Wii Review: WarioWare Smooth Moves

Review by: Trogdor390

You can pick your nose. You can maybe pick your friends nose. But in Nintendo's WarioWare: Smooth Moves for the Wii, you can sure pick some random stranger's nose! This bizarre assortment of micro games, which range from 5-15 seconds each that eventually speed up, are perhaps Nintendo finally showing they've gone off the deep end! Not that a pair Italian brother plumbers easting mushrooms and stomping on turtles wasn't enough…

In this game, the game play is very forward and simple. Just try to survive as long as you can. You can gain lives by beating bosses, but once you lose all four of your lives, game over, sweetheart. The actually game play has you hold the Wiimote in a variety of positions to emulate what you are doing on screen, with a small diagram to show you what to do before the minigames start. These positions include the broom-handle-like "Janitor", the "Tug-of-War", and the "Thumb Wrestler". Nothing complex or something that you would need a degree in astrophysics for but some games need to played a few times some times for you to figure out just what you need to do in it (you really only have like 5 seconds, man!). Multiplayer is fun as this is a party game. From the hot potato-style games to a game of darts for over 32 people trading off a single wiimote. It gets intense and crazy. Another thing I like is WarioWare band of characters and non-connecting writing. It is quirky, bizarre and funny. But overall, not terribly complex, funny, and it works.

Now controls seem to run hand-in-hand with game play in nearly every game like a pair of love struck teens, and this is no exception. Most of the mini-games are absolutely spot on and feel like you suppose they should (When have I actually shot a dragon with a laser?!). The variety of control positions is cool and gave me a kick out of doing them. My only 'tear-your-hair-out' thing, and it is a big one, is that the Wii can't register precise movements and that makes some mini-games nearly impossible, unless you get lucky. This makes it frustrating in a game where you only have five-seconds to win and a loss can come in a matter of seconds. That is only and most major draw of this game. But most of the mini-games work fine and are a blast to play.

I agree with my fellow reviewer Pikaboo in the fact that, besides game play, Nintendo always makes great music and sounds. The in game music is fairly consistent with the stages and it switches when you are in mini games. The between game music is catchy, if not annoying if you hear it all the time. But other wise the minimal voice-acting and sing is spot on, the sound effects are realistic and not as bad as some games. Just annoying after while.

Oh boy, graphics. Now, this isn't halo, people. Graphics don't really mater as much in this game. The back grounds are cartoonish and well put together. They are lush and colorful. The non-playing images are all very consistent and good looking. In the mini-game art varies widely from game to game but that's good because it keeps it mixed up enough to keep it fresh. The graphic are not supposed to look realistic and that's fine. The Wii's not working overtime graphically on this, unlike the Twilight Princess or Super Mario Galaxy, and these could easily be pulled of on the GameCube, but this style of art does really require photorealism and High-Definition. Hell, the DS pulled this style of graphics of in WarioWare: Touched, and it only has a little edge on the N64. But it's fine. If it's not broke, don't fix it…

This is a party game, so if you've got a bunch of friends, go ahead. Replay is pretty decent. There's no online play, so that sucks, and playing single player again and again is only training for beating your friends. Good, but not great…

Well, coming into it I didn't know what to expect. It's more fun than a barrel of drunk monkeys, but lack of clean controls on certain games and the need of physically-present friends to give it good replay ability reminds you that these are drunk monkeys and that you'll have to clean up after them in the morning.