WarioWare: Smooth Moves

"Maybe a step down from "Twisted!", but still a great game."

WarioWare inc. Hmmmmm..................... What's the best way to describe this series? Each game is like a collection of minigames, but the games are too small to be considered "mini" (hence the term "microgames"). The idea of these microgames coming in collections would liken them to the party genre, but the titles are aimed mainly at the single player. So I guess it's hard to find a genre to fit the series into, but it can still be summed up with a single word - brilliance.

For those who haven't played a WarioWare game before, the concept basically involves classic Mario rival Wario, and his team of whacky developers, creating packages of five-second minigames, each with a simple objective. These objectives are as basic as dodging something, repeatedly mashing a button, or simply pressing a button at the right time. These microgames take the fundamental elements of minigames and place them in the confides of four to eight seconds. These games are usually broken into categories (how to hold the Wii remote, what movement to make with the Nintendo DS stylus, or even genres like "Sci-Fi" or "Nature"), with each set being coupled with one of Wario's oddball developer friends. But despite categorization, you don't really know in which order the games are going to come at you. This random bombardment of games becomes faster and faster until you're forced to face an extended boss game, whose defeat is the ticket to the next developer.

This generally isn't a game you'll know if you like or not based purely on description. Me trying to describe this series to my friends usually yields results such as "That just sounds kinda stupid", or "Man, I like my minigames to last for at least 30-seconds". But once you actually start playing the game, the true splendour begins, and you'll find yourself in a swirl of glorious confusion at the game's relentless fast pace, instinctive reactionary tests, and patented bizarre humour. Each game in the series following the original "WarioWare Inc." has utilized some odd gameplay peripheral or gaming interface that Nintendo is famous for creating. "WarioWare: Twisted!" had you tilting and twisting your Gameboy Advance in order to achieve goals, whereas "WarioWare: Touched!" involved poking and scribbling at the Nintendo DS touch screen or blowing into the microphone.

As soon as I heard that the Wii would involve a motion-sensitive controller, I immediately knew that it would only be a matter of time before a WarioWare game was developed to exploit this system's signature functions. Hearing the announcement of "Smooth Moves" was like winning an obvious bet. So I got the game for Xmas 2007 and began playing it early-mid January 08. But how does this game fare against its predecessors? Read on to find out.


GAMEPLAY = 7/10

The gameplay follows the same structure as the previous WarioWare games; you get four lives for every developer you face, and about 15 or so games. You must hold onto your lives as you progress through 3 different speeds, before facing a boss game. If you fail against the boss, you lose a life and get to play it again. Four lives gone and its Game Over. Beat the boss game and you unlock the next developer or several developers, plus often a discrete minigame purely to play for your amusement rather than to advance further in the story.

The thing that separates this from previous games in the system is the use of the Wii remote to complete the games. And the categories that belong to each developer are a collection of "forms", that is, different ways to hold the Wii remote. You'll start the game playing Wario's microgames, which all involve the most basic form known as "The Remote" (you hold the controller like you would a normal remote control). Throughout the whole catalogue of games, the only button you'll have to press is the A button - or B button if you so choose. Every game involves a combination of moving the Wii remote in a certain way and pressing the A or B button, and the first time you play a microgame it'll be up to you to work out what exactly you have to do in the space of eight beats. So much like the previous titles, this'll have you relatively bamboozled the first time around. There are around 20 or so forms, including "The Waiter", "The Elephant", "The Big Cheese", and many other poses to make you look like a tool in front of your friends.

Anyway, once you beat a developer you unlock a new one. And once you beat all the developers, you see the credits roll. It'll take about two and a half hours to achieve this, and for veterans of the series, probably less time still. But once you beat the final boss you'll still have to replay all the past developers to see every individual microgame. And playing a developer for the second time, it doesn't end after the boss game - instead you'll receive an extra life and a pose card giving you a pose to attempt with the Wii remote (though not necessary, these poses at least test your flexibility to an extent). After seeing this card, you'll face the next difficulty level of the same set of games, also increasing in speed. There are three difficulty levels for each game, and after surpassing the hardest level while playing a developer, the games will just keep increasing in speed. Half the fun is trying to beat your high score of how many games you can best with only four lives.

