Anyway,
this is one of the funniest video game series, but also one of the weirdest. It
might not be Rabbids-level of silly, but it can get very close to it.
The WarioWare series has one of the most innovative concepts I've seen
on the side of Nintendo. Sure, after seven games it's lost of its
novelty, but it's still creative enough. It remains fun for a long while.
What
are microgames? It's the WarioWare formula. Each character in the
series is a developer at WarioWare, located in Diamond City. Wario's
the greedy boss, everyone else is either a comic relief, has another
job or is just so bizarre that he/she fits in with the rest of the
gang. Every character creates about twenty microgames, and Wario sells them. The franchise started with WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!
On the Game Boy Advance. Today's game is the fourth one released in
the franchise. WarioWare Touched! features all the things you
can do with a Nintendo DS. It's very fun to play.
You
are probably wondering how exactly I'll review this game. I mean,
each character has a short storyline with a series of microgames
in-between, and that's all! Well, there's an intro and a conclusion,
so that does give it a bit of a plot, even if it's small. Let's not
waste any time: This thing is not a microgame, so there's a lot to
talk about!
The video game review blog Planned All Along has reached a new milestone on May 26th, 2014, around 8:00 PM.
It has officially reached 20,000 visits!
No, really, look!
I would like to thank everyone who helped reach this milestone, including the three Google+ communities where I post a link to every article; the That Guy With The Glasses forum and the Brawl In The Family forum; the few from the ComicFury forum who came to read my blog; my Facebook friends who somehow cared enough to take a look once in a while; and everyone else who stumbled upon this blog while doing a search on Google.
The blog's first anniversary will be on July 19th. On that day, and on the weeks preceding and following it, I will publish a five-part review that will cover a fan favorite game. Not saying which one, but if you can see the results of the poll, you can guess what it will be.
Also on July 19th, the blog will be completely redesigned and ameliorated. Tired of seeing this purple color on the background? I was thinking about changing it too! For this, I've been in contact with user LeRenardRoux from ComicFury (by the way, go check her comic out; it's called The Wolf at Weston Court, and it's beautifully drawn. It also got a spin-off). She did a few things for this blog, including a new background image.
...Among other things. What else did she do? What will be used in the re-design in July? Will the title also change? What else will be added? Will I run out of question marks?
Keep coming back to Planned All Along on the next months, and you'll see some of these questions finally answered!
Read Part 1 here. Whoa!
I never thought I'd need two parts for this review! Well, it happens
sometimes. I have so much to say that I get carried away, I put more
details, I put in an analysis or my two cents... and before I know
it, the review isn't 2,000 words long, it's 4,000. Well, gotta live
with that. Where was I now... Oh, right! I was now at describing how
the gameplay goes!
For
starters, there's two things added to Cartoon Network Racing that are
NOT in Mario Kart: Coins and Stars.
No,
not those. And yes, technically there IS a Star in Mario Kart and
there used to be coins, but... it's not the same things.
Nope, not like the ones in the skies either.
There
is one Coin hidden on each of the 16 tracks in CNR; its value
increases with the speed of the Cup you're currently playing. Those
are sometimes well-hidden or put in places where you would have
problems getting to them without getting a few places back in the
race. However, they prove to be a very good source of income for the
game's shop. I'll discuss this a little later. The other change is
the Stars. Under the number of laps you've completed, there's bar
that is empty at the beginning of each race. When you collect a Star
(there's 5 on every racetrack; some are well-hidden), the bar fills
up a bit. If an opponent hits a trap you've set up or you attack an
opponent successfully, it also fills up a bit, less than with a Star.
When it's full, you gain access to that character's ability! Each
character has a special ability, and it's named differently for each
one, though the effects are often similar. Some will gain a constant
speed boost until the bar is empty again; others will be able to
attack the other racers around them a few times. Most of the time,
the superpower is a reference to the series the character came from.
As an example, Bubbles of PPG fame can use a sonic scream to hit her
surrounding opponents. Now that's a pretty damn cool idea. What's
more, the CPU racers cannot use those abilities, so you have an
advantage. Those two gameplay mechanics are very cool, and I'm happy
that they're in the game.
So,
after you've completed three laps in a course, your performance is
given a score, 10 if you arrived in first place. And it goes on for
four courses, on a maximum of 40 points. At the end, if your
character arrived in first, second or third place, he appears on a
podium, and the next Cup is unlocked. But if you ever played a racing
game, you knew all that. Also, after you've completed a cup, you
unlock its four courses in a Time Trial Mode, in the speed that
you've beaten the Cup in (Normal, Souped-Up, Soupered-Up,
Flipped-Out). You also have to beat the best time on every course,
meaning you have to do each course four times, with progressively
faster karts, and with a time that becomes a little harder to beat
for each one.
