A deservedly lost world: Retro Review of Wario World (Gamecube)

Wario, aside from being evil, appears to be a bit bipolar. His Warioware microgame collections created a new subgenre by boiling gameplay down to its essentials. Such games at Warioware Twisted juxtaposed simple, random tasks, from keeping a stack of dishes steady to picking a nose. They created a frenetic portable series that made your free time disappear. Unfortunately, his platforming adventures have not faired as well, especially compared to the colorful gallivanting of his red and blue doppelganger.

Wario World is an attempt to take on Mario at his own game, by dropping our mean-spirited protagonist into his own platforming game. Unfortunately, the attempt to recapture the magic of the adventures of Mario and Luigi here falls flat.
The story in Wario World is typical Nintendo fare. Within Wario’s treasure vaults a black diamond comes alive and starts mutating his riches into various nefarious animals. As we all know, you don’t mess with the big W’s money. So our dastardly avenger is on a quest to recollect his lost bounty.

Wario’s greed propels him across four worlds, consisting of two levels per world and a boss fight. With only 12 stages in total this game feels tiny, especially when compared to the classic NES and SNES Mario platformers. Even though those titles were released over a decade before Wario World they offer a greater scope and simply more gameplay. In order to progress through each level requires you must collect diamonds to unlock the door at the end of each stage. These diamonds are found in mini-stages, which are accessed via trapdoors found throughout the level. The number of diamonds needed to complete a level increases with each world, but are never too terribly difficult to collect. These mini-stages are some of the high points of the game. Their layout and challenge is greater than anything found in the regular levels. Also, in these smaller settings the camera can be manipulated to find the best angle using the C-stick. One of the few times in the game where it truly feels the 3-D is used to its full effect.

Warioworld is a 3-D platformer with a 2-D mentality. While Wario can move in three dimensions, e.g., into and out of the background, the camera is fixed, as in two dimensional plaformers. The only time his movement is unrestricted is in small battle arenas and the mini-stages mentioned above. The battle arenas are where the mustard-colored wonder wails on waves of dumb-as-dirt foes. The levels have an interestingly unhinged quality about them, from cemeteries guarded with animated doorknockers (an homage to Super Mario Bros. 2 perhaps?) to circuses complete with trampolines that bounce you around the level. Unfortunately, the three levels in each world are completely disconnected from each other. Why are levels with a jungle, snow and volcano themes all smashed into a single world? Since the days of Super Mario Bros. 2 Nintendo has always placed the player in exciting, coherent worlds. Compared to exploring the underground passages of Vanilla Dome or decoding the pyramids of Sand World, from the Super Mario Bros. series, Wario World’s themes feel cheap and disjointed.
Only one of the levels really stood out, Mirror Mansion. At certain points within the stage you cannot directly see your character. This forces you to use the mirrors situated throughout the mansion to maneuver Wario around avoiding hazards and attacking enemies. The downside to Mirror Mansion is that it is one of the last levels and by the time you reach it you’ll have already been thoroughly unimpressed by the preceding adventure.

The amount of actions Wario can perform is tiny, leaving you repeating the same moves over and over. Jumping and dashing are his primary means of navigating the levels. You attack opponents with punches, butt stomps and throwing enemies into each other. The only advanced maneuvers in Wario’s arsenal are grabbing an enemy and piledriving or airplane spinning them. These tactics help you move past the games simplistic puzzles, such as spinning a switch to open a door or raising a platform. Unfortunately, there is little reward for taking down enemies and in nearly all situations you are better off ignoring or running past them. A general lack of challenge pervades the entire game. You begin with four hearts, allowing you to be hit eight times before you hit the game over screen. The number of hearts you have can be increased, by collecting various items in a stage. However, this is unnecessary as most enemies clearly telegraph their attacks and missing a seemingly critical jump only sends you to dungeon-esque level where you can only lose coins. Though this will hardly be a concern as every enemy doles out a healthy fountain of currency. This further minimizes the game’s challenge as you can spend your cash to continue if you hit a game over screen. You can even continue in the midst of boss fights, with your adversary retaining all the damage you’ve already dealt. This system is ripe for exploitation, allowing you to practically “credit feed” your way through the game.

