WarioWare: Get It Together! (Part 2)

Continuing from Part 1… and we’re already at the (not quite) final stage! No time to waste, let’s get to it.

The missing folks

Oh, this boss is so cool. The glitchy effects before
the fight were really cool, too.

"Win!"

Wario's “Anything Goes” stage, the classic closer of the main Story Mode (with all microgames therein involving him in some way) is the one most bugged out. The glitches have even taken over the space between games! The greedy developer jumps in with a few friends. This stage is the longest yet, but also, between microgames, you have to fight the boss bug in the background. This is one of the most unique ideas I’ve seen in WarioWare, and it’s brilliant. Still, at the end of the usual number of microgames, we have won, and we kick the final bug out. Or… do we?

It's the first time that the "space between games"
serves a real purpose and it's amazing.

Woo, the crew's all reunited! ...Or is it?

After a little bit of deliberation, Wario realizes that he likes the fresh spin this bug adds to his stage, so he agrees to let it stay in this area. Still unsure how to leave, though, the gang soon meets the Supreme Developer. This godly being bearing Wario’s nose admits to being the one who pulled the crew into the game to clear out the bugs. He lets them leave, but welcomes them to return anytime to play some more.

When they have returned to their world, the developers wonder what exactly caused those glitches. Some ancient artefact? Messing with the wrong person? Nah. Just Wario being a mighty sloppy dev as usual. Wario's angry employees chase him around the room. Must be a Wednesday at the office.

However, Wario realizes there are people missing still – so a few devs must still be trapped! The whole crew goes back in and meets the Supreme Developer again, who informs them that something else is out there and has captured them… The group has to face the next stages, all of which are classic remixes. One with all of the microgames at random; one with all of the microgames starting on the third difficulty; and a last one with the full remix, but only one life. Through this, we rescue…

Spider-Mantis.

Red, Ashley's demon, who flies at a decent speed around the screen, and you have full control of his flight. His attack is to toss a bomb down towards the ground; the bomb has decent power and its explosion can knock things away. Overall a great character solely limited by his direction of attack.

Master Mantis who, much like Cricket, is a master jumper. He can jump all the way to the ceiling. There’s a trick, though; if he reaches a ceiling (so the top of the screen or an item in the way), he’ll start walking on it upside down. You have full control of how he walks and jumps, but the ceiling-walk element can trip you up while solving a couple of tricky microgames.

Considering Lulu hated Wario's guts in WarioWare
Gold, it's weird to see her having joined the crew.
This microgame, especially, looks like one she'd
really despise.

Lulu, the new recruit from WarioWare Gold, also has free movement around the screen. Two details: Her walking speed is slow, but her jump is fast, so she works best when jumping. Her ribbon doubles as a propeller, allowing her to flutter when she comes back down. By pressing Down while she’s in midair, she does a ground pound, a moderately powerful attack. She’s not a bad character to use at all, just a bit weird when it comes to speed.

In each of these three stages, the crew found a golden item. Dr. Crygor thinks these can be put together to unlock a secret, but cannot quite figure it out himself, so he calls his granddaughter Penny for help. The young genius wasn’t at the office; she was at the lab, designing a water nozzle powerful enough to allow flight, like a jetpack. Upon receiving the call, Penny jumps in with her new contraption, and gets an entire stage all to herself.

No need to turn on the faucet, she could have
washed the hands by herself.

Penny Crygor is one of the trickiest characters to use. Not the worst, but until you master her wacky controls, she’ll be a pain, especially when she pops up at random. Pressing A switches her between two modes: In the first mode, you control the direction of her nozzle, and she is propelled in the opposite direction. Steer very carefully, as she’s also subject to gravity. In the second mode, she remains in one place, hovering, and still shoots her water cannon all around. Obviously, both modes have their use, but can still be a major headache if you’re not accustomed to her. Her nozzle’s rate of fire is constant, and she’s shooting it fast, so she’s a good fit for microgames that involve hitting targets repeatedly. The game genuinely considers her projectile to be water, so she can cut the knot in water-based microgames by shooting it herself. (Examples: Sending water in a dog's mouth, watering a plant, cleaning shaving cream off a face, etc.).

