Wario World

"Two Words: Awesome and Underrated"

Wario has come a long way from his early days of being a generic evil twin of Mario. He now plays the role of a greedy, but funny, treasure hunter, spending most of his time searching for ways to earn fast cash. The antihero's first 3D game, Wario World, developed by none other than Treasure Video Games, is able to capture the same feel set by his past 2D platformers, and does a fine job with it, too.

-Story-
The game opens with a short introduction that goes something like this:
Many, many years ago, there lived an black jewel that had evil powers. The jewel used its powers to create armies of monsters and evil spirits that nearly overran the world. But a group of fantasy-creature-like people called the Spritelings were able to seal away the jewel deep inside their ruins.

(skip to the present)

These events were all but forgotten over time, and one day, Wario makes off with the still-sleeping jewel.

The game takes place after the ending of Wario Land 4, and Wario has used the huge profit gained in the Wario Land games to build his dream castle. On the night of its completion, he's inside the castle, sitting among piles and piles of his ill-gotten gains and laughing his greedy head off, when the jewel re-awakens and transforms Wario's castle into a bizarre alternate world and many of his treasures into monsters. Wario, who's seriously ticked off by this, decides to take matter into his own hands. In other words, his goal is to find the black jewel and beat the @%*# out of it.

Not too complicated, and not too simple, either.

-8/10-


-Gameplay-
This is the heart and soul of the game, right here. (then again, the gameplay is the heart and soul of pretty much every game) Wario's world is a small hub world that has four areas branching off of it. Each area has two levels, making for a total of eight (yes, only eight) levels. However, you'll soon see that the game is no Metal Slug in terms of length.

Each of the eight levels are very well-designed, and most of them are HUGE and will take a while to navigate. Plus there's plenty of collecting to do in each one of them. (but no SM64-like 100-coin collecting, fortunately) More on that later.

If you were expecting the gameplay to be a remake of the formula used in the Wario Land games, you may be a bit disappointed. The gameplay is much less puzzle-oriented (no transformations, sorry), and more "destroy every enemy that stands in your way"-ish. (personally, I think that suits Wario better) There game is action-packed, as the enemies are relentless and limitless in every level, and as Wario has a plethora of moves other than the traditional shoulder bash and ground-pound. (punches, headbutts, piledrivers, and others) So, the game falls into the beat-em-up genre, and this isn't a bad thing at all. After all, Wario has always been as tough as nails, and the possibilities of 3D really let him show off what he can do. And how fluidly he can do it, too. Thanks to some excellent control mechanisms, moves are executed quickly and can be streamed together for an almost infinite amount of time, allowing for smooth, fun, well-designed gameplay.

But don't worry about Wario World being a mindless, brainless action game. Each of the eight levels has eight small bonus rooms (some of them similar to the ones in Super Mario Sunshine) filled with puzzles. Some of them are ridiculously easy, but as the game goes on, they can get to be very, very hard. Plus each one is totally unique, so you won't be trying to beat the same puzzles again and again.

Each level has eight treasure chests that contain various (duh) treasures, five caged Spritelings, (who were somehow captured in the process of the transformation of Wario's castle) and eight pieces of various golden statues of Wario. (collecting all the pieces of one statue rewards you with an extra 1/2 point of HP) Collecting 100% of the treasures in one level can take an hour at least, and is a good challenge for those people who find the game too easy.

However, one of the game's two real drawbacks comes with the treasure collecting. The only reward for collecting the eight treasure chests in every level is unlocking a handful of sample games from WarioWare, Inc for the Game Boy Advance. This is pretty gimmicky, as they're only good if you don't own the game, and they're not very fun by themselves, as they only last a good 3-5 seconds.

Of course, no Wario or Treasure game would be complete without its share of great boss fights, and Wario World has a lot of them. Besides there being a boss at the end of each level, each of the four areas ends with a boss battle that is bigger and harder than the others, adding up for a total of 12 bosses (13 if you count the final boss). Each fight is completely different, and all of them are very fun and creative in their own ways, both gameplay and presentation-wise.

