By now it's become almost some sort of unwritten law that when you develop a game for a Nintendo system, it has to feature mini-games as well. Nintendo's newest Wii effort harks back to a mini-game series it created on the Game Boy Advance. While the Wario Ware name is nothing new, the innovations Nintendo continues to inject into the series still makes it one of the most appealing and freshest franchises on the market.
Of course with Wario Ware: Smooth Moves being on the Wii, the mass of mini-games thrown at players will utilize the Wii Remote in a crazy number of fashions. While one could say the choice of control is the only asset that sets Smooth Moves apart from its predecessors, the motion control really does add that extra layer of game play which prevents the game from being a mere "been there, done that" affair.
The premise of the game hasn't changed one iota since the original released almost four years ago: Players work their way through a number of levels, each designated by a character in the Wario Ware universe. The levels are filled with nothing but a string of mini-game in which players can only fail four mini-games. Each stage only takes a few seconds to complete but as the stage progresses the mini-games speed up and lead to a more-involving boss stage.
While in initial execution, the stages will only take a couple of minutes to work through, completing them will unlock more stages as well as a number of extra features, galleries, extended mini-games and multiplayer modes. After completion, players can also return to the stages and work through them endlessly in order to obtain personal high scores. So while gamers will rip the plastic off Wario Ware and start off with barebones options, through single-player dedication, eventually a bevy of options will be selectable.
Unfortunately, that marked a glaring weakness for me as Wario Ware: Smooth Moves does not come with multiplayer out of the box. Furthermore, the multiplayer modes won't even surface as selectable options until someone completes the single-player mode's storyline (which will round out at about two to three hours unless one is sidetracked by some of the unlockable options).
Article comments
1 - Strat_ax
The review is spot on. Had this game for 2 weeks now and I have the same quirks with the multiplayer option--some of the mini-games should have came out of the box. Also, there were very minor control issues on some of the games; but that does not play down the entire game. Despite the latter, it is very fun and unique game for the Wii system. Not knowing what to do on some of the mini games is part of the fun. You can go back to all of them if you decide that you need practice. Four and half stars (4 1/2 of 5) from here!
2 - Mark Agar
Having only just got a Wii, we only had the one remote control that came with the unit. We bought this game with multi player (think party) in mind, but we were unable to get hold of another controller just before Christmas. The lack of multi player support we thought was because we only had the one controller.
With the party theme in mind, we bough the game along to a friends house for New Year celebrations to play on their Wii, but became very frustrated when the second controller was not picked up by the game and there didn't appear to be any options for selecting more than a single player.
It struck me as odd that it would give a menu option for Single Player when that was all that was available, and I guessed that multi player would need to be 'unlocked' by completing the single player game.
This was a real disappointment as it meant that someone had to stand there all on there own going through the levels as quickly as possible in order for the rest to join in. Multi player should have been available from the off in my opinion.
The other frustrating thing is the cut scenes at the beginning and end of each section, there is no way to skip these, and after seeing them all before on our own Wii twice, it does get a little tedious.
That said, it's a great fun game and very worthy of a place in our small (but growing) collection of titles for this incredible little games console.
4 out of 5 from me :)