Wario Ware Inc. Mega Party Games
Oct. 16th, 2011 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Wario Ware series is a set of "microgame" collections--like minigames, but even shorter, as most of them give you about 5 seconds to figure out what you're supposed to be doing and then do it, and you play them in rapid succession. I've played all of the portable entries is the series, and when I found a used copy cheap, I figured I'd give the Gamecube installment, Wario Ware Inc. Mega Party Games, a try.
I was kinda disappointed in that most of the microgames were the same ones as the original GBA game (and the single-player mode uses a recurring GBA motif that emphasizes that similarity). The unlocking was a little odd, too--in the GBA games, you unlock microgames in the library by playing each character's section, and as the games come up randomly, they're added to your library. That gives incentive to play characters you've beaten over and over to unlock all of their games. This game starts with the library fully available. You only have to beat each character once in a "tower" challenge to unlock a few extra modes (the all-characters mix, hard mode, extra-hard mode, and time attack) and then there's one blank square that even Gamefaqs writers don't seem to know how to unlock.
The multiplayer mode was new, and is basically nine different party games for 2-4 players. You unlock most of them simply by playing through the others, which Jethrien and I did over the course of about an hour. Some of them are good about creating ways to balance out people who are better or worse at the microgames; others are pretty much a chance for the person who owns the game to show off. And it gets old quickly. I had the same reaction when I played the Wii installment at a party a few years ago: It's an amusing waste of a couple of hours, but then I'm done and don't feel the need to play it again.
There are some new videos and character bios which are also easy to unlock, but meh, whatever.
Overall: This series works better in a portable format, I feel. It's a game designed for five minutes of play at a time, which means you get tired of it after an hour and it's silly to boot up a console for, but it's great for ten minutes of distraction while you're waiting for a train. The multiplayer aspect is good for one small gathering (max 4 players), but it's not going to keep people coming back. The gimmicks they added for WarioWare Twisted and WarioWare Touched actually made the games more interesting and added variety (as did the various Wii "poses"), whereas there's not enough new here to be worth it. I'd recommend most other installments before this one.
I was kinda disappointed in that most of the microgames were the same ones as the original GBA game (and the single-player mode uses a recurring GBA motif that emphasizes that similarity). The unlocking was a little odd, too--in the GBA games, you unlock microgames in the library by playing each character's section, and as the games come up randomly, they're added to your library. That gives incentive to play characters you've beaten over and over to unlock all of their games. This game starts with the library fully available. You only have to beat each character once in a "tower" challenge to unlock a few extra modes (the all-characters mix, hard mode, extra-hard mode, and time attack) and then there's one blank square that even Gamefaqs writers don't seem to know how to unlock.
The multiplayer mode was new, and is basically nine different party games for 2-4 players. You unlock most of them simply by playing through the others, which Jethrien and I did over the course of about an hour. Some of them are good about creating ways to balance out people who are better or worse at the microgames; others are pretty much a chance for the person who owns the game to show off. And it gets old quickly. I had the same reaction when I played the Wii installment at a party a few years ago: It's an amusing waste of a couple of hours, but then I'm done and don't feel the need to play it again.
There are some new videos and character bios which are also easy to unlock, but meh, whatever.
Overall: This series works better in a portable format, I feel. It's a game designed for five minutes of play at a time, which means you get tired of it after an hour and it's silly to boot up a console for, but it's great for ten minutes of distraction while you're waiting for a train. The multiplayer aspect is good for one small gathering (max 4 players), but it's not going to keep people coming back. The gimmicks they added for WarioWare Twisted and WarioWare Touched actually made the games more interesting and added variety (as did the various Wii "poses"), whereas there's not enough new here to be worth it. I'd recommend most other installments before this one.
