INTRO
There are not currently a whole lot of what i would call great games out for the Nintendo Wii at this present time. A lot of the games that are out i think are mere experiments from developers as they try to figure out everything that the Wii and the Wii-mote can do for their games! Wariowear however is a great game and has continued to be a great franchise of Nintendo's!
So who or what is Wario and what is Wariowear? The story goes a little something like this. Mario and Wario grew up together as kids, and Mario would always beat Wario in all the games that they played together. Over the years Wario developed a hatred for Mario, they are now sworn enemies. Wario became so popular for Nintendo that they started making Wario Games, including Wario Land. Wariowear is a game that has been around for a little while now and the game first appeared on the Gameboy advance, the series then jumped to the Nintendo DS with a game called Wariowear: Touched! It was a instant hit because the gamer could become more involved in the game play due to the Nintendo DS capabilities! It was just a matter of time before the game would jump to the Wii so that it could exploit all of it's features!
WHAT IS WARIOWEAR ALL ABOUT?
In the beginning of the game you are shown a story. The story starts out in Wario's home town. In this town there is an old Temple that has been there for hundreds of years. One day Wario decides to go into the temple. Wario starts to explore the temple and he comes across an ancient magical tool called the "form" the form looks identical to the Wii-mote, and from there is where your adventure begins. Wario figures out that by moving the form around he can manipulate objects all around him! As soon as he figures this out you are thrust into the first segment of the game, and that is to escape from the tomb!
Each level of the game features roughly 15 micro games. In all there are over 200 micro games for you to try and figure out! Doesn't sound too hard does it? Well when the micro game appears it tells you how you must hold the Wii-mote, and then you have a but a few seconds to figure out how to solve the puzzle! Each level is dependent on you mastering the way the game tells you how to hold the Wii-mote.
There are 12 ways to hold the Wii-mote and each new way is introduced to you at the beginning of the micro games! If you have to use a new way that you have never seen before, a funny cut scene where a narrator tells you about the way to hold the "form" appears. Examples of ways to hold the form include:
THE UMBRELLA
when using the Wii-mote in this way the player must hold the Wii-mote vertically like you are holding the handle of an umbrella!
THE REMOTE CONTROL
When you are told to hold the form in this way, you simply hold the Wii-Mote like a tv remote control!
THE ELEPHANT
When you are asked to use the form this way, the player must place the end of the Wii-mote on their nose. Most of the games that use this form involve you moving left to right, swaying the wii-mote like an elephants trunk would!
THE HANDLEBAR
In the series of micro games that require you to hold the Wii-mote in the Handlebar form, you must turn the Wii-mote on to it's side and hold the Wii-mote like bicycle handlebars!
THE DISCARD
This is probably my favorite one. When you use the discard you have to place the Wii-mote on a flat service out of your hands. You then usually have to pick up the wii-mote at a specific time to perform a task! For instance the micro game might show a picture of a phone, when the phone starts ringing you have to pick up the Wii-mote! Another example of this one would be a showdown micro game! You place the Wii-mote on a table or your leg (anything but in your hands) then a voice will say "draw" you have to be quicker than the computer so that you can get your shot off quicker!
The other ways to hold the form are,
The Sketch Artist - Hold the Wii-mote like a pen
The Samurai - Hold the Wii-mote like a sword
The Waiter - Place the form flat on your hand
The Big Cheese - Hold the Wii-mote by your side
The Mohawk - Place the Wii-mote on your head
The Chauffeur- Hold the Wii-mote like a steering wheel
The variety of micro games is simply stunning! You will find yourself performing all sorts of tasks. Running, Jumping, answering the phone, flipping food, dancing, driving cars, performing squats. The list goes on and on and on! The biggest challenge though is figuring out exactly what you have to do and how you have to move the Wii-mote to perform the challenge! Again you only have a few secoonds to figure it out! If you do not complete the task you will lose a life! In each level you have 4 lives. When you lose all your lives you have to start from the beginning of that particular level. Trust me it is much harder than it sounds and you will work up a sweat playing the game.
One feature i like is that when you complete a level all of the micro games become unlock and you can play any particular micro game over and over again. When you do this each micro game will get harder and harder the more you play it, so it will really put your form skills to the test. One thing that i hate about this game is that yes, it is a 2 player game, but you can only access 2 player mode when you have completed the game in 1 player mode!! That to me is ridiculous, who has ever heard of such nonsense?
SO HOW DOES IT LOOK
You have to remember that the Nintendo Wii was not developed to be able to display jaw dropping, high definition images that will blow your socks off! The Graphics in Wariowear, are bold, bright and very colorful They have a very last gen feel to them and there is a lot of Japanese influence to the graphics. You will see a lot of Manga style characters in the game.
Honestly some of the graphics in the game are absolutely crude and look like graphics you would have expected on the SNES or Genesis. However this game was not made to wow people with it's graphics. It was made to wow people with it's interactive content. In that respect the graphics do their job well, but do not expect the visuals to be as great as the game play.
HOW DOES THE SOUND MEASURE UP?
The sound in WarioWare is actually pretty good. There is lots of up beat music, dance and techno music. As the speed of the game increases so do the tempo of the music. The sound effects are really few and far between, but the ones that are there are great!!
When you complete a micro game you will hear cheering, or clapping, the thing i love about the sound though is how they utilized the speaker in the Wii-mote itself. Earlier on i talked about a micro game where you have to answer the phone, Well when you pick up the phone a voice comes out of the speaker in the Wii-mote and it sounds like it would on the phone! There is a game where you have to use a sword. When you swing the sword you hear a whoosh of air coming from the speaker like you would if you swung a real sword! It is the little touches like that, that really stand out for me!
THE CONTROLS
This is what the Wii was made for! Innovative game play that makes the gamer feel like they are actually in the game! Using all of the methods that i listed above, you will really feel like you are fully immersed in the action. The sensitivity of the remote is just right and I have not experienced any disconnect while playing this game, everything is really, really well done.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Wariowear: Smooth moves for me is the best Wii game to date. It does everything that the Wii was made to do and it does it with style and grace! You will constantly find yourself coming back for more so you can master each way to hold the Wii-mote and so that you can figure out each micro game, because believe me you will not figure them all out first time, and once you have a tried a micro game and you fail, you will want to figure it out because it is just so much fun to do so! The graphics might not be great, but really who cares! Playing games is about game play and WarioWare has bundles of it! If you have a Nintendo Wii i urge you to buy this game! You will love it!
