What parents need to know
WarioWare: Move It! is the tenth game in the WarioWare™ franchise, released for the Nintendo Switch on November 3, 2023.
Following the principle of its predecessors, it is a game with a comic visual signature in which the player(s) try to beat various minigames in record time. It is possible to play from 1 to 4 players. It is a direct sequel to WarioWare’s Smooth Moves, released in 2006.
In the story mode, players take turns taking on the role of one of the characters from WarioWare’s troupe as they meet in a contest on a mysterious island with stone joy-cons, the Posoliths. Over the course of the chapters, a series of microgames (minigames lasting no more than a few seconds) are offered to players, who must complete 15 of them, plus a boss, with fewer than four mistakes. This story mode can be played solo or in 2-player co-op.
This installment in the WarioWare series is particularly focused on the motion detection made possible by the joy-cons. All microgames require you to take a particular position, and to respond quickly to a command. For example, one game will ask us to film our hand with the right joycon camera and win rock-paper-scissors, while another will ask us to make a bird’s beak with a joy-con and peck worms.
There are also a few multiplayer modes that allow you to compete against your friends in a series of microgames, up to four players at a time.
This game is considered appropriate for an audience of 10+ years old.
Details
Level of experience required
Age | 3+ | 7+ | 12+ | 16+ | 18+ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Beginners | |||||
Intermediate | |||||
Experienced |
Evaluation
There are no scary scenes, but there can be animated violence. The violence is not particularly explicit.
There is no sexual content, but a cactus character appears with exposed buttocks and other characters bounce snowballs with their buttocks.
The level of language is simple, but it features crude humor.
Wario is a rude character who is motivated above all by greed, but the whole thing is played as a joke and he is never presented as a role model.
You have to adapt to the somewhat peculiar positions you have to take with the joy-cons, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy and enjoyable to control the game.
It is necessary to purchase the game once.
Local game modes
1-4 local players
Online Game Modes
None.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
No.
Our opinion
WarioWare Move It is a game full of surprises and retains the absurd and quirky humor of the series. Microgames are innovative, and as usual, we fall in love with 8-Volt’s microgames, which recontextualize classic Nintendo games into absurd microgames.
However, WarioWare Move It also suffers from the same flaw as the other titles in the series; Its lifespan is very short. It only takes about 2 hours to complete the story mode, double that if you want to complete everything.
Your appreciation of the title will depend greatly on how much fun you will have playing it again with friends. For our part, we much preferred the single-player mode, which explains microgames better, since some of the positions to take with the joy-cons can be a bit difficult to understand at first glance. In multiplayer, with players who have never played WarioWare, the experience was less conclusive.
It’s also worth noting that while motion detection generally works very, very well, games that take advantage of the Joy-Con camera have caused us some problems, with the controller sometimes having trouble accurately detecting the position of our hand.
In short, WarioWare Move It is a fun game that gave us a few laughs, and is unlike anything else in the video game landscape. However, is the experience worth the $65 CAD (50 euros) asked? It all depends on your interest in the multiplayer mode.