WarioWare: Move It

The WarioWare series has always been very intriguing to me. It's an almost timeless party game, but it never really seems to evolve with each iteration. From the Mega Microgame$ first instalment on the Game Boy Advance, to my personal favourite, Smooth Moves on the Wii, all the way to 2021's Get It Together on the Switch, WarioWare has effectively been the same game, with marginal updates, year after year. And for this November's WarioWare: Move It, this is once again precisely the case.

Now it should be said that this is both a good and bad thing. The WarioWare series has survived the test of time because it is fundamentally fun, and there's no change in that with Move It. But, if you've played any of the former games, you will absolutely be familiar with what Nintendo is serving up here too. The ingenuity and advancement that we have seen in the various Mario series has not translated to Wario's party effort, yet as I mentioned a moment ago, it's still a blast to play.

WarioWare: Move It consists of various game modes that are tailored to either a single player, to a pair of players, or a group of up to four players. You can play more party-centric modes where you compete or team up with friends, or can jump into the really weird and silly story that sees Wario and his colleagues essentially taking a vacation on a tropical resort island. Whatever mode you pick, you'll be expected to use the Joy-Cons in a variety of daft and creative ways to overcome and keep beating fast-paced and small minigames.

The story mode is incredibly short and doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond simply teaching you the basics and fundamentals of how each of the various moves work and are handled. Sure, there is a story of sorts at this mode's core, but it's so unusual and unapologetically WarioWare that it's basically incoherent and has zero meaning to it. There are at least various bonus modes and ways to keep playing alone or with a friend in the story mode sections beyond the main narrative beats, but as anyone who has played a WarioWare game before knows, it's really in the multiplayer and party elements that this game excels.

When you team up with a few friends for some local fun, WarioWare is almost one of one. It is an absolute joy to play, to see your friends contorting themselves into bizarre shapes to beat minigames that will leave you with more questions than answers. Why are you cleaning cavities in a koala's teeth? Why am I crushing balloons by sitting on them? The minigames are weird and wonderful and when you embrace the chaos with friends, WarioWare: Move It becomes a top party title. However, Move It lacks in its multiplayer support and feels more limited than previous WarioWare games in this respect, which is a massive let down when considering this is usually where the series stands head and shoulders above the rest.

The minigames, as has become expected from this series, do once again pay homage to many of Nintendo's other series and titles. You will find yourself digging up fossils in Animal Crossing, defeating Koopas as an 8-bit Mario, running away from Link as a chicken. Be it Ring Fit, Super Mario, Paper Mario, Wii MotionPlus, Pikmin, it's a great title for once again highlighting the brilliance and breadth of Nintendo's portfolio of projects, which is why the controls being a major let down are once again disappointing.

Because the single biggest let down with Move It are the unreliable motion controls of the Joy-Cons. This is a game without much margin for error, as each of the minigames give you only a few seconds to understand them and then beat them, meaning there is very little time at all to fight the Joy-Cons to get them to register your movements and actions. Yet, this happens in pretty much every minigame that comes up. I've found it's a particularly big problem when you run out of lives and have to match a pose during the second chance system, as the Joy-Cons are outright miserable at realising you are contorting yourself into some bizarre shape in hope of being able to continue the fun.

Some of the moves that rely the most on motion are also very difficult to succeed in. The action that uses the Joy-Cons infrared sensor to track the movement of your opposite hand barely functions, meaning whenever you're asked to complete this action, you basically have to expect you will fail unless you can 'cheese it' and manage to essentially fool the system. It's a shame that the game is let down by the hardware it relies on, but the frustration that often amounts from the unreliable Joy-Cons motions and actions does significantly impact this title.

But if you can stomach the control issues, WarioWare: Move It is a fun party game once again. The main other issue is that Nintendo clearly doesn't intend to take any risks with this series at all, as Move It reminds me of pretty much every other WarioWare game that there has ever been. It really is limited in its ingenuity and creativity in that regard. However, as they say, "if it ain't broke don't fix it", because you will get many hilarious hours out of this game when you team up with some friends and let loose.