Two thoughts immediately come to mind whenever anyone or anything conjures the name WarioWare. The first (and arguably the more personal association) is Survival Fever – the surprisingly-enjoyable multiplayer mode from the 2004 Gamecube iteration that has either one or all players at once survive to an increasingly-sped beat. The second is the fact that of any series Nintendo has attempted to implement/shoe-horn motion controls into, WarioWare has often been the one that has not only been the biggest recipient, but against all odds, actually made it work. Not because it overnight made buttons, analog sticks and triggers alike entirely redundant, but rather the opposite sentiment. That motion controls are a silly, goofy and odd gimmick…but one which can work if that same sentiment is expressed and played into.
Not that WarioWare wasn’t already an absurd and self-aware acknowledgment of its own premise, but the back-to-back release of Touched for the DS in 2004 and Smooth Moves for the Wii three years later gave Nintendo’s obsession with unconventional inputs at the time a momentary bit of levity. It wouldn’t stop them from trying to repeat that success – in an all-too-similarly doomed prospect that, for instance, the Wii U Gamepad had promise – but this year’s offering, WarioWare: Move It!, comes off in much the same vain. An effort from Nintendo, with Intelligent Systems at the helm, to try and prove – perhaps a tad too late into the Switch’s life-cycle – that the Joy-Con’s motion controls and IR sensor capabilities can be creative and enjoyable enough to master.
And admittedly, Move It! does manage to prove that in some capacity…when it actually works. When you’re not struggling to have both controls pointing in the direction they should be (let alone the direction you want them in), when you actually know what you’re supposed to be doing during those fast-thinking five-or-so seconds most Microgames offer, Move It! is a pleasant reminder of how ridiculously on-point WarioWare’s pitch can be. How the ongoing sight of Wario’s signature facial features (zig-zag moustache and all) plastered across many a character or object draws an easy smirk, or at best, an occasional chuckle. That the mix of art-styles – the crude, the simplistic and the polygonal alike – is funnily enough a plus rather than a complaint. Move It! does still conjure momentary delight at the way the game employs its various Joy-Con-wielding poses (referred to as “Forms” here). Even if the poses themselves are simply replicas of those in Smooth Moves, just with two peripherals to wield, rather than the solitary Wii Remote of yonder.
But that’s precisely why Move It! in the end can only settle for sinking into Smooth Moves' shadow here. That a decade-older piece of hardware proves to be more reliable than the Switch’s motion-control equivalents is the major pointer; Move It!’s inconsistent controls are a disappointment. In trying to flex the potential and possibilities said peripherals can offer, the game winds up at times overly-convoluted, messy and worse still: completely unclear on what it is one even needs to do. Is it an immediate reaction to what’s on-screen, where one singular movement will be the determining factor on whether said Microgame is a success or failure? What exactly am I even controlling here? And as noted: can I even rely on the sensitivity with controls to even read/render what I’m doing?
For a game with an extremely short single-player mode – around a couple of hours tops – and a paltry amount of multiplayer/co-operative alternatives – Move It! doesn’t take long for that worrisome distrust to settle in. Yet that as it may be, I would be lying if I said the game doesn’t still have it in itself to generate one or two solid moments along the way. Some entirely original games whose required pose is sufficiently built to what’s been shown on-screen. Others familiar returns from prior games and/or adapted to the dual Joy-Con set-up. Sure you can still “cheat” your way to victory by simply fooling the system into thinking you’re properly adapting the required pose or action. But at its best, WarioWare: Move It! still succeeds at keeping you on your toes at what’s around the corner. No matter how many of the four starting lives you may be clinging onto on your route to the Boss Stage Microgame at the end of each character’s respective route.
And herein lies the crux of a game so heavily reliant on its controls: when it’s working as it should, Move It! evokes the best moments of something like Smooth Moves or Touched in how creative yet easy-to-grasp the game can get. Especially during the latter-half of the single-player outing when button inputs are added to a certain pose. Or at its simplest and most indulgent: when the signature Nintendo IPs get thrown into the WarioWare blender once more. The problem is that the experience is a mixed bag – half the time it works, half the time it doesn’t. Bad enough that the latter case occurs throughout one’s time with no one segment being the primary culprit. Worse still that the aforementioned Boss Stage segments are so reliant on consistent accuracy to find a game completely failing to register one’s input is a major problem. Capped off by the fact the game has no means of recalibrating controls and you’re left with a situation where hoping the game doesn’t freak out is just as crucial a requirement as your own abilities.
There’s a consolation to this probable (and highly-likely) scenario of failing again and again. Essentially providing you with an opportunity to keep going after losing four lives by copying the pose shown on-screen before time runs out. Succeed and you’re allowed to resume with all lives restored. But while this may sound, on paper, like a smart inclusion from the developer’s side, it doesn’t take long to come to the realization that this feels more like an admittance of the baked-in problems with precise motion control inputs. An acknowledgment that players will in all likelihood fail through no fault of their own. Not least when games encompassing the Switch’s IR Sensor come into play. Having you enacting the required gesture – answering “four” with your fingers for example – and even seeing your response projected on-screen, only for the game to refuse registering said input and deem it a fail on your part.
Move It! is full of these tiny spots of miscommunication that add up to a growing thousand cuts-esque distrust in not just what, but how the game is conveying its crucial details. Situations that can have you even question what it is one is supposed to be doing due to how vaguely designed some Microgames are. Anyone who has played a WarioWare entry since its inception will know that you only have a few seconds to analyze, ponder over and eventually react to what’s on-screen. That the game adds an unnecessary layer of uncertainty to what has always been a case of quick reflexes – mental and in this case, physical alike – is one that can’t solely be blamed on its choice of input. Some, though not all, of that blame falls on the design.
At the very least, when it comes to the multiplayer side of Move It!, the worst you can say about some of these additions is that the ideas are sound, albeit the all-round execution can be a tad flawed. One instance requires two players. One wielding both Joy-Cons who must face away from the screen and replicate the actions of the other player without them. Essentially mirroring what the latter participant is doing. A relatively-novel, co-operative take on proceedings, but is let down by the fact that Microgames requiring instantaneous, lightning-fast reflexes may result in one or two unintentionally delayed responses. Other offerings are mere revisits of modes from prior games. Not bad by any stretch, but come off more like padding for an otherwise multiplayer aspect that, again, feels overshadowed by prior entries in the series.
Closing Comments:
As comical and outlandish it remains, WarioWare: Move It! and its admirable attempt to add legitimacy to the Switch’s motion controls result in an experience that’s both inconsistent and at times simply all too unclear to work out. When it works, the ideas posed and the involvement needed do manage to draw a smile at the absurdity one is voluntarily offering, let alone being presented on-screen. If nothing else, the egocentric, narcissistic idea of Wario plastering his face across many a Microgame visual is still as satisfyingly-dumb as it’s always been. But it’s a feature so obviously mutual to the series across the board and while this latest entry attempts to be both familiar to fans of the series' prior Wii outing, while unique all the same, the failings of its motion control-reliant inputs at times land WarioWare: Move It! in an awkward spot of feeling neither wholly enjoyable nor a complete flop. There’s fun to be had in parts – Microgames at their best when they’re both mechanically and visually a source of smiles. But in any way a worthy successor to Smooth Moves or even the handheld Touched all those years ago, this is not.
WarioWare: Move It!
WarioWare: Move It! is the 2023 entry in Nintendo’s long-running party game franchise. Packed with over 100+ microgames, Move It! blends comedy, frantic action, and multiplayer.
