WarioWare Gold Review

It seems that Wario wouldn’t let the 3DS be put to bed without having a collection of his fast paced micro-games hit the system.

WarioWare Gold is the biggest collection yet, filled with over 300 micro-games and contains many of the fan favourites from WarioWare titles of the past that have been slightly upgraded and given a fresh coat of paint. As well as some brand new games never experienced before.

The game contains a short but interesting story mode that will allow you to experience many of the micro-games that WarioWare Gold has on offer. This mode can be completed in around 2-3 hours but does tell an engaging story that is helped by the brightly animated and fully voiced cutscenes you’ll witness when beginning or ending a story mode stage.

The story mode is broken up into 3 tiers, each containing 5 stages that each contain numerous micro-games. Each tier focuses on a particular gameplay mechanic you’ll need to use in each of the games in that tier.

The mechanics used are Mash, which has you mashing or using a selected button throughout the game to perform a certain action. Twist, which has you take advantage of the 3DS’ gyro controls to control things by physically twisting the system. Touch, pretty self explanatory, it has you interact with the game using the 3DS touch screen and finally the fourth mechanic that is introduced later in the game, blow, which has you blowing into the 3DS microphone to participate in the game.

WarioWare Gold uses many of the 3ds’ hardware functions to great effect. And often thinks outside the box to use them in fun and interesting ways.

Each micro-game only sticks around on screen for 3-5 seconds before quickly hitting you with the next one. The furious speed can get overwhelming at times especially if you’re not exactly sure what you’re meant to do to succeed in the game. But the game does a good job easing you into the various mechanics in story mode so you won’t feel lost for too long.

The micro-games start out simple enough but end up getting more difficult as you progress. And when you only have 3 seconds to analyse the stage, figure out what it’s wanting you to do and then complete it, you’re likely to fail a few of the stages unless you’re a WarioWare veteran. Thankfully even if you fail you’re able to purchase another life and continue progressing from where you failed assuming you have the coins required to do so.

After completing the story mode there are still numerous things you can do in WarioWare Gold that will keep you entertained. Challenge mode is unlocked upon completion of the story and contains various game modes that put a fresh addictive spin on the micro-games you’ve now become familiar with. Such as the time trial mode Wario Watch which has you fighting off a counting down clock by completing mini games and transferring the time remaining from that game to the clock so you can try and last as long as possible before hitting game over. And the hectic but addictive All Mixed Up mode which blends the various micro-game types together into a single challenge playlist where you won’t know whether you’ll have to mash, twist, touch, or blow next, giving you just a moment between games to figure it out.

Playing through these various challenge modes will likely be done so you can earn more gold coins to spend at the game’s Capsule Machine. Here you hand over your coins to unlock capsules that reward you with one of the hundreds of unlockables WarioWare Gold has on offer.

The worst part of this is that not all of the unlockables feel like rewards. The majority of them feel like filler items that serve next to no purpose such as in-game phone text messages, themed alarm clocks and trivia excerpts about various Nintendo characters and promotional toys.

Although there are some great gems hidden in the sea of unlockable items such as the expanded mini games or cutscenes from the story mode that you can play with in Studio mode using the microphone to re-record the dialogue with your own voice over. When you see one of these pop open it feels like coins well spent. But as these are fewer and far between compared to the other rewards it’s easy to sink a bunch of gold into the Capsule Machine and come away with nothing of note which leads you back into the micro-game challenges to grind for more gold which did make the core loop of the game feel quite repetitive after a while.

Final Thoughts

With over 300 micro-games, a short but quality story mode and various challenge modes that will put your skills to the test, you can’t deny there is a lot of value packed into WarioWare Gold and it will keep you entertained for quite some time. Unfortunately many if it’s collectables don’t feel like rewards and the grind required to to eventually not be rewarded brings to light WarioWare Gold’s repetitive endgame.

Fans of the WarioWare series will know exactly what they are in for. Besides the short but interesting story mode you may have played many of the micro games in previous titles.

For newcomers to the WarioWare series I think you’ll have a great time with Gold as it’s taken a massive amount of the fan favourite micro-games from the game’s of the past and combined them into one complete package full of fast paced insanity.

A review copy was provided by Nintendo Australia for the purpose of this review.

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