WarioWare: Smooth Moves

"It's-a Wii, Wario! Yes, I stole that from the loading screen...."

What's the maddest thing you can think of? Is it Michael Jackson, pottering about in his own personal amusement park with only a monkey and some children for company? Is it the fact that Girls Aloud and the Sugababes have teamed up to do a girlie cover version of Walk This Way? The dream sequences in Twin Peaks? Mr. Spock releasing a song about Bilbo Baggins? Scientology? The fact that you know you still would with Britney even if she has just had some sort of mental break and shaved her head like some sort of flabby, bingo-winged redneck monk? Or is it the creepy homeless guy who sits on your street corner constantly muttering under his breath about buttons? Well forget all that, because your Wii is about to out-mad the lot. WarioWare is back, and this time, it's physical...

Wario is having a good time. He's happy sat at home in Diamond City watching a bit of TV. But then a strange little creature appears and steals all his cake. Wario pursues the wee little thing all the way to the Temple of Form, where he discovers the Form Baton - a mystical device that looks suspiciously like a Wii Remote. Giving up on recovering his cake, he decides to steal the Baton instead. Meanwhile, football team The Diamond City Roughs are playing a game against some fearsome foes, but head cheerleader Mona is running late. Can she reach the game on time, cheer the Roughs on to victory, and survive the creepy, stalkerish affections of the team's star player? While, across town, a local Dojo is under attack from a big red manifestation of evil, and there's something to do with turtles getting hit by cannonballs, as a few blocks away some Dragon Ball Z reject is bouncing on some creepy silhouette people's heads because his sensei is a bit peckish, while a goth-lite little girl called Ashley is dabbling in the black arts, and a bulldog is picking up an attractive and otherworldy young woman in his taxi. And then the storyline starts to get a bit weird.....

Anyone familiar with the WarioWare series will know that plot isn't exactly what drives one of these games. Indeed, the rather random cut scenes that pepper the game - which include a full on dance routine led by a troupe of cats, by the way - seem to exist not so much to fulfil any narrative purpose, but more to perpetuate the franchise's obsession with the downright bonkers. Any attempt at storyline is merely an excuse to assault you with a series of 'microgames' that last no more than a few seconds, usually with some astonishingly simple aims (putting in an old dear's false teeth, for example). And with the arrival of the Wii Remote, and all its motion-sensing abilities, Smoth Moves ensures that the WarioWare universe is about to get even more surreal than ever.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves features some of the most ingenious use of the Wii Remote to date. As you progress through the games you'll be using it as a sword, as a steering wheel, and as a dumbbell. It takes on the form of a lightgun, with the 'B' button being used as a trigger. You'll be reaching toward the screen to catch a falling girl or to push people over. You'll be using it to trace pictures on the screen. You'll have to put it down, and then pick it up again to answer the phone (with the voice on the other end coming out of the Remote's speaker). You'll even quite literally be dropping it. It's all very impressive at first, but Nintendo have realised that simply showcasing what the Wii Remote can do isn't the most entertaining prospect, and so in order to avoid falling into the trap of producing a self-congratulatory tech demo, they have filled the game with an incredibly surreal sense of humour. Smooth Moves is probably the funniest game you'll ever play.

Some of the humour is a little bit obvious (one game sees you fanning away Wario's bum fog, for example), but it's the off-the-wall humour that sneaks in to the game that is far more impressive. Each new position that you need to hold the Remote in is introduced in an amusingly earnest and totally bonkers Lloyd Grossman-esque voiceover. After tilting back the remote to make a young man drink from a glass of water, he inexplicably grows an afro, or a big beard. One game sees you pulling up a zip. When you have, you realise that you've just zipped somebody into a panda costume. And perhaps most cryptically of all, after winding the remote to shred a top secret document, a picture of a goat appears on the screen for a second. It may at first seem like the designers were simply a bunch of fruit loops, but as you play, it's the game's sheer barmy-ness that really sucks you in. The fact that Smooth Moves clearly doesn't take itself seriously makes it easier to really let yourself go and get into the game - and since Smooth Moves will require you to do some downright odd things at times, anything to help you lose your inhibitions is essential. But what's more, the fact that the game is genuinely hilarious helps to suck in everyone else in the room too - it's impossible to see somebody having a go at WarioWare and not want to have a go yourself. And that's exactly what the Wii is all about.

All of this may make WarioWare: Smooth Moves sound like a disposable party romp, but there is actually quite a hearty challenge lurking beneath the surface. The microgames are split into different levels, based around the different characters in the game, each culminating in a 'boss stage' which proves to be a more substantial mini-game - like a driving game, or a sword fight with some ninja guy that features mechanics that may even be slightly more intuitive than the disappointing Red Steel. But each level can be re-entered after defeating the boss, only this time it doesn't end - more microgames are thrown at you after the boss fights, with the game getting progressively harder until you finally crash out, giving high-score chasers something to get their teeth into (indeed, later unlockable modes really seem built for high scores - there's one where you are only given one life, and must see how many games you can get through, for example).

