Part 1 can be read here.
Hello and welcome to this continuation of my review of WarioWare: Touched! Gotta get all the bad puns out of the way immediately: Although it's the point, there's nothing touching about the game. Zing! It doesn't tap into my emotions. Re-zing! It's like there's a screen between me and them. Though I gotta admit, those characters sure don't lack style-us! Re-zing-a-ding!
Hello and welcome to this continuation of my review of WarioWare: Touched! Gotta get all the bad puns out of the way immediately: Although it's the point, there's nothing touching about the game. Zing! It doesn't tap into my emotions. Re-zing! It's like there's a screen between me and them. Though I gotta admit, those characters sure don't lack style-us! Re-zing-a-ding!
Okay,
enough with the stupid humor, now let's go back to looking at each
character's stage in this game. Who's next... Okay, I completed James
T.'s stage, so that means... Oh yeah! It's Mike's turn! What, you
don't know Mike? It's the most useless robot maid ever... But the best
karaoke singer of all Diamond City!
He's
Dr. Crygor's most recent invention (after the “matter transcreator
apple thingy stuff word salad whatever”). He was created to be the
handyman in the lab, but the poor robot has talent mostly in karaoke,
so he doesn't like his work too much. At every given occasion, he
blasts through the ceiling to go sing karaoke among the aliens. No,
really. All minigames in his stage require that you blow into the
Nintendo DS's microphone. The Mic. If you can't do that for too long,
that stage could make you dizzy. Anyway, after Mike is done
karaoke-ing with the bunny aliens, Dr. Crygor arrives and takes him
back home. Then, the two try a duet.... but Dr. Crygor's singing is
absolutely horrible. I know what it's like. I'd say that Mike's stage
blows, but... that's not even the case, it's just as fun as
the others. Maybe not breathtaking, just a bit tiring, but
still fun.
"My singing rocks, your singing sucks! How did Crygor put that in me if he sings like a screaming goat?" |
Wow, those 8-bit graphics are great! But on a GameCube... It's kinda less impressive. |
Next
is 9-Volt, the little Nintendo fanboy. His microgames are all based
on retro Nintendo games. He has been around since the beginning. So,
what's his plot? Take a wild guess. Here it is: A new video game
comes out, so 9-Volt and his overgrown pal 18-Volt go buy it. They
head back to 9-Volt's house, where they play the game for many hours.
After playing, 9-Volt goes to his turntables and the microgames
start. They play all night and fall asleep in the game room. When
they wake up, they realize they're late for school and hurry out.
...That's it. 9-Volt might be a big Nintendo geek, there's very
little else for his character, so I personally find him a bit bland. Other than that, he's fine, I guess, if you are a Nintendo geek
too...
By the way, this is only halfway through Wario-Man's boss stage. Yes, it's a nose. |
Oh
yeah, by the way, when you beat 9-Volt's stage, Wario's face on the
main screen turns blue. Huh... that's not normal. When you select his
stage, you see a whole new cutscene! Wario is sick in bed, and feels
“awful”. ...Isn't he always awful? Anyway, he goes to the fridge
and takes out a garlic that looks really odd. He still eats it, which
makes him feel better... and turns him into his superhuman
counterpart, Wario-Man! Well, Wario clearly didn't get the memo that
a superhero name should NOT contain the name of his secret identity.
Superman wouldn't call himself Clark Kent-Man, right? So, Wario-Man's
stage begins. All the minigames in his stage feature Wario in a way
or another. What an egocentric. Ah, so THAT'S what was missing from
Wario's stage at the beginning! Anyway, the stage begins at that point. Once fifteen microgames have been beaten, Wario-Man shows how un-powerful he is
by trying to stop a train and failing miserably.
Then,
we get reports that WarioWare Touched! Is a success with the
Diamond City population. This story ends where it began: During that
time, Wario falls right into the manhole his GBA SP fell in at the
beginning. He comes out, back in his pajamas, still sick. The Sewer
Guru comes out and whacks him with his cane, then waves goodbye to
us. The end.
"Fear my un-manly pink pajamas!" |
Main screen at the end. |
This is gonna be hard, so bear with me. |
Oh,
but wait, there's more! The WarioWare series is famous for
having a lot of post-Story Mode stuff! Once Wario-Man's stage is
beaten, you can go to it anytime by feeding the weird garlic to Wario
on the main screen. You also get access to the first Bear Stage.
What's a Bear Stage? It's like Jamie and James T.'s stages, except
they contain every single microgame from the nine stages. The
difficulty for those bonus stages comes from the fact that it picks among all the microgames you've unlocked (and there's 181 in
total), so you must be prepared to face anything; you never know
what's gonna come next. First is the Pink Bear, which starts with
microgames on their first difficulty and then progresses like a regular stage; then it's White Bear, for which
you have only ONE life, and the microgames start on second
difficulty; Last but not least, Yellow Bear has microgames on first difficulty that begin
at a very fast speed, so you have to think quickly.
Also,
when you unlock every single microgame, you earn Pyoro T., from the
series-within-a-series Pyoro. The little bird has been in the first
game, then in Twisted! and in Touched!. It's the big reward for
unlocking all microgames. And it's also always a lot of fun.
Years later, the Angry Birds would show up. Coincidence? |
However,
unlocking all microgames is a piece of cake compared to the real
final task in this game. You're not gonna believe it. It's been
another staple of the series since the beginning, and it's always
been the longest thing to do. It's another fun part, but it's also
unnerving and sometimes kind of a pain to complete, because it can
and will keep you busy for days. You have to beat a high score on
EVERY. SINGLE. MICROGAME. That means over 180 microgames for which
you must beat the high score. Just imagine the time it takes. Only once
you've completed this task do you earn the final toy for your
collection.
And
boy do you need some dedication to get there. If you take about three
minutes per microgame, it still means about nine hours. Nine
hours playing microgames! Holy crud! And yes, that includes the boss
microgames, which are often very long. When you get all of a
character's microgames, a silver crown appears on their head on the
Album Menu. When you beat the high score for all games in a
character's album, that character's crown turns golden.
By the way, here's one of the toys: A videoclip!
It's
also very easy to unlock all the microgames, as you unlock one as
soon as you see it in a stage. Now, seeing them is another matter
entirely, as they're always selected at random and, therefore, you
might have to play each stage a few times before you unlock all of
that stage's microgames. Again, from personal experience, reaching 50
on each stage the second time you play is usually a high enough
number that you've seen all the microgames once. Or at least there
won't be many left to find. Trying to reach 50 on each stage should
keep you occupied for a few hours... but trying to beat the high
score on every microgame takes the cake. This is the long task. And
trust me, it takes many hours.
And
that's it. Do I recommend this game? Oh yeah, for the whole family.
It can get challenging enough for expert players and it's a nice
introduction to the Nintendo DS for the non-gamers. It's definitely
one I recommend, both for this reason, but also for the colorful characters,
the comedy and the ideas for those simple, simple games. Buy it, play
it, enjoy it.
And
I swear I'll someday cover the other WarioWare game for the Nintendo
DS: Warioware Do It Yourself, which I like even more than this one.
And this Friday... I'll be participating in a hunting game! No
worries, I'm not killing any real animals. But it's still gonna get
violent. Okay, bye!
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