Wario's a misunderstood guy. Often known to Mario fans as little more than a rival, few seem to appreciate how much poor slob has done on his own. You mess with Mario one time and you never live it down. But those of us more sympathetic to Nintendo's lovable anti-hero have come to know him well in his many off-beat adventures, and for those that know, Wario is so much more.
Wario is the Anti-Mario. He's a fat, greedy, disgusting, pointy eared mutation of the falsetto plumberboy who has championed Nintendo for the past couple decades. But the title goes beyond the character design. Since the series inception in 1994, Wario has always gone the opposite route of Nintendo's mainstream poster child. When Mario games were linear, arcadey affairs, Wario games dared to shed the arcade trappings, often even making Wario invulnerable, and focus on hardcore puzzle platforming. Now that Wario has graduated to the home console, he reivents his franchise once again to be about as different from Mario's 3D outings as it can.
Understandable, EAD and Mario's mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto have always stayed far away from Wario's deviant outings. Wario is the brainchild of Hiroji Kiyotake and the geniuses at Nintendo R&D1, who over the years have come to focus more or less exclusively on Nintendo's handheld systems. So when it came time to reinvent Wario for the consoles, R&D1 needed some help, and so they turned to the like-minded former co-conspirotors at Treasure to lend a hand. After all, Treasure has come to be almost synonymous with quirky game design and off beat humor.
And so it came to be. Nintendo and Treasure shacked up once again to create a Wario for a New Age. The results are about what you'd expect from such a meeting of minds; The game is both an extention of the ideas in the Wario Land series, and the beginning of its own identity. This effort puts a much greater emphasis on action, a direction the series was taking steps toward already with Wario Land 4, but at the same time it preserves those things that made the series classic to begin with.
Wario's story begins in much the same way as all Wario games. The game opens with our protagonist enjoying his favorite activity, cackling manaiacly alone amongst his riches, when suddenly his fortune was once again threatened, not by pirates this time, but by a cursed gem pilfered on one of Wario's "buisness trips". The gem begins transforming his gold into monsters and quickly lays waste to Wario's precious castle and rebuilds a bizzarre kingdom, transforming the oncy freindly abode into a trippy alternate dimension. Not fond of having his wealth pilfered, Wario sets out on his adventure to right this injustice and regain his riches.
It seems the pudgy plumber has pugilistic aspirations this go-round, as he now comes prepared to pummel anything living. The game has a light beatemup slant to it with quick two-fisted action providing the main means of offense. In addition Wario also retains his old shoulder bash and butt stomp, and gains the ability to pile drive, twirl, and fling his oppenents to inflict damage on the oncoming hoardes. The game is not as non-confrontational as Mario or it's ilk. Wario's gloved fists will be adequately occupied, I assure you.
But at it's heart Wario World is still a puzzle-oriented collectemup, and it's very much a platformer in the truest sense of the word. Your precision jumping skills will get a workout in this game, and in that sense it bears a much greater resemblance to the two-dimensional ancestors of the genre than what that genre has become today. Although Wario can run around in 3D, the flow of the levels is generally side scrolling, and fairly linear. In each level there are scattered 8 trap doors, each containing a red crystal. To earn this red crystal you will have to complete one of two kinds of tasks. The first kind is a puzzle room. This will be a small, square room which will require you to use your problem solving skills to reach your goal. The other kind of task is a platform gauntlet. These are very similar in nature to Mario Sunshine's "void" levels, and require some old school jumping skills to secure your prize. These levels tend to be shorter and more gimmicky than Mario's void stages, and I actually like them more. I'm sure both types of trials will be crown pleasers.
There's more to hunt down as well. Each level also contains 5 of the woodland spirits that will help you defeat the black crystal, 8 of Wario's treasures, and 8 peices of a golden statue which, when assembled, will grant Wario a life extention. All of this provides plenty of gameplay, and finding the various treasures is usually intuitive and intelligible.
Both Treasure's library and the Wario series have been known for their well made bosses. World's imposing baddies definately favor the Treasure school of design, and they are in no short supply, with 13 proper bosses awaiting punishment and an array of minobosses to impede your progress. These fights are very well done, and the characters themselves are memorable and usually worth a chuckle. Most fights have a "right way" and "wrong way" to beat them too, so a little extra skill and problem solving is rewarded. Definately a highlight of the game.
Visually the game is very appealing. The stomping grounds are colorful and stylish, and each level has a different style. Although many of the same enemies appear throughout the game, those enemies will sport a completely different look in each level. Even within levels there's very little repitition and each area is memorable and distinct. Different levels often have their own unique graphical effects to lend to the tone of each stage. The circus levels has some lovely shadowing and spotlight effects, and the ice in the winter level is gorgeous. The game moves at a silky smooth frame rate with only a couple instances of any slowdown. The tradeoff seems to be that for all this variety there's a sacrifice in the texture detail. Textures look good, but do not really impress.
The game's audio is top notch. Veteran Treasure composer Norio Hanzawa (better known to fans as NON) demonstrates a versatility I never knew he had in him. Instead of the spacey pop melodys that form the back bone of Hanzawa-san's body of work, Wario's back bone is a funky bass-heavy jazz, blended with various other styles for each themed stage. Charles Martinet reprises his role as the voice of Wario, and once again does an excellent job of portraying him as the funny, rotten little bastard that he is. His grunts, cackles and shouts are downright comical, and really help make the character. Sound effects are also cartoony and well suited.
But it isn't all sunshine and giggles. The game does have a few shortcomings worth noting. One thing that seems to be an issue of contention for many is that the game packs a very abusable continue system that essentially just refills your health when you die for a low coin cost. This pretty much makes death optional, and damages the game's challenge. Interestingly enough, though, the game seems perfectly balanced for those who choose not to continue, as level progress is still saved and catching back up is painless. It almost seems as if the continue system is an afterthought for those who are easily frustrated. So while this is a potential pitfall, the fact that continues are optional, and the game balance is otherwise solid keeps this from being a major downfall.
Also disappointing is the lack of a scoring, grading or ranking system (like the one found in Wario Land 4, for example). The game doesn't seem to lend itself to it, since enemies respawn this time, so I can understand its omission, but it still hampers the replay value. Similarly disappointing is the lack of additional difficulty modes, which also could have gone a long way toward added longevity. And just by nature of the old school gameplay and structure, Wario's quest is not particularly lengthy. While it's plenty long for the kind of game that it is, those expecting to get 20 hours out of the title will not find what they're looking for. This isn't an issue for me, but I think it bears mentioning.
With those complaints out of the way, I still have to say the game endures. Wario World comes like a breath of fresh air to the stagnant platform genre, and reminds us of why this genre used to be one of gaming's most important. It's intuitive and well paced action coupled with some high quality level design, and tons of personality make for a memorable gaming experience. It's been a while since a game put a smile on my face like this one has. Especially in the context of today's gaming scene, Wario's old school meets new school fusion is just plain fun to play, and a welcome change of pace. Thanks, Nintendo and Treasure. I really needed this one.
This review was harder for me to write than I thought it would be. It's a little longer than I wanted it to be too, but hopefully it won't drag. I just wanted to be the first to give a postive, but balanced review of the game without sheer Treasure fandom as my reason for why it's good
