Man, this is another one of my childhood favorites. I loved this game, as it offered many secrets and hidden goodies. After Wario Land 3, I didn't think the next game would be as good as the last. Well, as Wario makes his leap on to the GBA, good things were bound to be expected. So lets just jump straight into this one.

The story starts out very cold and dark. You see an ally way, the city is quiet, and you see a black cat walk by. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Then, a garage opens to reveal a car, ready to drive off into the night. It nearly runs over a cat passing by, and a newspaper flys into the cats face. As the wind blows down, the cat reads (assuming the cat can read) the news, to find that there is a newly discovered pyramid, which can only mean one thing: Warios gonna loot the entire thing of it's treasure, or die trying. This sets the mood rather well, and is typical of Wario to go off for one sole purpose; treasure! So this makes a decent story in my opinion.

You get a choice of difficulty betwen normal or hard. Completing the game in hard gives you a "Super hard" difficulty (or "impossible" if it's a PAL version). I hate it when they say "impossible" as a difficulty, even though it is in fact possible to complete. It's just a fancy word for "Super Duper Hard". The Americans seemed to have got this right, but I digress. Anyway, as you start the game, you come across the pyramid, and you enter it.....along with that cat you nearly ran over. You jump into a pit, and some face in the wall below rolls out its tongue and you slide out of it. This brings you to a sort of hub world, where you can select what "passage you want to go to", but at the beginning, you only have one to choose from.

Each passage (apart from the first and last one) has four levels, a mini-game room, and a boss. Each passage had levels that reflect the passages "element", to say simply. It even has these signs on the walls as you enter a level. Oh, and did I forget to mention that when you enter a level, you jump on a frog statue to open up  a vortex to go inside a painting? I swear I'm not making this up. As you enter a level, the vortex closes, and you need to find two things. The first, is a key to the next level, and the second is to find all four pieces of a big jewel, which will open the boss room if you find every piece in the passage.  You'll also need money, not for personal greed, but for the mini-games later before you fight a boss. This can be obtained by defeating enemies and breaking certain blocks. If your lucky and smart, you can get a diamond, which is worth $1,000.....wait, is that a....health bar? A health bar is a Wario Land game? And I thought I've seen it all.

You have eight hearts, and if you lose them all, you don't quiet die, but instead get kicked out of the level. You can collect hearts through out the level, but if you kill an enemy, you can collect a piece of it's essence. Collect eight pieces and you regain a heart. Pretty handy, eh. If you have full hearts and collect eight pieces of essence, then any kill after that will reward you with more koney than before, so it really does pay to be careful. You can also stop on the ground to make a select few baddies change their colour to make them give more money, as the cost of them being more dangerous. To get out of the level, you must find a frog statue, jump on it, and get the hell out. If you don't make it in time, you will lose some dosh, but if you lose all of your money, I daren't think what'll happen. Sometimes, you might find the frog statue before you find the key or all the jewel pieces, but don't worry, you might come across them on the way back....did I mention the key was a living thing? It's just some bird face with a key for a beck.....I got it! The perfect name for this creature: A Keese! I'm going to call it Keese, and it will be my Keese. Shame it dies when it unlocks the door for you =c

The level design is a craft one. There are hidden breakable blocks everywhere. Try breaking a block in a suspicous place and you might be rewarded well. Sometimes, you might come across a purple pipe. Go down this one and you'll be welcomed with relaxing music which is perfectly suitable for a puzzle. You might also meet Professor Dude, looking out to find new stuff to take back. You can throw him, smack him, throw him in water, and he won't care.  He sees things from an optimisic point of view. You might find him either exploring, or just playing on his GBA (Effectivly breaking the fourth wall), and if he gets wet, no sweat! He'll just get his swimming gear on and explore the depths of the abyss (which by the way, he looks absolutly adorable when he does that! ^^). Each of these pipes contains either a diamond (90% of the time), or a heart chest.

Before every boss, you have access to a mini-game room. You have a choice between three mini-games (all costing $2,000 in the first passage, and $5,000 for every passage after that). These can help you obtain Medals, which can be used to buy weapons to help tip the scales in your favor....apart from the smile, that's for free. These mini-games need you to either hit a home-run, jump over stuff, or even remember a face and palce the right pieces in place. These are easier said than doneat first, but once you played it a few times, you should do alright. Sometimes, I just play for the sake of beating my highscore.

The graphics are pretty good on this game. The attention to detail in the background is a joy to look at, while the enemies are both weid and interesting. It's clean, smooth and sharp. The music, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. At some parts, it's just a mash of 16-bit sounds, while at other times, it's either really rockin' or incredible cute and happy, almost as if I could have a happy relationship with the song....wait, what am I saying? I want to date a song? This game must be affecting me in some way, but I digress. My favorite moment in the game is when I jump on that frog statue, and the atmosphere changes completely. The background gets disorted, the timer starts, but most importantly, the music changes into this serious piece that makes you feel that you have to step your game up and escape before it's too late. The music does all the work, really.

What i really hate about this game, though, are he hidden CD's in the game. If you can find one, then pat yourself on the back, they aren't the easiest things to find. You can play them on the CD player on the hub world, but most of the time, the CD's themselves are just a jumble of soudn effects, and I find them very boring. I don't know if I'm missing anything or not, but I just don't get them. At the end of every boss, you'll get a treasure and a number of chests (depending on how quickly you have defeated the boss), the more chests you have at the end of the game, the better the ending is.

Overall, I give this game 9.4/10      Never before have I found a game so full of charm, wonder and mystery, yet still retain a sense of annoyance, love, seriousness and menace....ok maybe not the love part, but the others I think are there. This is a gaming masterpiece, chucked full of secrets, humor and great platforming. It's a must play if you love the Wario series. Now....how am I going to tell that song it's not going to work out?......

Wario Land 4 is a pretty fun game, it has some good graphics, and its fun to play in a Wario game, all of his games are pretty good. Love the game. Great review.