I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m a big WarioWare fan. Whenever Nintendo announces a brand new system with a hardware gimmick, I immediately start to think how the WarioWare franchise will be able to take advantage of it in order to create something even wackier and more creative than its predecessor. I loved the announcement of a brand new WarioWare for the Switch during the last Nintendo Direct, as I hoped the game would be able to deliver where 1-2-Switch had failed. I had hoped it would be the go-to party game that took advantage of all the techy crap shoved in the Joy-Cons and the system as whole. What we ended up getting in WarioWare: Get It Together was the complete opposite. We ended up getting a mere lifeless husk of what the franchise used to be.

I am shocked that I disliked WarioWare: Get It Together as much as I did. I was looking forward to it like a fanboy eagerly awaiting a genre-defying band’s new album. We can crap on the Switch’s hardware and excessive amount of unused gimmicks as much as we want, but one thing’s for certain: WarioWare could have easily taken advantage of the system’s gyro functions, high-quality Joy-Con motion controls, and touchscreen. WarioWare: Get It Together does not feature any of those. Sure, we ended up getting a gimmick, but not what I was expecting from the franchise: utter, creatively bankrupt simplicity.

Instead of motion controls or creative control schemes, the main “selling point” of WarioWare: Get It Together is controlling a bunch of different characters inside the same microgames, with the catch that all of them can be controlled with just the analog stick and the A button. They move around with the stick and perform one specific action with A. Each microgame can be played with any character, but the fact all of them can access these games (with the exception of “boss sections”) means that they had to be dumbed down to be accessible by all common denominators. The simplicity of the gameplay makes the game feel as stripped down and held back as the original WarioWare released for the Game Boy Advance.

The fact that you control the WarioWare roster inside the microgames is a consequence of the game actually trying to push a narrative for once. However, it can be summarised in just a few words: the gang has been transported inside Wario’s new console by a glitch. It’s not exactly a deep story nor does the game try to make it more important than it should be (it isn’t), but there is a significant amount of text in between “chapters”, with very little in terms of voice acting. A shame, considering that WarioWare Gold, its 3DS predecessor, probably featured Charles Martinet’s best role in years.

I know that WarioWare isn’t exactly the kind of game known for having the best of presentations, but Get It Together achieves a new level of visual laziness. Having every single zany microgame “invaded” by hideous chibi versions of Wario and his crew is already obnoxious. But the rest of the game itself, most specifically its UI, feels absurdly uninspired. The game features the same font and icons from Game Builder Garage, that simplistic game-making learning tool released for the Switch a few months ago! In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked to find out WarioWare: Get It Together was created with that particular engine.

I know what some might be thinking about my main criticism with WarioWare: Get It Together being its utterly dumbed down gameplay loop: “you can’t do motion control-based games when there are Switches devoid of Joy-Cons”. Why wasn’t there an option to include a few of them on the side though? The Skyward Sword remaster still featured optional motion controls for those without Switch Lites. And even sthen, all Switches, no matter the version, feature touchscreen support. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems didn’t even bother including such kind of support for the game’s menus, let alone microgames themselves. Once again, this is a franchise that revels on creativity and being played on systems with wacky gimmicks. Removing said gimmicks from WarioWare just turned it into a poor man’s Mario Party: The Top 100.

I don’t remember the last time I have played a game published by a major corporation that felt so soulless like WarioWare: Get It Together. Yes, even by some of the usual suspects. What was once Nintendo’s go-to franchise for zaniness, creativity, and actually taking advantage of every single feature included in a console’s hardware has been reduced to what mostly resembles a lazy and rushed job just to ensure the publisher had something to sell during a particular month. With a name like Get It Together, it’s almost as if the game was already aware of its incompetence. Thanks, I hate it.

 

Graphics: 5.0 Sure, its minigames look like crap by design, but the main problem with this game’s visuals is its ugly playable character designs and a cheap-looking UI, even reusing the same font from Game Builder Garage.	Gameplay: 5.0 All characters feature a control scheme centered around using the analog stick and A button. They feel uninspired and highly repetitive, as all minigames have to be adapted to these control schemes. No motion controls or any other interesting gimmicks are featured in here, which is a huge oversight.
Sound: 6.0 A few heavily compressed voice clips and some boring tunes are all that WarioWare: Get It Together! has to offer in terms of sound design. The freaking 3DS game had more voice clips than this one…	Fun Factor: 3.5 The lack of a proper identity, no gimmicks and a really boring control scheme, not to mention the unbelievably lazy presentation, result in a game completely devoid of charm, wackiness or creativity. It’s a mere shell of what WarioWare used to be.
Final Verdict: 4.5

WarioWare: Get It Together! is available now on Switch.

Reviewed on Switch.