Game review: Warioware Gold

The latest instalment of the Warioware series is out now, but is it worth all your gold coins? Read on to find out…

Warioland: Super Mario Land 3 was one of the first games that I remember getting insanely into and since then I’ve held a strong affinity for the spikey moustached chubster that is Wario. Unfortunately for me, the main Wario games dried up years ago. At the same time though I can still get my Wario fix with the newer Warioware series. It isn’t the same but they’re pretty decent “pass the time games” so let’s have a look at how Warioware Gold plays out.

So for those of you out there who have never heard of the Warioware franchise let me enlighten you; it’s essentially a series of mini-games that speed up the more of them you manage to complete. The more mini-games you complete the more you unlock until you have a plethora of quick fire finger testers at your disposal.

Weirdly for Gold they decided to have it fully voice acted as well which means you get to listen to Wario’s almost reverse Mario accent in all its glory and get confused at how high pitched his voice is when compared to his stature. Also it has a storyline, which is something I didn’t think happened in the series, but apparently it did back in 2010 with D.I.Y….who knew!? The plot itself is pretty ridiculous but it’s the kind of ridiculous you can really get into as it bookmarks all the ridiculousness of the mini-games (or “Microgames”) themselves.

While at the beginning or the article, I referred to them as “pass the time games”. But once I started playing the game, I realised that it had been multiple hours and my eyes where starting to hurt from lack of moisture and oxygen. It’s crazy to think that in a world of massive expansive games on consoles that I’d be spending my downtime playing my handheld console in my living room but the kind of frenetic action and instant gratification you get from blazing through challenges means that its a game that is truly hard to put down.

Come to think of it, I’ve had the Warioware games before and had a similar experience travelling on coaches with my trusty Nintendo DS back in the day and then arriving at my destination, but still carrying on with the game rather then doing what I was supposed to be doing. The games hold a kind of mystic-like quality that captures you completely in the moment as it mesmerises you with flashy graphics and cutting in between multiple scenes. The only issue with this is that whilst in the moment the game becomes the epitome of importance, once you put it down its easy to forget.

Now if you were to ask me about Warioland, I could talk to you about how I thought the Bull Pot was the best powerup and exactly what reward you’d get from Genie at Syrup Castle on completing the game. I could tell you how stressed I got trying to figure out how to defeat Funfun and how excited I’d get when I found a secret treasure hidden away. The only thing I can ever remember from the Warioware series is that sometimes there’s a mini-game where you pick someone’s nose and there’s a guy with an afro.

It’s for this reason that I’m in two minds about Warioware Gold. On one hand it’s an enjoyable game that’s good for trips if you’re commuting and only have short periods of time, but on the other its easily forgotten once you stop playing it and the addictiveness of it can ease into time that you could be playing something else. Having said that: who cares? You play games to have fun, right?

Author: Hal, Plymouth store