What
Cartoon Network Racing lacks, however, is a complete mode for those
who want to play with others who don't own the cartridge. It's
possible for those who have the cartridge to pick their character and
pick a course to play on; but if you play over wireless communication
with other players who don't have the game, there is only one race
track to play on, Dexter's Laboratory to be precise. Also, I should
mention that there's no Battle Mode at all in this, which means you
can race against your friends, but there's no additional mini-games
like the balloons thing from Mario Kart.
A little race down Dexter's lab, anyone?
But
what's fun with this game is that it's filled with nostalgia. It
represents each one of the six series, and you can try to guess which
series each course comes from, and sometimes what the reference might
be (since the courses are filled with hazards that may reference the
cartoon series the course is based on). Again... *sigh* like Mario
Kart DS. Dammit!
However,
this game works a little different once you unlock the Souped-Up
speed. You see, there's a Shop in the game, and when you finish a
course, you get an amount of coins. If you want to use one of the
game's racers in the Souped-Up speed, you have to buy an Upgrade for it in
the shop. This means you have to spend a bit of in-game money if you
want to get access to that character on the harder difficulty
settings. That's kind of an innovative idea, as I don't remember any other
racing game that did this. The cost is not very high, so you can access the racers in the next difficulty fairly easily. You need to do the same once you unlock the Soupered-Up
difficulty; but again, the cost isn't too high and you'll be able to
pay that upgrade for almost all the unlocked characters.
Of course, they are but distractions from the
racing games and your aching thumbs.
Also
in the shop, you can unlock alternate themes for the main menu
(instead of being stuck with a yellow-orange-ish theme, you can also
have a blue and a purple one), as well as two mini-games and three
cartoons. Wait, what? Mini-games in this racing game? Eeyup! The first
one you unlock is also my favorite: Sketchbook. It's a mini-game in
which you have to re-draw over the black lines of the characters,
using the stylus. Each time you fill 75% of the grey zones, you beat
that “sketch” and you get a score based on the remaining time. Do
that until you finally lose, which could be never if you get realy
good at it. I love this mini-game, it really got me hooked the first
time I played this game. It's an awesome game. The only problem is
that there's only 20 different sketches, one for each playable
character, all from the start. Which means that it spoils all the characters that can be
unlocked in the game. Whoops. The second mini-game is, sadly, nowhere
as good; it's curling with the original nine karts. Yeah, just that.
Still, the Sketchbook one is great and it's a nice addition to the
game.
The
other thing you can unlock is three six-minute cartoons taken from
those old Cartoon Network shows. The first one is “Dexter's Rival”,
the one where Dexter meets Mandark for the first time and realizes
he's better than him in every way; Mandark's only weakness being his
crush on Dee Dee... The second one, “Telephonies”, is about the
Gangreen Gang getting a hold of the Mayor's PPG-phone and sending the
Powerpuff Girls on lots of quests and attacks on villains who were
doing nothing wrong at the time. It's pretty darn funny. The last
one, “Black Sheep of the Family”-
No,
not this one. This one is a cartoon from Cow and Chicken, and it
involves the two main characters welcoming their odd long-lost
cousin, the black sheep of the family, into their house. He saves
them from a crazy Red Guy by knitting him some pants out of his own wool, so I guess that makes him a friend.
Whatever. Those three cartoons are pretty fun, a nice thing to unlock
in this. However, the sound might be a little low, even with
earphones. It often makes the dialogue a little hard to hear. That's
a little downside.
Eternal protection? Sign me in!
Last
novelty in CNR: Cheat codes. Yep, if you look for this DS game on
Internet, you can find a few cheat codes that will be activated
when you input them in place of your player name in the Options menu. The codes range from “unlocking
everything” to “seeing the races at bird's view” (which, by the
way, make it a little harder); one grants the player unlimited
superpower energy, which means you can use it to see every
character's superpower. However, each one of these codes also
disables the game's saving feature, so you cannot do any progress as
long as the code is working. It can help you at first, but you have
to remove the code if you want the save feature to work again.
Yep, some calm courses. Like in that other series
of racing games. The more popular one.
Last
thing, here's the sixteen courses. See if some of them remind you of
a show or another; some are obvious, others aren't as much. Just try,
for the Hell of it: Aron City Speedway, Death Rally, Desert Island
Dash, Cow and Chicken's Track and Field (this one should be obvious),
Natural Parkway, Dexter's Laboratory (obvious too), Snow Sunday
Drive, Townsville Raceway, Middle of Nowhere, Wild West Backlot, Evil
Glade, Strange Alien Race, Cross Townsville Traffic, Mount Rush Much
More, Outer Space Chase (that one is a rip-off of the Rainbow Roads,
BTW), and Mandark's Laboratory.
Aaaand...
that's finally all I had to say about this. A long review, wasn't it?
I didn't think it would be that long myself. Maybe I had a lot to
say... and maybe it's the comparison with Mario Kart that made it so
long. Well, at least I'm gonna spend less time talking about Mario
Kart next time! Yeah...
