Alas, there is someone who has always been in Mario’s glorious shadow
and it is not his brother. No my friends, that spot belongs to the
plumber’s unfortunate and obese rival, Wario. From the early days of
his ventures on the Game Boy to his release on the Gamecube, the tubby
gangster has always been a part of an incredibly simple and linear
based game-play style. One such example would be the immortality that
he possesses through most of his titles. However, Wario World ditches
the “live forever” aspect, but in turn takes in another attribute; that
all too familiar feeling of just plain sucking. It is quite a shame
because I really wanted to like this game, but it let me down in every
way imaginable.
In a land of gluttony and greed, poor Wario has lost his fortune due to
a curse from a horrible black gem. The gem’s power has turned all of
his gold into monsters and expelled him from his kingdom. It is up to
this man, clad in purple and yellow, to simply take out the opposition,
destroy the essence of the gem, and reclaim all of his treasure. From
this generic aspect of story-telling, we are eventually lead to the
main view of the game, which ends up being another platform-based
collect-a-thon. Now, in your mind, picture the collective themes of
Super Mario Sunshine, but factor in many more incredibly boring item
themes and an inescapable repetitive nature. What made other
percentage-based platform games a success was the free roaming
exploration, which is unfortunately absent in Wario World. For
encompassing this strange land is a set of 3D environments in a linear
2D side-scrolling fashion.
As soon as you begin the game, you will notice four worlds, with only
one being accessible at the beginning. Within each of these worlds are
three stages, each with their own treasures, puzzles, and bosses. Your
main objective in each stage is to collect treasure, after treasure,
after treasure, along the way having to fight incredibly stupid AI, and
going through a series of mind-numbingly easy puzzle sequences. From
tedious platform hoping to hitting switches a couple feet away from
their resultant, it is quite obvious what age group Nintendo was aiming
at. The difficulty of the game hardly ever improves and some of the
later tasks could best be described as time consuming. Primarily
because a large chunk of what you are collecting in this game is
absolutely pointless and only goes toward getting a perfect score
(which you will never have the desire to complete anyway.)
I can say one thing though; originality among adversaries was never a
primary objective for the developers. In each level you will usually
come across about two or three enemies and they are among the most
intelligent devoid creatures I have ever seen. For example, in the
first stage there are these small dinosaurs that will try to attack you
by slashing. I ran up to and stood in front of this creature for a few
seconds and then walked behind him. And to my astonishment, he was
still winding up his fist for an attack in the direction I was
previously standing. The enemies also appear extremely calcium
deficient, as the majority will usually take one or two quick slugs
each to drop.
The repetitiveness, however, comes from the usage of identical enemies
in later levels. That’s right they are the same enemies with the same
traits, but in order to make them seem different, they gave them each a
graphic change. In world one, we have the slow witted lizard-like
“magons,” and one level later the generically named “clowns.” Point is,
they move exactly at the same rate, have the same attack patterns, and
are taken down in the same amount of hits. You will go through the game
constantly confronting characters who are practically the exact same
thing as previous level foes and sadly there are very few of them.
Being plump has to have some advantages, eh? Well, old Wario certainly
knows how to throw his weight around, as you have a couple of various
moves to implement upon your dim-witted challengers. Using the B button
will allow you to throw a couple of quick punches, while holding it
will let you do a linebacker style charge. Meanwhile, the shoulder
buttons will prove useful in ass-slamming your foes into the dirt.
Moving Wario himself around is relatively simple and he controls well
for the most part from stage to stage. The only thing that throws a
wrench in the whole system is the previously mentioned 2D game-play in
a 3D environment. You will constantly find yourself jumping incorrectly
off cliffs and ledges and running right past your enemies. The loose
controls and unmovable camera angles will definitely grate on your
nerves after a while. To make matters worse, the unrelenting challenge
of keeping the power of your Gamecube turned on, with this game in it,
is the only difficulty to speak of.
Sad I know.
As said before, treasure hunting would be a lot of fun, if this world
was expansive. Unfortunately with everything moving in a side scrolling
environment, it is just a matter of time before you run into
everything. Small sprites, regular treasure, coins (which you can use
to buy lives and continues), and lastly red gems, sum up the available
loot. Earning said gems will force you to take on “puzzle challenge”
stages, which could have been something unique. Yet they pale in
comparison to the challenge levels in similar platformers and require
no more than the IQ of a hair dryer to complete. One mission actually
required me to pull a lever and then jump up just three platforms to
reach the item. Others required simple timing of hoping over slow
moving obstacles. The sad thing is that even if you fail there is no
consequence, but to jump back down and try again.
With the lack of effort put into the enemies, obstacles, and puzzles,
the boss confrontations have to be worthwhile right? Well, yes and no.
I did find the boss fights to be somewhat entertaining, but their
premise is shallow as expected. After the first few attack exchanges
you will know their pattern and proceed to wail on them, while
confidently laughing at your full set of hearts.
To complement the rushed game-play, Nintendo decided to humor everyone
with outdated visuals as well. Everything looks very bland and the
textures on objects like bridges and trees look extremely muddy. The
character designs are very generic and as said before are merely
cosmetic to hide similar enemy patterns throughout levels. Hell, it
looks as if they just copied and pasted character models and
environments, did a color change, and called it something else.
Practically every puzzle level looks the same and the majority of
obstacles such as the spike-balls are used over extensively. All of
this barely compares though to the look of the individual world entry
levels in the main lobby. Notice the adequately cardboard cutout shaped
design of the backgrounds and how they resonate in front of the
motionless sky.
As terrible as this sounds, it is the very sound itself that remains
one of the few positive features to Wario World. The game is filled
with some catchy beats and the same thing applies to the boss music
samples, however, both are short and repeat quite a bit too soon. The
puzzle level samples are repetitive as well and offer nothing special
to the already empty table. To top it off, Wario is terribly annoying
and his fake Italian accent is enough to make you want to pull that
little white plug out of your television’s audio socket.
Beneath all of the trash there is one feature included that is quite
interesting and that is the Game Boy Advance compatibility. If you have
an SP on hand, you can connect it with the system in order to transfer
a sampling of WarioWare Inc. to it. The fun little mini-games here are
humorous and interesting, but you are better off just picking up the
full version. Quite sad when the only credible factor in a game comes
from something that has nothing to do with it.
At the end of the day Wario World is as an empty serving that leaves
you with nothing but high cholesterol. The most this game encompasses
is about ten hours and that is if you can stomach the first few stages.
With the simplistic graphics, repetitive game-play, and bogus
challenge, it is obvious that the game was intended for young
audiences. However, I would not recommend this pile of garbage to even
the smallest adolescent out there. It is a shame that Wario’s first
outing in his own advanced console game was such a poor one, resulting
in being nothing more than a dusty old box in the corner of my drawer.
