WarioWare: Smooth Moves

"Here Come The Mcrogames!"

It is said that there exists a game where you ride up an elevator, making stops on every floor, performing random activities in the hopes of staying alive. One minute you'll be slapping someone to wake them up, the next you'll be attempting to finish your drink quickly and without splashing yourself in the face. Oddly enough, this game exists, and stranger still, it's loads of fun. Hello. This is my review of the game WarioWare: Smooth Moves, for the Nintendo Wii. This is the fifth game in the popular WarioWare series, and it uses motion control to present it's seconds-long “microgames”. As with the rest of the series, it's a blast to play, as I will now elaborate.

Gameplay
8/10
In short: awesome. Just the word “awesome” doesn't make for a very comprehensive review, however, so I think I'll go into a little more detail. The game uses various different ways of holding the Wii remote, called “forms”.Each form works quite well for it's set of games, though the title can sometimes be misleading; most games that use “The Tug-of-War” aren't actually tugs-of-war. Control is usually tight and responsive, though if you accidentally move the Wii remote out of the space for the game you're playing, you're out of luck. There is a tremendous amount of variety in the different games, as I touched on in the intro. I only had one minor issue with the controls: most games that use the form called “The Finger Food” would seem to be easier using the basic form, “The Remote Control”. The difficulty is rather balanced, with each stage starting out nice and breezy, then getting progressively faster and harder. So, yeah, “awesome” pretty much sums this up.

Story
6/10
If you only play one game this year, and it has to have a moving, epic, thought-provoking story with a profound moral lesson about humanity... don't get this game. You should get it, however, if you wouldn't mind, or might even enjoy, a disjointed, convoluted affair about an inventing contest, a broken Game&Watch, and a guy on a mini-bike who shrinks into an army of tiny clones and attempts to raid a strawberry patch. Actually, there is an underlying theme about a mystical baton that looks like a Wii remote, but in a game like this, it's safe to say that no one really pays attention to the story anyway. The story sequences are funny, and they do a nice job of bookending the barrages of microgames you'll be faced with, which all it should do, and all it needs to do.

Graphics/Sound
8/10
The graphics in this game are by far the best of any WarioWare game to date. Almost all games not based on classic games from an earlier era are in some sort of 3-D, and those that aren't still manage to present themselves in a fun, quirky way. You don't see much between the games, mostly just the traditional WarioWare elevator, but that's okay, because you're never between games for very long. Wario's games in particular are quite graphically interesting, as he (or his nose) appears in every single one of them. As for the sound, it's passable, but doesn't stand out quite as much. That is, with the exception of one song. I believe that every game in the series has had one full vocal song, and this game does not disappoint. It's called “Tomorrow Hill” and I must say, when I first heard it, I had a hard time believing that they made it just for this game. Until they said “driving through Diamond City”, which made it obvious.

Play Time/Replayability
7/10
Because it is made up of several, much smaller microgames, this game does not take long to complete; It took me about 4 hours total, and an even more experienced gamer could probably manage about an hour and a half. However, by the same token, it is almost infinitely replay-able. There's always something left to do: try to beat that high score, unlock that elusive last microgame, even just listen to “Tomorrow Hill” one more time- this game almost never gets boring. And, even if it does, there is a multi-player mode that's almost as big as the main game so you can have fun playing with friends. At times, it can accommodate not one, not two, not ten, but sixteen players. Impressive, isn't it?

Final Recommendation
9/10
Anyone who likes to have fun should try this game. There is certainly more than enough reason to buy it, because it plays very well, is loads of fun, and is simply hilarious. There is also an advantage to renting it, because you can finish quickly enough that you won't miss out on much, and renting is of course substantially cheaper. In any case, this is the perfect party game, and will likely remain entertaining for years to come- or at least until a new WarioWare game comes along, and the trip up the elevator begins anew.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/07

Game Release: WarioWare: Smooth Moves (US, 01/15/07)