Wario Land II ReviewThe population of Wario seems to have increased as a second game came out. What was a bad guy in Super Mario Land 2 became a new main character in the Mario franchise. Being the complete opposite of Mario, with his greed, brutal approach to things, and the very fact that if you turned the "W" upside down it would be an "M" makes his a somewhat comical yet a little serious character to have a rival with Mario. So what does this game have to offer? Will it hold up and make a pillar of future Wario games to come? Lets find out.
The story starts with Wario sleeping in his bed when suddenly....*gasp* it's Captain Syrup from the first game. Looks like she wants to invade your castle and get revenge for what you did to her last time. The castle rumbles and the game begins. You get a nice touch as you can press a button to get out of bed. You can then explore the castle and try and destroy the alarm clock that is causing the racket. Wario's castle is full of secrets to get you into the mood to explore every nook and cranny in the game. During the level, you may find a mini-game to play for some more treasure, special treasure that is. The easier the game, the more coins it costs ya to play it. Makes sense. At the end of every level, you get to play another mini-game to guess what the number is on the screen. It'll cost ya coins to reveal more of the number. If you get it right, you get a piece of a map leading to some place. I wonder where it leads....ok, I know were it leads. And trust me, it's worth it.
As you progress in the game, you'll come across different types of bosses and enemies. One of the most famous of these are the zombies. These just creep me out! They pop out of no-where, they throw their heads (yes, they really do that), and you have to duck to dodge them. If you don't, you turn into one. You fall through thin platforms and have to get to a light source to be normal again. When I played when I was young, the zombies always used to shock and scare me. Looking at the zombies now, the don't look so creepy....*zombie pops out of the floor* Agggg! Luckily, they aren't around much in this game, it's the third game were the make an even scarier use of them.
An interesting thing about this game is that you can't die. You don;t have any health. The penalty for being hit is losing coins. This kinda makes the game annoying and a little easy. With no health bar, you don't have any motivation to be your best in tough situations. If you had health, you would act like "I got one hit left! I just need to land one more hit on him." With that in your mind, you would care very much that you need to stay alive. Here, the only way you get out of a boss fight is that the enemy either throws you away, or traps you in a bubble and you float away, or you fall through the floor and land in the basement or something along those lines. It's a nice touch at first, but after three or four times it gets old real fast and very irritating. I would rather die and lose a life than have to go through that again!
At first, the game seems a little short. You can save when ever you like and go back to that precise point at when you saved. Oh good, it's not like I can create a save state on some emulator and go back to
that point when like =P I'll just use this for when I get to a boss fight. Hehe.....Darkpower508 1, game 0. When you play the game a second time, you'll notice you can select the levels you have competed. Boy, there's a lot of space in those gaps.....could there be more than one way to skin a cat.....er I mean compete a level? The answer is: Yes! A different way to complete a level to get a different ending and a different out come of the story. A good one is letting Wario stay asleep. Just try it out =D
With this, you can explore different areas such as an ocean area, a haunted house, and even try and take back your own castle. Each offers a different challenge as to swim, or dodge zombies *shudders*. Some of these levels are really annoying, such as the haunted house with all those zombies *face of utter disgust* they are almost as bad as spikes! You have the ability to throw enemies, which are always fun to do. You can also charge to jump further. Not a huge fan of the music, as it doesn't appeal to me. It's the kind of music that they didn't try very hard to compose. However, the controls are very fluid and easy to use. Some of the best controls for a Gameboy game, in fact. I like the way how you can slide and press down at the same time to get in those areas smoothly.
Overall, I give this game a 8.4/10 Although not perfect, I think this is a classic for the Game Boy Series (making it even better in the third game for the Game Boy colour. Boy how I love that game!), and a very fine game at that. The various different ways to complete the game offer lots of replay value. Although the music wasn't that good, the controls and graphics made up for it. The game play and different objectives make an interesting game to play, taking a different turn and twist on a platformer game. A must play for those seeking something different in the Mario series. Although it could have done without the Zombies.....
Graphics
8 Sound
6 Addictive
7 Depth
9 Story
4 Difficulty
8
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