A final boss fought with microgames?
I like this.

Penny assembles the items into a watering can, which she uses to sprout a beanstalk that grows giant. Up the beanstalk, Wario and his crew meet the weird thing that was causing chaos… and defeat it in a proper boss battle, where every “microgame” is a combat round involving one of the devs dealing a blow to the boss’s eyes. It’s a creative fight that ends with Wario taking the battle to the skies against what remains of the creature, eventually knocking away its chocolate shell and revealing it to be… Pyoro, who has (somehow!) snuck into the game.

He's like all the worst traits in a single annoyance!
Go away, you're no Yoshi!

Pyoro is the last playable character we unlock. He has decent walking speed on the ground, but he cannot jump at all; so, to reach high places, he must aim at floating rings, the same way 18-Volt and 9-Volt do. The gimmicky catch? Like all the Pyoro games in previous entries of the franchise, the bird can only shoot his tongue diagonally. The tongue will bounce off walls till it has reached maximum length. You must aim VERY carefully to hit your target, and sometimes the microgame’s timer is too short to let you try multiple times. I HATE Pyoro, he sucks in most games, and there’s little redeemable here. 9-Volt is worse, but at least I like the character; Pyoro doesn’t even get that honor.

Prezzies and missions

Lots of previous WarioWare games had a special area in which you could gather collectibles, usually toys. Things are different this time. After unlocking all the devs, the Crew section of the main menu opens two new areas. One goes over your stats with each character (number of microgames played, percentage won, etc.). The other is the Emporium. Although it’s not a part of them, the golden watering can is a good example of these postgame rewards known as the Prezzies.

So many items to find still.

There’s a hundred Prezzies classified into five levels of rarity. You will not get Prezzies from completing achievements or stages, which in my opinion is a bit of a missed opportunity. Instead, you buy them with the Wario Coins obtained when you finish a stage, when you beat a microgame’s passing score in the Play-O-Pedia where all of the microgames are catalogued, when you complete a mission and in the Wario Cup.

The Wario Coins are used in the Emporium, which itself has three areas. In the first, a selection of five Prezzies that you can buy right there,, changing every two hours. The second features two gacha-style “Cluckade” machines; the first one costs 100 coins per Prezzy and picks from all five rarities, while the other costs 500 per Prezzy and picks from the three highest rarities.

Will you get one of the ultra-rare 5-star items?
Probably not, probability is awful.

Let's give them so many gifts they won't
know what to do with them!

You give these Prezzies to the 20 playable characters. Prezzies have an Experience value based on their rarity and on how much the character likes the item. Characters’ item preferences are also split into five categories, from “I’ll take it but I kinda hate it” to “Holy crap you got me the thing I love most in the universe”. These Prezzies, therefore, increase each character’s level, which is represented by a rank going from “Free Spirit” to “Head Honcho” at Level 15 all the way to “Legendary Entity” at Level 30.

That one's easy. Some others are devilish.

The quickest way to earn Wario Coins is the Achievements/Missions, a whopping 270 of them. If you’re the completionist type, you're gonna be busy. The missions are divided in four categories. "General" involves the two plot-based missions (beat the bugs, and beat Pyoro), one mission for unlocking the microgames in every category, and missions for trying out the modes from the Variety Pack and completing challenges in the Wario Cup (I’ll explain those in a bit). The "Score" category has achievements for hitting a certain score in each stage, first with 3 to 5 characters, then with all characters; get the passing score in all microgames; get a specific score or higher in a specific microgame using a specific character who is usually a bad fit for it; hit some tough scores in the Variety Pack solo modes; and earn cups in the Wario Cup.

The "Game" section mostly involves quests where you must do something very specific in one microgame. Some require a precise character, others don’t. You can get some of these just by playing normally, but some are too tricky to be obtained by sheer luck. (My copy of the game is played in French, and sometimes the mission descriptions leave out important details in the translation… Gaah!) Last but not least, the "Crew" missions mostly involve raising a character to Level 15, then to Level 30, with a few extras.

