WarioWare, Inc. - Mega MicrogameS! Review by: Someone70 - 8/10
A Goldfish's GameLet's face it: long games make people bored. Sometimes, when you're just sitting there mashing the A button to skip through mounds of dialogue, or you're jumping on platforms over and over again, you just wish that this game would be
over already. Sure, you have a great accomplished feeling when you finish the 100+ hours of
Fallout, but you look back and think that half of the whole thing was more like work.
WarioWare, Inc. - MegaMicrogame$! (yes, that is a dollar sign at the end) is here to relieve you of that boredom by taking those big, complicated, and menacing game and throwing them into a blender set on obliterate. Instead of giving you a whole adventure to complete, this condenses games down to the length of 5 seconds to beat. Now you have no excuse for not finishing one of these games. The game is filled with over 200 tiny microgames that range from
catching a baseball to blasting Mars to counting frogs. Don't blink or you might miss a game or two!
Graphics: 8
The games will be whizzing by you so quickly, you won't have much time to pay attention to the graphics. The times that you would be looking at them are during the cutscenes that take place before each character's set of microgames. Each character has their own microgames that follow a theme: for instance, Jimmy T's games are sports related and Orbulon's are IQ related. Before you play their games, you watch a bit of a story that sets up how their games work (more on that later).
If you manage to catch a glimpse of the game while you're playing through them, you'll notice that the graphics are drawn fairly well for 5 second games. Some games have simple graphics that get the point across (one of the shooters involves controlling a triangle as a ship). Others have well-done graphics that take more than one play to get in (a game where you suck up snot- gross, I know- has a calming background of a lighthouse on the horizon that you may not notice at first). You can tell that the developers put a lot of effort into making the game's graphics, and it's paid off well.
Sound: 7
In terms of music, the sound in
WarioWare is fairly catchy. There’s a menu theme, which you’ll hear a lot, and the game themes. Each character has a unique game theme that plays for about five seconds in between each game. It’s a short jingle, but it can get stuck in your head. The games themselves are made up of the same ten or so songs. They’re hard to listen to, though, because you’ll be too focused on the game.
The sound effects aren’t superb for a GBA game either. They’re mainly dull sound effects that you’d find in an average game. But I suppose they fit the simplistic nature of
WarioWare. You get an additional bonus once you beat a game: Wario and co shout “Yes!” or “Aww!” when you win or lose a game.
Addictiveness: 9
Much of its charm is that, even though the games are only 5 seconds long, you will want to play them over and over again. After you clear a set of games the first time, you get to try and shoot for a high score. The gimmick is that the games get faster with each passing minute. Pretty soon, the 5 second games become 2 second games. It takes a lot of skill and luck to clear games at that kind of speed. Since the game order is shuffled when you start each character’s set, you won’t know what’s coming next and you always have to be on your toes.
Story: 6
The “story” in the game is little more than a short cutscene outlining the character and giving you a glimpse into their personalities and lives. The story also helps to set up what the “game interface” will be like, which is what you see in between each microgame. For instance, in Mona’s story, she’s speeding in order not to be late for work. So she gets a little help and bananas fall in the police’s path. In between each microgame, you can see the bananas falling and tripping up the police. The nice thing about the stories is that they make the breaks between games different among characters, so you get something new in each set.
As each character’s story is being told, colorful and simple animations demonstrate the character’s dilemma. It’s usually just a short and funny story, but they don’t tend to be very memorable. By the way, in subsequent games, the story structure is relatively the same too, so you don’t miss much if you play another
WarioWare title.
Depth: 6
There isn’t a ton of depth on a game like
WarioWare. Unlocking every microgame will take no longer than an hour to accomplish, and from there, you only have the high scores to go for. Since each playthrough for each character is different, you can’t prepare a foolproof strategy to take on each person’s set of games. The only deep training you can do with the game is playing each microgame multiple times so that you know exactly how to react when the game comes up(there’s a practice mode where you can spend one-on-one time with each game as much as you want).
Additionally, each character has a target score that you can shoot for when going for a high score. If you manage to get that far, then you’ll win a neat little bonus to play around with. It’s usually a game that is more like an extended microgame; they tend to last at least 20-100 seconds each. In these, a little more strategy is needed even though the gameplay still remains simple.
Difficulty: 7
WarioWare can range from extremely simple to frustratingly difficult, depending on what game, set, and speed you choose. When you first encounter a microgame, you will have
absolutely no idea what you have to do or what you have to accomplish. Some of the one-word instructions give you no hint at all as to what you need in order to win. In those cases, the game is trial and error. Unfortunately, a system like that can turn some people away from the game at first sight.
Some of the microgames are simple, and involve pressing the A button as fast as you can with no limit. Other microgames need you to press the D-pad with the right timing and any off press will count as a loss. As a result, while the games are speeding right past you, you have to pay close attention to what game you’re playing. But by the time you realize what you have to do to win, half of the game will have passed by. So it is very difficult to keep up with the game after a while. That difficulty, however, is partly why
WarioWare is an addicting game.
Final Score: 8.0
All in all,
WarioWare is a fun game at the core, with a few redundant flaws with the game. It’s quite a pleasing game to the first-time player, and continues to be so until one has completely given up on it. The microgames are challenging and short, which keeps you coming back for more. So if you can’t stand games like Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, or even Burn the Rope, then
WarioWare, Inc. - MegaMicrogame$! will relieve you of that boredom in 5 seconds or less, guaranteed.
Graphics
8 Sound
7 Addictive
9 Depth
6 Story
6 Difficulty
7
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