The second real drawback of the game would be the game's continue system, which is much, much too forgiving. WAY too forgiving. When you lose all of your HP, you only need to spend a small amount of coins to continue, and spending that amount barely makes a dent in the fortune of coins you'll collect during your travels. Plus you can continue from the absolute exact point you were when you died. This is okay in the levels themselves, but in the bonus rooms and boss fights, it can take the challenge away big-time.

But aside from that and the useless WarioWare demos, there really isn't anything to complain of. The game may be short, but the gameplay is so crazy fun that I just don't care and you shouldn't either.

-9.1/10-


-Graphics-
The graphics are very polished. The levels are designed very well and are pleasing to look at; the colors are bold, the lighting is near perfect, and most of the many objects and textures are nicely detailed. However, some of the objects and textures suffer from being too bland, too undetailed, or even a bit ugly, especially when viewed up close, but this will only occur a few different times throughout the game.

The enemies are another one of the graphics' strong points. The many different enemies are well-designed and fit in perfectly with their respective environments. There are several enemies that just don't look very good, but there are fortunately only a few of them. The bosses, on the other hand, never fail to disappoint graphic-wise. They're well-textured, well-designed, and usually very detailed.

Wario has never looked better in 3D. He is nicely detailed, slick-looking, and his animations are very fluid. Thumbs-up.

The graphics may have their dull spots, but they're still very impressive; not only are they great by Gamecube standards, but they are better than the graphics of some third-party Wii games. Plus there's almost no slowdown; the game runs at a fluid framerate about 95% of the time. In short, the graphics are outstanding.

-9/10-


-Sound-
The sound is a VERY impressive factor in this game.

When listening to the game's soundtrack, it's obvious that a lot of time and money was spent on it. None of the tracks in the game fall below the "good" category; they are all nice to listen to and are all varied greatly. And there's a lot of them. There's a different song to be heard in each level, a different song for each boss, plus various tracks like the hub music, battle ring (you'll see) music, and so on. Plus none of the tracks ever feel out of place.

Wario's vocals are funny and well recorded, but he only has a small handful of one-liners, so you'll be hearing the same ones over and over and over until you beat the game. But you won't notice them after a while, so it doesn't really matter. On the other hand, the rather annoying "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah" that plays whenever you pause the game will sometimes make you not want to pause.

The sound effects are another impressive element. There's a bunch of 'em, from the sound of an enemy conjuring out of nowhere, to the jingle that plays upon the hitting of a switch, to the turning of gears, to a laser firing, to the cool explosion noises.

And let's not forget the sounds that the bad guys make, shall we? Every enemy in the game has their own small set of vocals, from squeaks to shrieks to hisses to growls. The vocals of the bosses sound even better, ranging from metallic roars to psychotic laughter to shrieks of pain. And did I mention that the dying screams of some of the bosses sound like 3 or 4 people screaming all at once? It makes you wonder how much time the developers spent in the sound studio.

Summing it up, the sound is awesome and you won't tire of it anytime soon(unless you're bugged easily by Wario's nonstopping vocals, which I'm not).

-9.5/10-


-Difficulty-
Unusually enough for a Treasure title, Wario World isn't the hardest game, mostly because of the lousy continue system. While the difficulty of the levels and bosses ranges from decent to hard, the continue system allows you to get right back up on your feet anytime and anywhere, even right in the middle of a boss fight. So even if you die ten times while trying to complete a level, you'll still be able to finish it no problem, unless you choose "no" each time.

-7/10-


-Value-
Wario World is the sort of game you can beat 100% in a few days, or less. Even when collecting 100% of the game's treasures, the game shouldn't last much more than eight or nine hours. But on the other hand, Wario World keeps true to the Treasure factor of being an addictive, old-school title you can play over and over because of the rock-solid gameplay. So unless you're one of those people who only likes playing long and deep games, this is money well spent.

-8.5/10-


Next time you have 20 bucks (or more like 10 or 15 bucks, now that the Gamecube is last-gen) and you can't think of what to do with it, get this. It's a fun and very worthy addition to your video game library. Plus Wario is awesome.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/08

Game Release: Wario World (US, 06/24/03)