Of all of these character-based levels, though, by far the greatest must be those based on 9-Volt, the Nintendo fan. Here all the games are based on classic Ninty moments, only with added Wii goodness. Fishing in Animal Crossing is achieved by holding the Remote as a rod and pulling back at the last moment. The scene in Ocarina of Time where Link pulls the Master Sword out of the plinth is here (with you - naturally - holding the Remote like it were the sword). Jumping up to hit the '?' Blocks in Super Mario Bros. is achieved by literally jumping yourself to make Mario follow suit (trust me - this is possibly the Best Thing Ever). And remember the bit in Wind Waker where you hold onto the leaf and float away from the island by catching a breeze? Well you get to control that scene by sticking the Remote on your head. Naturally. And to top it all off, the Boss Stage is a StarFox run with R.O.B. the ill-conceived Nintendo robot as a boss, who shoots at you with a giant NES Zapper. All these microgames use the original graphics (there's even a moment where the screen goes all green-and-black as we revisit the original Game Boy Wario Land), and it's a real nostalgic treat for long-time Nintendo fans. This is likely to be the level that you keep on coming back to over and over.

But realising that these microgames can't by their very nature really hold your interest for too long, Nintendo has seen fit to include some longer unlockable games in the package. These stand alone from the main game, and see you chasing proper high scores rather than simply trying to beat as many of the microgames as possible. Some are still fairly weak, to be honest - a Balloon Fight-based game that sees you holding the Remote in one hand, the Nunchuck in the other, and flapping your arms to make your character fly is more tiring than entertaining in all truthfulness, but some are truly addictive, the best being one that sees you shooting cans, using the Remote as a lightgun. What starts off as a basic affair, simply shooting cans off of a fence, soon becomes a manic treat as the cans start flying around the screen, growing larger so that they need several well-placed shots to take down, and even shooting back. It's all presented in glorious 8-Bit NES-O-Vision, and is a throwback to the kind of arcade thrills that you don't see much these days. It's the inclusion of this type of prolonged gaming that grants the single player game the kind of longevity that it sorely needs. But sadly, even with this type of addition, the novelty of the single-player game soon starts to wear thin, and the cracks begin to show.

As you get used to the strange logic of WarioWare, and the humour starts to lose it's sheen, it becomes apparent that all is not as well as it first appears. For starters, there are some games that are simply too illogical - although you are told beforehand what stance you need to adopt with the Remote, that is all you are given by way of instruction, and since the game takes great pride in thinking as far outside of the box as possible, quite often the microgame will be over before you work out what you need to do, and this becomes increasingly frustrating as you progress. More crucially, though, some of the games simply do not work. Turning the Remote like a key to open a door should be simple, but often the on-screen key will stop turning even while you are still twisting your wrist, while in the game where you must 'wind' the Remote to turn a paper shredder, the game will often slow down your on-screen movements even as you speed up your off-screen actions. Though at first the fact that there is the promise that these awkward moments will be followed up by more games that work perfectly, as your sense of wonder fades your frustration with these most basic failings will increase. It's all very well releasing a game that amounts to little more than saying 'look what we can make your new machine do', but really, if you are going to do this you need to make sure that the Wii really can do all these things, and on this showing at least, it simply can't.

The already short term nature of Smooth Moves, coupled with these flaws, mean that you will no doubt tire of the single-player game within your first weekend, and when you do, you're unlikely to return to it for anything other than a very quick bash if you have a spare five minutes. Thankfully, though, the multiplayer mode offers more to keep you coming back. While many of the multiplayer games amount to simply taking it in turns to play the microgames, with the aim being naturally to win more than your opponent, it's the two-player games that completely shun the whole WarioWare ethos that actually stand out here. There's a surprisingly realistic darts game that spurns any sense of the wacky in favour of a more traditional approach (making it feel more like the code was designed with Wii Sports in mind instead of WarioWare), and does so incredibly well - it can become remarkably competitive. And then at the other end of the spectrum there's a completely non-competitive game where you and a friend play as two characters who are tied together - with one player holding the Nunchuck to their right hip, and the other 'tied' to them by holding the Remote to their left, the on-screen characters run a vertical course, and the players must jump to avoid any obstacles - if one player's character trips or falls into a pit, the other character is also held back, causing a need for some real teamwork. These multiplayer games are great fun, and are likely to hold a place in your post-pub gaming schedule for quite a while - long after the single-player game has been forgotten.

Because, ultimately, that's WarioWare's destiny - to be forgotten. Much like it's DS counterpart, Smooth Moves is a piece of disposable fun that prompts you to look at what your Wii is capable of in a different light. You'll literally be jumping around, waving your arms about and generally be making a fool of yourself like no other game has caused you to before, and you'll have a great time doing so. You'll laugh in ways that no other game has made you laugh. Then, after a few days, you'll get bored and put WarioWare away as you search for something with a bit more substance. While it lasts, WarioWare is a complete blast, and great fun, and if nothing else it's worth playing by virtue of the fact that it's almost certainly the only game in which you spank your arse to beat a boss. Just don't expect it to last very long.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/07, Updated 03/30/07