances to the ‘bonus-yet-compulsory’ levels. Before I introduce the most disappointing aspect of the game, let’s look at perhaps its finest quality: Bosses. Lots, and lots, of hard as nails, tough as old boots bosses. Every level ends with one and every world has a final one. And they’re not just tap ‘B’ fests either (well, the first one is but that’s to be expected really). No sir, these guys all have techniques for dodging your barrage of mussel. That’s not to say you have to expose a weak spot like in Zelda though, every punch you throw will hurt the humongous headaches, it just won’t necessarily do much in the way of damage, and even hitting them is an issue in itself. What’s even more wonderful about this is that these guys are actually challenging. I game-overed around 5 times on one boss but thanks to the game's attitude of “You know what, just carry on” (the game asks around 300 coins payment every time you die, and because coins have no other use and you’ll collect about 7000 in no time it means you can happily die and continue with little consequence) it wasn’t the least bit frustrating every time I did. Bosses are the highlight of the game, and are perhaps worth the price alone.  Now I’m going to come to a point I’ve been avoiding because it’s what makes Wario World a 7 and not an 8. It’s just too short. There are only 12 levels (not including the final boss) and that is just not enough. It’s like a Milky Way chocolate: cheap and tasty but only one mouthful. This game could’ve easily nabbed an 8 or even a 9 if they’d doubled the amount of levels, but sadly you can beat this game in about 2 to 3 sittings. What’s perhaps even worse is that nearly a quarter of this tragically short game is tutorial, and that’s just not on. Treasure tried really hard to extend the life span by adding in bonus missions, but sadly they don’t warrant much reward, as all you get are demos for Wario Ware (the series that killed off these games, sorry, but they just aren’t as good) via the GBA link cable, and who the hell wants those? With all matters in hand, it feels like an old school game. Great fun, simple mechanics and awesome boss fights, let down by short life span and lack of variety. What’s even worse though is that it doesn’t even feel like it needed to be 3D. This game could’ve been done, perhaps better, on the GBA. Wait... wasn’t that Wario Land 4? Score: 7So close to brilliance, yet so far from perfection.  Quote
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 21 April 2008 ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nice review although I agree with Noddingdog those mingames are very funny but I miss wario 
please bring back wario nintendo 
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