WarioWare: Get It Together! review: New twist on an old trick

Title: WarioWare: Get It Together!
Developer: Nintendo EPD and Intelligent Systems
Publishers: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (reviewed on)
Release Date: September 10, 2021

WarioWare: Get It Together! comes from a long line of WarioWare games. If you’ve never played them, the story is basically Wario trying to make money, so he starts shooting out a series of small games to get rich. Before he sells it, he needs to test it. It’s pretty low stakes as far as the story is concerned but the joy of the games has always been the insane format in which the game is played.

WarioWare games primarily (as we’re just going to forget WarioWare D.I.Y. ever existed) consist of you playing through 10-20 stages in a round. The last, at most, five seconds, long. The joy is figuring out what you’re supposed to do and doing it all in a few seconds.

If a cat is walking, and you see “STAY DRY,” it might mean that you need to control the person with the umbrella and protect it from the rain. Or you might be controlling the cat. Things like that. They range from a simple platforming to more complex movements to crass things like plugging a running nose or plucking an armpit hair. It’s Wario, expect a lot of moments like this.

It seems that Wario has gotten a little lazy with the code in his newest game, and it has become infected by bugs. Bugs so powerful that they suck Wario and his friends into the game itself. So your job in WarioWare: Get It Together! is to test the games, clear them of bugs, save everyone and fix the game while escaping in the process. This adds a really interesting element to the standard WarioWare formula.

As the characters are stuck in the games, you now control them in the minigames. This means that they, personally, have to complete the microgames with their limited abilities — and every character plays completely differently.

Wario has a jet pack and can shoulder ram things from the right to left. Dr. Crygor swims through the air and only does that. Terrifying mother 5-Volt is always asleep and you control her ghost, making it pop up violently, teleporting her body to that spot. And 18-Volt literally sits on the ground, not moving, but can fire discs wherever you aim.

The trick here is that when you start a round you pick up to five of these characters — of which there are around 20, each with their moves. At the start of the stage and every game, you play as a random character of the group you selected, and you’ll have to figure out how they would solve the puzzle.

If you have to squeeze out toothpaste, Wario would have to fly up to the middle of the diagonal tube and shoulder ram.18-Volt, on the other hand, would sit on the ground and rapidly fire discs into it. This also leads to the fact that there are several ways to complete stages. If someone on a parachute is falling towards a small block covered in spikes, 18-Volt could shoot the block and destroy it, while Dr. Crygor could swim up and push the parachuting person to the side so he missed it. The alien Orbulon can use the tractor beam of his UFO to stop the falling person.

So now it’s not just figuring out how a puzzle is solved, it’s figuring out how to solve it with that specific character. And some of the later characters can get really difficult. Wario’s shoulder ram and 18-Bit’s disc shooting are pretty straight forward but you also have characters like 9-Volt, whose skateboard can’t stop and can only shoot a yo-yo straight up. Or there’s Ashley’s friend Red who can fly anywhere and can drop bombs but only straight down. The Ninja Kat can’t stop jumping up and down and can only shoot shurikens in one direction, unable to turn.

Every puzzle can be solved by every character though which, honestly, is somewhat of a marvel in design the more I think about it. Though some characters make things really difficult. I loathed playing as 9-Volt. Here’s him turning Super Mario World into a straight up nightmare.

The only complaint I have with the game is that it can be beaten really quickly. I played it for about two hours and had completed both the story and the end game content. I’m not expecting some epic 20-40 hour story and I did expect it to be over quick, it’s just… I didn’t want it to be over.

Where the game really shines is the two-player modes. The story mode and several other modes can be played with two players and when this happens you each get to pick your own characters and attack the puzzle at the same time, working together to solve it in story or competing to get it done first in competitive. In the competitive modes, you can actually have up to four players competing at the same time. So once you have all the things unlocked in this game, it makes a really fun multiplayer.

I’d also really recommend unlocking stuff before doing full on multiplayer mode because you unlock some neat side stuff for completing the story. You unlock the options to give gifts to different players and as you do, they level up. While it doesn’t increase their skills, it allows you to customize their appearance. This can be something as simple as adjusting three of their colors to special looks like a zombie or baby that changes the noise they make. The baby is my personal favorite as it gives the character a mostly white (with red accent) color scheme and every time they talk an emoji appears over their face and makes a really uncomfortable sound that anyone who played WarioWare games will be immediately familiar with.

WarioWare: Get It Together Score (Nintendo Switch): 8.5

WarioWare: Get It Together! is short but it’s an absolute blast to play and will keep you hooked with everything it throws at you. The single-play story can beaten quickly but the replay value is in the different characters and figuring out how they handle each puzzle. The graphics are wild and fun, the controls are really solid, and the wealth of multiplayer options make this a blast for multiplayer couch sessions.