Wario brings his usual madness to the Wii
User Rating: 8 | WarioWare: Smooth Moves WII
The Wario Ware series is well known for not making much sense and you play a series of crazy micro-games endlessly. 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 but 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 games and gestures 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 cartooney 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. 
