WarioWare: Get it Together understands how simple games can be while still being packed to the rafters with fun, engaging ideas that are endlessly entertaining. It’s been a while since we’ve received a ‘pure’ WarioWare game in the series, with recent years being full of experimental titles and compilations of past microgames.
Get it Together is an entirely fresh experience, bringing a sprawling cast of characters back together as they partake in hundreds of wonderfully engaging microgames that are easy to learn yet difficult to master. While the game isn’t packed with content and the campaign is over in a matter of hours, the act of mastering each character and their associated games while playing alongside friends often supersedes such levity, resulting in a chill puzzle game that purists will adore.
Wario and friends are now operating out of an office building, working together to create the ultimate video game that can be unleashed upon the populace for maximum profit. Weird, I didn’t know our porky investor worked for Activision. Things are going swimmingly until the finished product malfunctions and sucks our entire cast of characters off into a virtual world. The only way for Wario and company to return home is by exploring their own game and wiping out a selection of pesky bugs, represented as cutesy blobs who roam about the place causing trouble. It’s a simple yet effective premise, and echoes the wholesomeness we’d expect from an outing like this perfectly. I’m serious, it’s sickeningly adorable.
Each character has their own level, bearing an aesthetic that pays homage to the games they originated from while taking them to bold new places. Don’t expect a revelation in narrative ideas here though, most stages open with a brief cutscene establishing the context of what you’re aiming to achieve before the microgames start rolling in. Visual design isn’t the only way characters differentiate themselves, they all control differently too. Wario is able to fly and bump himself into enemies and obstacles, while 18-Volt has a disc situated on his head that can be used as an infinite projectile to activate switches and shift the weight of certain things in each game.
Penny Crygor has a water cannon that can blast her in different directions, making use of physics in clever ways to shift your perspective and pose new challenges. You select a squad of characters before starting each level, and they can be split into distinguishable categories based on what games they are able to play. My personal highlight was a stage filled with microgames inspired by classic and modern Nintendo games. You’ll have to navigate a stage pulled straight from Super Mario World or pick the correct dialogue option to flirt in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. These brought a smile to myself like nothing else, and I’m so glad WarioWare leans into this legacy so heavily.
This adds so much variety to proceedings, and the addition of multiple stages each with their own unique games ensure that repetition from previous games is easier to avoid. Plus, the pace is so fast that you won’t mind a few repeated activities anyway. Like previous games, you have four lives to reach the end of each stage, with the momentum increasing as you reach certain milestones before coming across a boss battle, which are extended versions of games you’ve already played that incorporate the mechanics of certain characters. After an initial playthrough, it’s all about chasing high scores until the growing speed dooms you to oblivion.
Get it Together is far more forgiving, allowing you to restore lives without restarting by using some of the in-game currency earned by completing stages. In a way, this removes all challenges from the campaign and I had so many excess coins that not using them never crossed my mind. On the flipside, having to restart an entire stage because the trial and error nature of each microgame overwhelmed me is equally as frustrating, so this feature feels like a middle ground to appease both hardened fans and curious newcomers. These coins can eventually be spent on other things, but you’ll need to complete the campaign and dabble in a few other modes before that becomes apparent, so it would have been nice to see them tie into the wider progression system instead of feeling like an afterthought.
The game almost wants you to speed through the campaign and unlock all of the characters so you’re able to delve into optional modes like earning gifts that can be given to each character to level them up. Sadly, the rewards for doing so seem to be purely cosmetic, whether it be different colours and outfits to customise them with or gorgeous concept art to browse across myriad galleries. It feels like these coins are going towards fun yet fruitless extras that don’t add anything to the core gameplay experience. Given the asking price of £40, the overall offering here feels a little bit slight unless you’re playing with friends or a seasoned completionist.
You can also experiment with a number of optional minigames which prioritise co-operative and competitive play, taking select characters into new environments as they play volleyball or complete specific tasks based on set parameters. They recontexualise the skills learned in microgames and give you greater opportunity to master them, which is an appreciated environment given how scattershot the campaign can be. However, unless you’re playing with a friend, the appeal of these modes are lost because there’s no competitive spirit, you’re just playing against AI in exchange for coins that will be spent on the same dull rewards.
I love WarioWare: Get it Together for bringing this charming series back into the limelight. It introduces a bunch of excellent new microgames and a huge selection of returning characters I was so happy to see, yet the short campaign and lacking amount of extras can make the overall package feel underwhelming. Unless you’ve loved the series for decades, this one might be hard to recommend until the game is subject to a discount or two.
Review code was provided by the publisher.
WarioWare: Get It Together!