WarioWare: Smooth Moves

Some of the fondest memories I have of my adolecence was to bring my Wii to school and play with my class this amazing game, 12 people at a time. One might think pulling something like a 16 multiplayer game of Wario Ware Smooth Moves would be very unlikely, since it would require at least having 12 people in a room. School was the best excuse for a situation like this, and since those endless hours would pile up, we would often find ourselves playing either Brawl, Mario Party 8, Mario Kart Wii or this one. And this one had all the quirk every other review will tell you this game oozes. We were lucky enough to have old tube TVs in class back in the late 2000s, where we pluged our consoles and used on our recesses, lunch times, after hours; whenever was a good idea to play.

Yeah, those were the times. In a sense, I think to enjoy this game to its fullest potential, you had to be there, or something very similar. The truest experience of what Nintendo was aiming with the whole Wii thing. If you are lucky enough, you can recreate it with a Wii and a bunch of friends or a family.

Many people will say that Wii Sports was the tech demo that showcased the potential of the console’s motion controls. Judging by the accessible basis of sports and the fact that Nintendo put a copy of the game inside every single box the console was shipped in, this was Nintendo’s clear intention for Wii Sports, and they succeeded without a doubt. As I’ve said before, Wii Sports had a shelflife of approximately an hour before the novelty of the motion controls wore off, and the initial excitement ran thin. Fortunately, early Wii owners had the alternative of playing Twilight Princess, but at the cost of alienating everyone else from the family-friendly intrigue that radiated from the Nintendo Wii. What if I told you that there was another early Wii game that one could enjoy with others that showcased the vast parameters of Nintendo’s ambitious motion-controlled console? No, it’s not Wii Play because that game had an even slimmer shelflife of fun than Wii Sports did. I’m talking, of course, about WarioWare: Smooth Moves, the fourth installment of the absurd party game franchise that more or less exists to display innovative ways to use Nintendo’s hardware for many of its consoles. If Wii Sports was the vehicle to exhibit that the motion controls of the Wii were competent, WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the vehicle to show that they were fun.

Reviewing WarioWare based on its contents would prove to be superfluous upon its fourth entry. Smooth Moves is the same game as the previous three entries and upholds what we’ve come to expect from the series. It’s a cavalcade of wacky microgames made to be completed in mere seconds. The player must complete a certain number of them and only gets four chances to screw up. The time to complete these microgames gets thinner as the player progresses, and there is a boss microgame that usually takes longer and requires more substantial use of the controls. These various microgames are divided into minuscule stories between the eclectic cast of Wario’s compadres. This summary basically sums up the premise of every game in the series, so what gives each game its unique appeal? Smooth Moves was the first game in the series to be developed for a mainline Nintendo console instead of being relegated to a handheld system. The first WarioWare game was ported to the Gamecube, but that was merely the GBA game on more advanced hardware. Smooth Moves was designed with the Wii’s hardware in mind, and the kinetic nature of the system fits this series like a glove. The previous WarioWare games on Nintendo’s handheld systems were party games in theory, but having a party around the pocket-sized screen of the GBA or the DS sounds lame as hell. One of the cardinal rules listed to the player when starting Smooth Moves is to “lower your inhibitions,” which implies that they will be using the Wii’s motion controls to make a complete jackass of themselves. The prerogative of Smooth Moves is like dancing: one can do it alone, but it’s better to perform with others. Smooth Moves is the first WarioWare game that is fully realized as a party game, and this gives Smooth Moves a more vibrant energy that none of the previous games had.

Conducting the various microgames in Smooth Moves is done more methodically than in previous titles. The Wiimote is a comparatively more versatile tool than something like the DS stylus or the body of the GBA, and the microgames take advantage of this range of uses. The Wiimote is a swiss-army knife of practicalities, illustrated by a calming tutorial that sounds like the “deep thoughts” segment from SNL. The player will put the Wiimote in positions ranging in kinetic involvement, starting with using the Wiimote like a remote control to more involved uses like placing it on the player’s head like a mohawk. The smattering of stances can be used for many purposes. For example, The player will use the umbrella stance to simulate drinking liquid, the discard stance to pick up the Wiimote with precise timing, the boxer stance to toss a shuriken, etc. An optional story with Orbulon involves microgames that utilize the nunchuck, incorporating the additional connection in a few ways. The suggested stance to complete each microgame is great at assisting the player, and getting involved with performing each stance with the Wiimote is amusingly silly fun in of itself. The unfortunate thing about using the Wiimote to complete microgames is that the more involved stances tend to conflict with the sensory aspect of the Wii. I could’ve sworn that I was executing the “mortar and pestle” stance correctly, but I could never get the hang of the microgames that involve the stance and never figured out how to perform them accurately. Other than those minor instances, most of the forms are fluid.

WarioWare games are also pretty light on plot, and Smooth Moves follows that consistent formula. As mentioned before, the various microgames are divided by subplots involving the kooky staple characters of the series. Mona is cheerleading for a high school football game, and Kat and Ana defend their fort from a monstrously tall demon. 9-Volt and 18-Volt have a spat over a busted Game and Watch resolved over a series of Nintendo game-themed microgames that they’ve become known for like they are the Treehouse of Horror episodes of WarioWare segments. The vaguely overarching plot with Wario involves him taking an ancient relic shaped like a Wiimote. The scene is escalated with him sprinting away from a boulder booby trap like Raiders of the Lost Ark. He then divides himself into mini Warios due to a faulty motorbike which culminates in rebuilding himself and returning the Wiimote relic to where he found it. The plots here are as light, roundabout, and appropriately bizarre for the WarioWare series and are unfortunately as short as the other games. Unlike the other games, Smooth Moves augments the game's length with tons of side content. Besides the aforementioned additional Orbulon story, progressing through the game will unlock tons of minigames that have unique uses for the Wiimote. Many multiplayer games use most if not all of the microgames from the single-player game. The staggering wealth of extra content is exactly what the game needed to expand its playtime beyond the main short story typical of the series.

