To my delight, Nintendo decided to make more Wario Ware games after the welcome but kinda disappointing Wario Ware: Get It Together, and i gonna indulge myself, so the new installment, Wario Ware: Move It!, released very early last November, and it’s getting a full review as well, even if far, far later i originally planned, you can’t stop the garlic fueled madness after all.
So let’s WAH!
At least if you have either a normal Switch or its OLED revision, because Nintendo has decided this one you’re gonna play with the joycon detatched from the Switch, or you’re not gonna play at all.
So yeah, don’t bother with this one if you have a Switch Lite, you won’t be able to play this one at all, it straight up ain’t compatible…. except it is, kinda, you’ll have to buy or own extra Joy-Cons and use the screen of the console in “table mode”, which also means the multiplayer modes are completely off as they require the console to go into TV mode, which the Switch Lite can’t do.
And i don’t see them patching some kind of buttons and analogic control scheme later, because this is basically a follow up to the Wii iteration of the series, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, as it built and depends upon motion controls, heck, it even forces to put the switch straps on the Joy-Cons as some minigames actually have you deliberately drop, place them on a surface or have them hanging around your wrist…. so yeah, this will rightfully enrage a lot of people.
It’s a shame too, because this is actually a great Wario Ware game, fixing the issues i had with Get It Together controls and how they were both accessible but limited the creativity and fun of the mini-games themselves…. but it crafted around & about motion controls and various poses to make with the Joycons, so if you hate those there’s no alternate control scheme, probably will never be.
Again, it’s so frustrating because the quality and ingenuity put into the microgames is on par with the best of the Wario Ware, top of the crop bonkers stuff that will surprise and keep you curious to see what new weird shit the game is gonna throw at you and expect to make sense in 5 seconds tops, from doing a sumo pose to “ass draw” shapes, cook meat over a rolling belt-stove, shake the hand of a virtual dog, win a beam struggle between an alien monster and a tokusatsu hero, to cite some of the less impressive ones.
If it feels like the game has shown you everything, then it throws something even weirder and out of left field, managing to keep things fresh, which is incredible for what’s actually the 11th entry in the series,
Also, while there’s a good number of poses to remember (just below 20), eventually they become mostly second nature, the game shows the pose before the mini-games that require/uses such pose, so you aren’t supposed to learn all poses like historical dates, and there are plenty of weird ass “second chance” poses to find as well.
The plot has Wario winning a resort vacation to the Stonepass Island as a lottery’s premium price, figures he can write it off as a “work vacation” so he brings all the gang, they receive all a couple of “Stone Pads” (which of course look like Switch Joycons), and shenanigans ensue.
The story mode is more or less the same in terms of content and progression, though this time you can recover from a game over if you perform a specific – and often ridiculous – “pose of rebirth”, which often changes, so they’re also tossing an extra bone to the less experienced players, which gels with the idea of “anyone can play and join in the absurd mess” behind the series.
Actually, it feels a bit shorter to beat, because fans of the series can use the recovery pose thing to expedite beating the story quicker, but on the flipside, there is a bit more in terms of extra activities to unlock after seeing the credits, which balances things out…. though i hope you have an extra set of Joycon as some of the post-game stuff for Story Mode is straigh up ONLY for 2 players or more.
Yeah, if you, like me, were hoping to see more stuff for solo play, this feels a bit like a disappointment, despite the post-game remix modes offering an increasingly though challenge that will fix a somewhat forgiving story mode.
I mean, beating the game also unlocks a separate mode only for 2 players that’s basically a fun co-op game of charades, and the Party sections for multiplayer purposes is as big as it was in Wario Ware Move it, which is hard to really fight against, because it has been made abudantly clear since the Gamecube expanded port of the original Wario Ware Inc (Wario Ware Inc Mega Party Games) that while solo it’s fun, Wario Ware shines like a freshly nose-digged diamond, making for an absolute blast of a time with friends and family, even those that aren’t big on videogames.
It’s the kind of chaotic fun you want from a multiplayer sessions of bizzare microgames marathons or duels or whatever, it’s a fuckton of fun, as always, so i don’t begrudge Nintendo and co-developer Intelligent Systems for focusing on that, i don’t, but i’d wish they made at least twice more in terms of new mini-games, added a complex and long system of unlocks to even further incentivate the huge replaybility, maybe even add some online features for multiplayer, which would seem like an oversight but then again it took forever for Mario Party games to have online play……and Nintendo is treating some of these returning franchises like Wario Ware and Advance Wars like “lesser budgeted deserving” releases, let’s be real.
I’m still glad to have Wario Ware back at all, let me make it clear, and i’m pretty happy this one it’s an incredible return to top form for the franchise, but unless you plan to play it with friends often, the story can be beaten in an afternoon at best, and there’s even less content for solo players, even in terms of unlockables and stuff to do find after doing the story, there’s more stuff relegated to multiplayer and multiplayer ONLY, and – i can’t strees this enough – if you don’t care about motion controls and wish they died out with the Wii…. here is all so about dem motion controls, with no options for more traditional control schemes, and while it IS compatible with Switch Lite, it requires detachable Joycons and you can’t access the multiplayer modes, de facto forcing you to play the short story mode and not the more abudant ensembles of party modes.
More Wario Ware is always good, this one is super good too this time around, and while i see there’s some irony in wanting more solo content in a series that grew to know its strenghts are found in multiplayer, it’s a shame it came with a pre-claimed monkey paw-style series of caveats in terms of accessibility options and variety of controls schemes, which are also very “Nintendo”.
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