Anyway,
my verdict is that YES, this game took a lot of inspiration from the
Mario Kart series. I can't hide it, the signs are obvious. Cups with
funny names, each with four courses; three speeds and a mirror mode;
a time trial mode; a multiplayer option; Items that are partly based
on those from Mario Kart; special karts for each character; the
ability to use a Rocket Start and to slipstream from behind an
opponent racer; tons of references; a dynamic trophy handover. It's
like this game was too heavily based on the series, the similarities
are too obvious. That's a shame, because the creative stuff is also cool. I mean, nothing to make it an awesome game, but an enjoyable
one nonetheless. But some people will immediately go for the
resemblances with Mario Kart, calling it a cheap knock-off, a parody,
a weak attempt at copying it.
Mandark's Lab is a mix of
Hell and technology. Badass.
But
I think there's enough differences to make this game worth giving a
try, even if only a little. I mean, for starters, it's very cool that
you can control twenty different characters. Among the 16 race tracks, many are not
quite as detailed as the ones in Mario Kart DS, but some are
very creative. I DARE you to race in Mandark's Laboratory” and not
feel awesome. It's like a technological Hell with black and orange
colors everywhere, and then spinning parts and electric zappers...
Holy wow, this is pretty cool stuff right there.
I
think adding the two mini-games was a good idea (or, the Sketchbook
one, at least), and it's also fun to have access to three cartoons.
Though, to tell the truth, I think the three cartoons may be partly
to blame for having less stuff in the game. I'm not a file size
expert, but about 22 minutes of cartoons take a lot of data space, so
maybe that's why the game isn't as filled as we could have had.
A cow in a baby-buggy becomes Super
by putting on pajamas and keeping the
same vehicle. ...I've learned never to
question superhero origins.
Other
than that, the stylized karts are cool, and I'd even dare say that
some are creative, compared to all the karts in Mario Kart DS
that at least make an effort to all look like cars. I mean, Muriel is
driving her freaking armchair. How cool is that? It's that sense of
over-the-top silly that seems to be missing from Mario Kart. I also
like the changes to the formula that were made in CNR: Having to pay
to gain access to your character in the later speeds of the game, the
Star and superpower system, and the collectible coins. You'll usually
be able to completely fill a character's superpower bar only once
during a race, but it's awesome enough and can really help you get
ahead. The superpowers themselves are often good references to the
series; Cow from Cow and Chicken temporarily goes into Supercow Mode,
as an example. It's also very cool that you can use cheat codes, even
if they disable the save feature.
Sure,
Cartoon Network Racing feels like a Mario Kart clone that didn't get
everything right, but what it added is just good enough to make it
worth trying. I totally understand all the complaints that go that
way: I mean, I discussed each and every one of them in this article.
Yet, by the end, I can't help but get enjoyment from this game, more
than I've ever had with Mario Kart DS. (And before you ask, YES, the powersliding played a part in this decision.)
There.
I hope you enjoyed this review of Cartoon Network Racing, and...
seriously, I hope I will not have to review any Mario Kart game in
the near future. Give me a year, okay? I might be able to do that in
about twelve months. Tune in this Friday for another review, as
usual!
...And
hopefully I won't have to make any comparisons this time around!
Raise
your hand if you grew up with Cartoon Network.
…Sorry, I don't see you. If you could see me, though, you'd have noticed I didn't raise my hand. Thing is, I didn't technically grow up with Cartoon Network as a kid; I grew up with its Canadian counterpart, Teletoon, which aired a lot of Cartoon Network series back in the day. So yeah, it was very similar. Since then, Teletoon started making its own series and exporting them... to Cartoon Network. There's a bit of irony here, don't you think? Anyway, the game I'm reviewing today is for those who feel nostalgia for the early cartoons of this channel. Cartoon Network, not Teletoon.
Cartoon Network Racing DS should remind you of another series. I mean, it's obvious that I'll have to compare Cartoon
Network Racing to Mario Kart. And I'll go a step further. I'll use
Mario Kart DS to make this comparison. Same portable
console, that should be fair. Many reviews say that the resemblances are really obvious; that's what we'll see today.
Seeing as this is Part 4 of a very long review, I strongly suggest you go read the preceding three parts if you haven't yet: Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here. Hello
again? Yeah, still me. Still rambling on about a certain series and a
video game adaptation that was made for it. Don't worry, it ends
today. I've been re-reading what I wrote in the past two weeks and I
came to a stunning realization: I know way too much about fanfiction.
Okay, I've read a lot, I've also written quite a few – which is
probably why I make fun of it so much; self-deprecation FTW! – but
I'm also very able to write original stuff. And Heck, all my writing
tips so far are about the don'ts of fanfic writing, which are just one step below the don'ts of real story writing. Okay, so... where
was I... Oh, right! The finale!
This
is gonna be epic. I mean, really epic. Like, so freaking totally epic
that you won't believe it. You'll really see how far a card game can
go. That is, not THAT epic, actually...