Variety and Cups

Get a friend to play with or against!

The Variety Pack is a bunch of mini-games you can play on your own or with friends. True to its name, WarioWare: Get It Together encourages multiplayer in its base game (the stages and microgames) as well as these. Very few mini-games here are single-player, most require two or more. Notable modes include:

-Daily Grind, a platformer about collecting contracts and switching between characters;

-Friendless Battle, a fight between the character you pick and an endless stream of fighters;

-A short and sweet volleyball game;

-A couple of modes about beating microgames and trying to distract or outdo each other;

-And a Super Smash Bros.-inspired mode to let the devs duke it out. Damn, I’d buy a full WarioWare game like this in a heartbeat.

How could you NOT want a full version of this?

The final mode unlocked once all the characters are available is the Wario Cup. 52 challenges, one unlocked every week. Each challenge is different; sometimes you can choose your characters, other times not (ex. An entire set played only as 9- and 18-Volt). On some occasions, you’ll be playing a character as two clones on the screen (ex. Two Pyoros). Sometimes the microgames will be in a set order; or they’ll pick from a pool of themed entries (ex. Microgames that require smarts for an IQ-based challenge).

Two Pyoros means double the headache.
Thanks to UTAGaming for the Wario Cup videos.

Every challenge comes with Bronze, Silver and Gold trophies to unlock by reaching a certain score threshold. One interesting aspect here is that every playable dev gives you a different amount of points based on how easy or hard they are to use. Characters like Orbulon or Ashley give less points, while 9-Volt or Pyoro give more. Also notable is that this base score for a character can be increased by boosting that character’s level in the Crew section, by giving them Prezzies. So if you’re missing just a few points, maybe you can manage by liberal application of gifts.

What makes this final mode disappointing is that you cannot unlock challenges any faster; it’s one per week, that’s it. I would prefer if there was some way to unlock them more quickly; as an example, if you unlocked a new one after getting the gold trophy in the previous one.

Final words

WarioWare: Get It Together is everything we expect from the franchise: It’s quirky, fast-paced fun with a cast of colorful folks that gets surprisingly challenging down the line. Its gameplay is something we don’t really see anywhere else, a truly unique idea that still feels the need to reinvent itself from an entry to the next. This time is no exception, and giving the WarioWare characters centerstage for once may be one of their best ideas. For years we’ve had these characters and they’re playable, at last!

Even the worst characters are good in some
scenarios.

Sure, we have the usual formula of about 200-ish microgames to play through, split by genre and experienced in packs that get faster and harder over time – no change there. The inclusion of these 20 devs who have different skill sets and attack options makes for a fresh challenge every time. That said, some devs are better than others, and some are awful to use. When you must play with all characters to clear achievements, you’re guaranteed to be forced to play some microgames with characters who are a horrible fit for them. Still, it’s impressive that all microgames were created in such a way as to be beatable by every character, and instances where a microgame/dev combo is nigh-impossible are extremely rare. (Side-note, I am still disappointed that Ana and Spitz are tossed to the side, with only Kat and Dribble showing up when you want to use the whole group.)

The further into the game you get, the trickier
some of the microgame requests get.

The entire Story Mode as well as the collection of microgames can be played with a friend, while Variety offers options for up to four players. I do appreciate the attempt at including several multiplayer options here, though I feel the game would have benefited from allowing remote play. The base game is short, but the achievements lengthen the experience significantly if you choose to go through them. Between the basic collection goals, the scoring tasks that can be quite daunting, and the character-based requests, you can count over ten times the hours it takes to beat the story.

Some really cool twists in the formula, as well.

All this, of course, wrapped in a very cool art style with chibi characters in tiny games that can vary wildly in look, and accompanied by music that’s excellent throughout. Overall, I consider this a solid entry in the franchise and I hope WarioWare keeps going as strongly over the next years, including with the upcoming game Move It!, which is basically a new Smooth Moves adapted for the Switch’s double-remote motion controls. Can’t say whether I’ll buy it, but I do hope it does well. In the meantime, I do recommend Get It Together!, it’s worth it.

Expect more reviews soon!