As you'd expect from the series, the microgames are a diverse mixture of scenarios and difficulty levels, many of which could stand to be regular-length minigames on their own. There are about 200 microgames in total, and a variety of ways to play them (by associated developer, all mixed together, "Sudden Death" with only one life). There are also multiplayer games which involve the Wii remote being passed back and forward between a party of people. These multiplayer games have their moments, and there are some good concepts afoot, but in the end it feels kinda like the multiplayer mode was only thrown rather than fully implemented. It's alright for a chuckle with your friends, but watching your friends attempt single-player and seeing them make idiots of themselves just trying to work out a form is much more fun!

Sadly, like all great games this one does have its issues. My major problem with this game would be how the height of your TV affects gameplay. In my house, the top of the television that my Wii is connected to doesn't even reach my nipples (though I'd like to refrain from using my nipples as a point of reference in game reviews, they just seemed to fit here). So I can't really stand up to play games - I either have to sit or squat on my knees. This makes it particularly hard and fiddly for microgames such as the one using the form of "The Mohawk", where you have to do squats. Also, this indifference sees me flicking the remote upwards in the jump-rope microgame rather than actually jumping. These issues of television set positioning really make you question how much thought went into designing this game, and even how much thought went into the design of the Wii in general.

My second big problem with this game is that compared to prequels "Touched!" and "Twisted!", it can be seen that "Smooth Moves!" has a horrifically small amount of replay value. In the last two additions to the series, there were a number of unlockable toys you could obtain by beating certain minigames and the like. These toys were mere extras that, rather than testing your skill, would demonstrate fun and comical novelties that tested the systems twist / touch screen interface. While these were entertaining on their own the simple fact that you had to obtain them added over an hour of replay value. There are no such toys in this game. More shockingly, you can't even get medals for beating an individual microgame a specific number of times. Even in the very first WarioWare game, there was the option to replay individual microgames with four lives and see how many times you could beat that game through all its speeds and difficulty levels. In "Smooth Moves!" you're allowed to replay the lone microgames.... once on each difficulty setting, with the speed pre-determined. So the greatest amount of replayability this game encompasses is unlocking all the microgames, which'll give you a neat little surprise, but sadly cannot hold a torch to the replay value of its brethren games.

However, much like previous WarioWare games, trying to beat your high score on a certain developer or perfecting your skills at included minigames such as "Pyoro" offers much replay value on its own. It'll take you a few tries and frustrating failures to master each individual game on each difficulty level, and though there's no greater reward for collecting all the Pose Cards, you'd be a Grinch to be bored with this game a week after buying it.

GRAPHICS = 7/10

If you've played one of the past games in the franchise, you'll not be surprised that this game houses a plethora of artistic styles. One second you'll be staring at a chalkboard stick figure doing some frame-by-frame dance, the next second you'll have your eyes glued to a complete 3D portrait of "Metroid Prime", and the second after that you'll be viewing a superb 2-dimensional adventure with the best graphics any game of the 2D platformer era could offer. With all these contrasting graphical worlds being thrown at you in such a small amount of time, you might think you're being subjected to a subliminal experiment. Either that, or you'll feel as if you're cycling through each home console of every past gaming generation.

So it's fair to say that the graphics display variety. But just how good are the graphics? If you judge a game's visuals by technical skill, then you probably won't rank this game too high. While there are fascinating and even captivating screens of 3D in certain games, the graphic aren't the best the Wii has to offer, and the Wii in itself isn't the most optically sophisticated console in the current generation of gaming. Still, as stated previously, the best assortment of 2D microgames have graphical detail that rivals the Metal Slug series. It just goes to show that a 2D game can surpass a 3D game in visuals if the producers spend enough time and money on it.

To elaborate, the visuals in this game are diverse, and whenever the graphics appear to be bad (as in pre-schoolers-crayon-drawings bad, or polygonal-nose-so-primitive-you-can-actually-count-the-sides bad), it's always the developer's creative intent. There are highs and lows, and the concoction of distant artistic worlds is refreshing at the very least.

