Wario Land 4

"An excellent game!"

Wario land 4 is the first Wario adventure for the Gameboy advance. It sees Wario searching for a lost pyramid filled with treasure. The game takes place in the ruins surronding the pyramid, where the mission is to defeat the guardians of the four passages to open the entrance to the pyramid.

Gameplay~

The gameplay is great. Each passage is devided into four levels, in these levels, Wario is dropped off by a vortex into a totally new land. Unlike most games, these levels are finished by re-opening the vortex and escaping. Sometimes the vortex is at the other side of the level, sometimes it is close to the entrance. But before you leave you will have to do at least two things: get Keyzer, who unlocks the next part of the passage you're in, and collect four pieces of gems. To increase the replayability of these levels, there is also the challenge of the hidden C.D's in each level, and getting 10 000 coins for a golden crown on that level.

The difficulty of the game is finely tuned, if you're new to the game, you can start on the forgiving normal mode. If you fancey a bit of a challenge, you can start on hard mode. This ups the difficultly by quite a bit, giving you less time to escape the level, lowering your health on Boss fights, and the location of gems are harder to find. There is even a secret Super hard mode to unlock...

Now for the bad points, the bosses aren't really intresting, as most of them just involve defeating them before time is up, and once you beat the game with everything, there really isn't much to do (but it will take a long time to get everything)

Music~

This is where Wario land 4 really shines. The music is the best I've heard from the gameboy advance. Some levels are even backed up with Japanese lyrics! The sound effects are great, and very clear.

The only bad point really is the C.Ds, not that they aren't good quality, it's just that most of them are either a small music sample repeated over and over again or very boring.

Graphics~

The graphics are excellent, basically, it uses a wide range of colours, and the enemies are very detailed. Wario is really detailed, and the cutscenes are great. In a nutshell, It puts most of the snes graphics to shame. There aren't really any bad points...

Overall~

A great game, worthy of being in any gamers collection.

Rating: 7/10

Overall~

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/02, Updated 01/26/02