Each level ends with boss fight against an adversary that is themed to the level, e.g., a creepy clown riding atop a giant ball along a tightrope accompanies the circus level. This initially intrigued me. I hoped to find a challenge in the bosses that is sorely lacking from the standard enemies. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that nearly all of these encounters can be overcome using the same strategy. First, dodge the boss’ attack and get behind them. Second, unleash a fury of punches until they are dizzy. Finally, grab them and throw them off the platform. Some bosses attempt to change things up, e.g., a magician with an eerie smile forces you to play a cup and ball game to attack him. Despite the attempt at variety, Wario’s limited moveset makes all these fights play very similar to one another.

Overall, if you are tired of playing as Mario, aka Mr. Goodie Two Shoes, and want to indulge your inner greedy misanthrope there are better Wario adventures. His most recent escapade, Warioland Shake It! remains a gorgeous, if somewhat standard 2-D platformer, with a few interesting ideas. The most innovative feature is forcing you to run back to the beginning of each stage with the bag of money you collected, dodging enemies and pitfalls along the way. This proves once again even with past missteps, like Wario World, you can’t keep a bad guy down.

A breath of fresh air with a beat: Review of DJ Hero (PS3)

Chances are if you’ve been to a party in the last five years you have jammed on a plastic axe, pounded out a frenetic beat on a drum kit or belted your favorite karaoke jam via either Guitar Hero or Rock Band. And while both series have proved to be wildly popular and amazingly fun games to play with friends, they have also continuously retread the same ground. The prolific creation of sequels and spin offs has left the once dynamic music genera feeling stale. Surprisingly, the savior of music games will not be the classic and contemporary rock hits that brought it to prominence, but the hip-hop and dance beats of DJ Hero.

DJ Hero follows many of the same designs of earlier games, a series of color coded notes roll down a musical “highway” prompting you to tap buttons in time with the beat. However, this time you’re not absent-mindedly strumming along to an old classic rock standard, you are actively scratching, rewinding and cross-fading two songs into a single mix. The tracks in DJ Hero cull the best of 70s pop, early 90s dance and modern hip-hop in order to blend them together into arrangements that will have you leaving the game on just to enjoy the music. The set list of DJ Hero has a much higher quality-to-crap ratio then other games in the genera, assuming you have at least some interest in hip-hop and dance music. While DJ Hero may appear to be solely targeted to club kids and mix tape fanatics if you find your head bobbing to the latest Jay-Z single or Daft Punk mash up you will find a lot to like here.

DJ Hero introduces a new plastic peripheral into your life, the turntable. Its substantial weight and responsive platter is counterbalanced against the temperamental crossfader, resulting in an accessory that works for now, but will surely be improved upon with future iterations. Unfortunately, using the turntable is not as intuitive as the plastic guitars that preceded it, your left and right hand have to be decoupled and doing very different things in order for you to achieve success. However, as with all music games, practice makes perfect; mixes that initially required total concentration can be breezed through easily once you’ve invested a little more time. The learning curve is gentle and each difficulty level adds new components and actions to perform. The difference is so substantial that playing the same mix on two different difficulties feels like two distinct tracks.

While DJ Hero is rewarding overall, one key omission really stands out, a lack of DLC. Only a handful of new mixes have been made available to expand your experience. The numerous tracks on the disc provide a lot of content to work through, but the heart and soul of music games is a continuous supply of new content to keep you coming back for more. This keeps DJ Hero from being the new musical obsession that I want it to be.

Instead of being a glorified track pack, DJ Hero provides an experience that is simultaneously new and exciting while retaining enough vestiges of the genera to feel familiar to veterans. Even if you have played every version of Guitar Hero and can 100% all the tracks in Rock Band give DJ Hero a spin to realize that the future of the music game is in innovation, not iteration.