SOUND = 8/10

There's as much diversity in the audio of this game as their is in the graphics. Much like the graphics, the music in this game is a mixture of different styles that best suits each individual microgame.

If you want an example of what songs in this game are like, just think of any good platformer where a small line of fanfare plays whenever you finish a level or pick up an item, or even die for that matter. In situations like these, composers are forced to create short and memorable jingles rather than capitalise on the palette of sounds the system can produce. The songs for individual microgames are somewhat like this; four second tunes using two or three instruments. The instrumentation and melodic structures suit the western / space / idle theme of the microgames perfectly. Although the compositions do seem more often than not like jingles, there are times when the tunes - much like the microgames themselves - feel like they've been spliced from a full length game.

But the soundtrack isn't limited to these mini-songs. Cutscenes do contain compositions that reflect the events and characters at hand, be they oriental or taxi related. No matter the length of the music, the songs in this game were made to fit the areas they're used in.

STORY = 7/10

While plot definitely isn't the strong point of this game, it at least features. This isn't the type of game that's filled with plot-twists revealed in suspenseful cutscenes. This is more the type of game where you get humorous answers to obvious questions through body gestures made by character sprites. Like the Mario Party games, the storyline here is more conceptual than ongoing, and is written on a post-it note attached to the gameplay that can easily be ignored without any serious harm being done to the overall game.

The main storyline involves Wario's snacks getting stolen by a small creature. Angrily following the creature into a mysterious temple, he finds the "Form Baton" (Wii remote), an ancient device that when moved in different ways can cause things to happen. Discovering how fun using the baton and attempting various Forms is, Wario decides to make a series of microgames to capitalise off of the remote and make an easy fortune. The idea that the specifications and functions of the Wii remote are worked into the gameplay seems tackily novel and maybe even a little gimmicky. Still, there's a cheap laugh to be had in all this cheesiness.

There's also another sub-plot given to each individual developer, as a setting for the microgames they throw at you. As if that wasn't enough storyline stuffed down your throat, there is still technically an aim to each microgame. Grabbing the arm of a falling damsel within four seconds simply by stretching out the Wii remote is still grabbing the arm of a falling damsel. And Spielberg may never have gotten a Grammy for making a feature length film about directing boys and girls to their respective toilets, but it's a concept nonetheless. Also, the Grammies are music awards, not film awards. But the point I'm trying to make is that this game cycles through every clichéd plotline and unconventional concept imaginable - from a nervous jock trying to catch the attention of a beautiful cheerleader, to a giant geisha fan blowing an atomic killer robot off of a cliff to save humanity.

Whether you even care about these scenarios or not, I gave the story a relatively high score because I include the game's hysterical comedic value in this category. Inside every line of text and every colourful background, there's something either subtle or blatant that'll put a smile on your demented face (demented because you fought logic and decided to pick up such a weird game). "WarioWare: Smooth Moves" is a tale of love, loss, duty, greed, disco, a fast food joint that includes popsicles and squid tentacles on its burgers, and Wario.

OVERALL = 7/10

There's an opinion shared by many in the gaming community that developers should strive towards making "art" games rather than just "fun" games. But like the great pioneering games of the arcade era, the WarioWare series manages to be both. "Smooth Moves" is an addition to this series that experiments with what Nintendo's latest brainchild, the mighty Wii, can do.

Sadly, this game falters on the count of issues regarding the hight of your TV and the paucity of replay value. This series feels like it was meant for the portable console, and on a home console one can't help but think of it as a little fish in a wide ocean. Still, it's a fish worth eating if you're hungry enough.


FINAL VERDICT

This game needed to come out at one point, but in the end it feels a little rushed, and not the full potential of what a Wii WW game could hope to be. If you're a big fan of the series, then "WarioWare: Smooth Moves" is a definite must-have game. If you're a newcomer, then the best game to get hooked on would be the original "WarioWare inc.: Minigame Mania" for the GBA, for it would be one of my top 10 favourite games ever made.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/08

Game Release: WarioWare: Smooth Moves (AU, 01/25/07)