LogFAQs > #967006597

#22: WarioWare: Get It Together!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/6/3/AAA-H0AADhKX.jpg

WarioWare is a series that has been around for nearly 20 years now, and it's always kind of just consistently good. As of writing, there are no WarioWare games in my top 100 games all time, but if you go to my next 100 after that there's like... five, including this one. It's just always a really fun time. I have like, undiagnosed ADHD, or something, and WarioWare is kind of perfect for that - always changing, giving you something completely new to look at and do. Its frenetic pace means it's never quite complex enough to be truly engrossing, but it's a really great format just for the sheer creativity of its hundreds of microgames and it's fast pace makes it fun to pick up and play for little chunks at a time.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/6/4/AAA-H0AADhKY.jpg

WarioWare is also a series that I basically thought was dead for a while. There was an explosion of WarioWare games in the early 00's, capping off with Smooth Moves in 2007 and the criminally underappreciated DIY in 2010 (we don't talk about Snapped). And then the series went... dormant, for a bit. Game & Wario came out for the Wii U in 2013, a highly underrated game in my opinion but questionable if it's even a 'true' WarioWare game, since it's a minigame collection and not microgames. And then... again, nothing for a bit. It probably didn't help that Snapped was a failure, DIY came too late in the DS's lifespan to really get noticed, and Game & Wario was on the Wii U, but hardly the series' fault. I actually didn't even really notice when WarioWare Gold came out in 2018, figuring that it was little more than a remake of games I'd already played, so it didn't get a chance to show up on my decade list (DIY and Game & Wario both did), but I played it recently and it's actually really worthwhile.

Get It Together is a pretty emphatic statement: WarioWare is very much an active series. The first 'true' new WarioWare game in a while, really since DIY, and really the first 'big' one since Smooth Moves. It's been about 15 years! But at the same time, the series was never really dormant to begin with - it never went more than 5 years without a quality new release. Just long enough to make me forget the series exists before delivering another quality banger.

There isn't much to say about Get It Together except that it's really, really good. In fact, I'd say it's my favorite 'pure' WarioWare experience since Twisted. I found Smooth Moves' Wii controls a little cumbersome, DIY is fun mostly for its creation engine, G&W isn't really a WarioWare game, and WarioWare Gold is a remake-of-sorts, albeit a good one. Get It Together has no annoying gimmicks, it's not a remake, it's just pure WarioWare fun.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/6/5/AAA-H0AADhKZ.jpg

This game's two schticks are; it's co-op, and you play the games by controlling a WarioWare character inside the games. The first innovation, co-op, is a revelation. Now that WarioWare has co-op, I'm immediately aware that WarioWare has always NEEDED co-op. Mega Party Games was a fun WarioWare party game for GC, but it was mostly taking turns playing microgames - even when there was simultaneously play it was head to head. And that's a lot of fun - the hectic mania of WarioWare is really well suited to having a group of players all get into it at once. But having it be co-op is better; having two people have to coordinate on the same series of 5-second tasks introduces so much more chaos. Two people playing this together for the first time is an absolute blast - it's great to have to react to every game with another person.

But the other gimmick, controlling WarioWare characters, is also a surprisingly good addition to the formula. At first I thought it was mostly just an awkward concession to the co-op formula; normally in a WarioWare game the controls differ from game to game, but here your controls just move your character around, and your character interacts with the game. It seemed weird at first, but it does change the way the game's played quite a bit; instead of needing to learn the controls you need to learn how your character interacts with the game, which is different. The fact that there are a bunch of different characters and they all have completely different control schemes is super interesting; it completely transforms the way some games are played, making some super easy and others very challenging, and expands the design space of the game by changing it up depending on who you're playing. It is also an important concession for co-op play, of course, since it allows two people to be controlling the game at once.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/6/6/AAA-H0AADhKa.jpg

This really brought me back to the first time I played WarioWare, that thrill of being thrown into all these different games and panicking (in a fun way) as I try to figure them out. They never seem to run out of new ideas for games, and the visuals and sound design in every game here are more snort-laughter inducing than ever. It's got a fair bit of content, though I still beat it in a few hours; but it's got a lot of replayability and it's great to play with a friend. It's just a great followup to the series; Nintendo has been killing it in revitalizing their slightly-sidelined series and getting back to basics, making these once inert series fully active again - not the last time on this list I'll be saying that, by the way (still RIP F-Zero though).

Of course, now that they've made an excellent WarioWare game, the WarioWare team can get back to what they really should be making... a new Rhythm Heaven game! There's a bunch of references to Rhythm Heaven in this game, so I'm hopeful!

Next up: I loudly declared that this game would be bad. Whoops!