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WarioWare Twisted! Review - GBA

This, if you hadn't joined the dots yet, is a review of WarioWare: Twisted!, the companion to the DS's WarioWare: Touched!. However, while the DS's version was rather short and obviously pulled together in time for the system's release, Twisted shines as the best of the series.

Gameplay

The absolute, hands-down, super awesome best feature of the game is the inbuilt gyroscope AND rumble pack that bulges from the GBA cart. I plugged this game into my DS (my GBA of choice these days; the game is configured to work in both the DS, if you were wondering) and seriously spent five minutes just moving up and down the menu selections, enjoying the feel. You see, after getting through the obligatory 'Warning: Playing Games May Kill You' (thanks, ESRB) and 'Remember, twist the GBA, not yourself' notes, you arrive in a menu.

Now this menu isn't your everyday gaming selection screen. It's circular, and as you tilt your GBA to the left, the selections shuffle along. As the cursor moves past, the rumble pack throbs gently, so you really get the feeling of each choice sliding past. It's hard to explain, but man, I must have spent a full five minutes just tilting that thing back and forth before getting into the game.

If you want to understand the Revolution, get this game. I feel dumb for not seeing their controller design sooner.

So, let me get this out of the way (relatively) early on in the review. Yes, Twisted! suffers from all the problems associated with the other WarioWare games. Yes, it's short. You can breeze through in a few dedicated hours. But let me tell you how Twisted! takes everything done in the last games, and just quadruples it.

Each mode, for those unfamiliar to the concept, features a set of rapid-fire minigames. Serious rapid-fire, that is; one every five seconds, roughly. These tasks range from keeping a pig enclosed in a pen, to getting a ball out of a maze, to walking up a crumbling staircase, to sliding a full glass along a bar, to focussing laser beams on objects and more. Noses with inserted fingers and toilet paper abound. You'll never see the same thing twice. Unless you, like, replay the stage. But you know what I mean.

With just four lives, five seconds and just a word to help you out (like 'save' or 'water'), you'll find yourself replaying the levels often, not just because you failed to pass them first time through, but also because it's so damn fun. At the end of each set of minigames, you'll face a boss game, during which you have no timer, thankfully. In some instances you'll even have to rotate the system 720 degrees! it's nuts!

Each edition of WarioWare just adds more and more extra content. Where the first just had the option to replay all the minigames, and Touched! added the 'Toy Room' for extra little (continued next page)