The ultimate prerogative for the Nintendo Wii was to usher in motions controls in gaming beyond any peripheral before it. Wii Sports was a nice sampler of what the Wii was capable of, but I doubt anyone regularly played any of the game's sports on display. In a way, WarioWare is a series made to showcase the parameters of kinetic prowess for any Nintendo system. Nintendo would’ve been foolish not to utilize the series for their killer app. Executing WarioWare’s signature microgames had never required such involvement from the player before. Doing so will have the player in stitches from laughing at the game and themselves. In many ways, WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the perfect Wii game because it best uses the novelty of motion controls.

Smooth Moves is a worthwhile entry in the WarioWare series, and like its predecessors is a game about using quick reflexes and information processing skills to play tiny microgames in quick succession, identifying what must be done to win and then executing within 5-10 seconds. The formula is rock-solid and pretty airtight, and the creativity on display here is pretty amazing, but the extensive use of unreliable motion controls puts a slight damper on the experience overall.

Being a very early title for the Wii, a big emphasis was put on the utilization of the Wiimote to create gameplay that was not possible on other systems. The result of that is around a dozen different "stances" for the controller that the player must learn for different sets of microgames. For example, you might hold the Wiimote like a pencil to draw something, or like a broomhandle to sweep something. The stance required for the next microgame is flashed on the screen right before it starts, which may seem to blunt the series' unpredictability, but many of the stances that seem obvious or limited are switched up in very clever ways. In conjunction with the vast ocean of possibilities for a motion control scheme, you'll be pushed into pretty chaotic territory even knowing which stance to use, which is great.

The crucial issue with the game is unfortunately something that pervaded most all of the earliest Wii titles: inconsistency with certain setups and motions that can lead to a feeling of struggling through certain microgames. A handful of the games just never controlled well for me or my friends and were considered to be "automatic losses," which really sucks. Additionally, the cutesy and concise instructions for the game tend to fail the player more often in Smooth Moves, as the actual motion meant to be done is not obvious, even given the stance. An example that comes to mind is a game in the "Remote" stance, just neutrally pointing the Wiimote at the sensor bar, where you control a hole in the ground and need to ensnare some people running around a room. The actual motion to move the hole is not clear by the instruction to "Trap!" - am I meant to point it like a flashlight, or move the remote toward and away from the screen to simulate physically being in the room, or tilt the remote right and left to "steer" it? Worse still is the fact that these motions are easily conflated with one another, so you may not understand how a game truly works even after completing it correctly. This sort of obscurity is not present in the much tighter handheld entries and it dulls the experience whenever it occurs.

While these problems in conjunction severely cap the experience overall in terms of a consistent gameplay experience, I do want to express again how interesting of a game this is design-wise, with functions of the Wii remote never seen since. The psychology of the microgames was grounded in quasi-reality, giving the player an easy way to understand the new controller by relating their movements to things that they already do and have done. Naming the stances after real-life use cases for those bodily motions was also a stroke of genius that immediately contextualizes the stance and its possibilities. In addition to some genuinely funny writing and some laugh-out-loud ridiculous games, the overall experience is hard to fault in its ambition. For that, I still consider it to be worth playing and experiencing for yourself.

The Wario Ware series is well known for its simple but insane micro-games. You are told how to hold the remote before the game appears and when it does; you have about 5 seconds to complete it. Completing it is usually done by making a simple gesture but some games are slightly more complicated and require you to time your gesture.

At certain intervals, the games difficulty and tempo will increase to add to the intensity. The problem is that the game seems to play at the slow speed for too long, but when it does get fast, it can be insane.

There are around 200 micro-games which are assigned to different characters in the town. You are shown a silly story as an introduction but the games themselves don't relate to their story at all. When you play the first time, you will see an intro scene then play around 8-15 games then the 'Boss Stage' which is just a more complicated and longer game. After you do this, you will see the ending scene and can move onto the next character.

If you chose to play the same characters, you will then play in an endless mode so you will play continuously with the game becoming progressively harder and faster. You have 4 lives and will replenish a life when you do the boss stage. There is a lot of replay value because you will still discover new games on multiple plays, and your incentive will be to achieve a new high score.
Examples of gestures and games include:
Pointing the remote forward - “The Remote Control”: Moving a flash-light to find a character. Shooting cans, sauté vegetables in a pan,
Holding the remote upright - “The Umbrella”: Swatting a fly, changing car gears
Holding the remote horizontally (facing towards)- “The Chauffeur”: Rotating a maze, driving a car
Holding the remote horizontally (facing up) - “The Handlebar”: Pumping a balloon

The graphics are sharp and the game is well presented and full of charm, but the games have a deliberate and varying style of graphics. Some are represented by basic child like sketches, some are shown as basic 3D models, and some are 2D cartoony graphics. There's even a set of games based on retro Nintendo games which can range from the NES era with 'Super Mario Bros' coin collecting game, to Gamecube era with 'Metro Prime' Samus rolling game.

A few games seem to suffer from control issues, and some games need the remote to be pointed directly at the sensor bar, but the game never tells you that.

Overall, Smooth Moves is a great game but personally I found Touched on the DS to be a better game because it seems more crazy and frantic which is what the Wario Ware series is all about.

This was one of the early Wii titles that best "got" the Wii, but that doesn't really say much. Other than that, it's still Warioware!