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WarioWare: Touched! review

Game: WarioWare: Touched!
Platform: DS
Genre: Casual (Party)
Developer: Nintendo

Reader review by goldenvortex

December 08, 2006

The DS started Nintendo's incredibly irritating use of pathetic innuendos. While people are now ecstatic about playing with their Wii's and the Wii's of others in public, a year ago, they were obsessed with “touching”, “stroking” and “blowing” the DS. Did you find those last sentences funny? Of course you didn't. In fact, every time I hear a DS joke or an ever increasing Wii joke, it puts me off going near any of them, which is a shame because they both have the potential to redefine the way we play games, but due to it's poor library of games, it uses it's features in a gimmicky and boring way.

WarioWare: Touched was the first game to really demonstrate the creative capabilities of the DS, and to be fair, it did a good job. Taking the brilliant formula seen in other WarioWare titles, it threw hundreds of five second mini-games at you. I remember playing it on the Gamecube and being thoroughly addicted, wondering what the hell I would be doing next and panicking when I made a mistake while doing that aforementioned wondering. What I liked about the Gamecube version was that you never really knew what you were going to get. However, the DS version, although following the same structure, reduces this feeling by categorising all of the games into specific stylus related tasks or over-use of the microphone.

It reunites the majority of the WarioWare cast with each character controlling a specific genre of games. While Wario offers a selection of games which mix the various elements of the game (which is something that the game should rely on), the rest simply rely on the movement of the stylus, which severely reduces the amount of creativity and action that the game should have. For example, Jimmy T's games all involve you tapping the screen with the stylus in the appropriate place. So, if you know that all of the next game requires you to do is to tap the screen in a specific area, it reduces the entire concept of what WarioWare stands for. Other games styles include using the stylus to cut, scribble, drag and rotate, with each style giving you about twenty games and a boss to beat.

This focus on showing off the DS's gimmicks completely push away the challenge and creativity that WarioWare was renowned for. All of the games in one genre completely rely on a specific task therefore even after you've played the first two games in one character's collection; you'll have to trying very hard to make any sort of mistake. The over-use of the microphone in Mic's stages really makes it a painful experience, and I'm not exaggerating. If you've ever played Feel the Magic, (which required you to blow really hard on the bottom DS screen until you lost consciousness), you'll be rather worried that these games require you do to the exact same thing. As well as giving you a major headache, they do nothing to differentiate from the fact that all of the WarioWare games in one category require you to perform the same task over and over again.

However, the developers must've realised that the game has this problem because they included various mix games, which take aspects of other genres and mix games together into one. While there are four mixes which take various game genres and merges them together to create some new modes, the real challenge comes from the three Mega-Mixes which take every single game from all of the categories and presents it as one. These three modes brilliantly capture the essence of WarioWare, throwing you a selection of games which allow you to tap, stroke and blow all in one genre. Although, it takes these methods and finally gives you one game that incorporates all of the available styles into one category. It's just too bad that you had to sit through seven extremely repetitive games categories just to unlock them.

However, it's not as bad as it sounds because WarioWare is an incredibly short game, (actually, that makes it sound even worse!) so it'll probably only take you about an hour and a half or so to unlock the modes that are actually worth playing. However, the fact that the game is so short and highly concentrates on one specific style at a time means that you'll only play it occasionally after completion and when you do, you'll only play the first Mega-Mix mode because it's the only thing that attempts to capture the spirit of original Game boy and Gamecube games. It's worth getting for cheap or if you just happen to have two hours to spare but apart from that it feels like nothing more than another DS demo, which I could really do without.

It is games like this (and re-occuring sex jokes) that spoil the DS from doing what it's meant to do. It's been proven by Kirby's Canvas Curse that the gimmicks of the DS can be put to good use but everything that I have played so far simply abuses these features just because they're available. This does nothing to differ from the fact that the DS is nothing but a fad, a gimmick that'll wear out in year or so. Unfortunately, this doesn't fare to well for the Wii, which will undoubtedly use its gimmick to bore the pants off us.

Rating: 4/10

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