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Review:

29th November 2001:
Warioland 4
Mario's evil alter-ego has made the leap to the Game Boy Advance with this new platformer from Nintendo
Posted by Marc Hull - Game Boy Advance - UK and Europe

While Super Mario Advance was an enhanced NES port, Warioland 4 is the first Nintendo platformer to be built from the ground-up on the Game Boy Advance, and after his appearances on the original Game Boy he has a lot to live up to. Fortunately the game is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessors graphically, with all kinds of transparency effects and parallax scrolling adding more detail to each level, and Wario himself is now more colourful than ever, sporting some smoother animations. However, with the increase in emphasis on the graphics, have other areas of the game been neglected?

To begin with, the answer seems to be no. Similar to the previous games, Wario cannot die, but instead he 'transforms' into different states that allow him to perform certain tasks, so getting crushed changes him into 'flat Wario' who can float through the air and fit through small gaps, while eating a pie turns him into 'fat Wario' who can smash through tough blocks by jumping on them. However, unlike the previous games this one is set inside a mystical pyramid, with warps leading out to the various sub-levels from the map screen. To activate a warp, Wario stands on a button and jumps through a psychedelic tunnel, ending up in the level. Once inside, he must find the four jewel parts hidden in chests throughout the stage, collect a key if needed, and then locate the switch to reactivate the warp. However, the warp appears at the start of the level, and closes after a certain time, so once you've pressed the switch you have to dash back to the start of the level before the timer runs out, or have to do the level again.

Once you're back on the map screen, Wario uses the key from the level to unlock the next door in the pyramid, and advances onto the next level. After four levels have been completed, if you've successfully collected all four jewel pieces on each then the end door opens and you face a boss encounter. Fortunately, this is another area in which Warioland 4 improves upon it's predecessors, with some pretty sweet bosses to be fought. Most of them are much larger than you, very nicely animated and require many hits to kill - none of the 'three hits kill' stuff from the previous games. There's also a clock counting down during these stages, so hanging around and biding time is generally out of the question.

Aside from the main quest, there are also three mini-games on offer, continuing another Warioland tradition. The first is, rather unusually, played with the Game Boy Advance on it's side, and as the bowler hurls a ball you must press the A-button to bat it at the correct time, so that it flies off inside the valid area and scores a 'Home Run' instead of flying off sideways causing a Foul, or being missed completely causing a Strike (where three Strikes mean Game Over). The second game has Wario running on top of a car-wheel as various obstructions appear on the screen for you to avoid by pressing the jump button. This is done in-time to the background music, and as the game progresses both you and the music speed up, making it slightly more difficult. Finally, the third game has Wario in a barber's shop, and for a few seconds his eyes, nose and mouth change and then disappear. You must remember which facial features he had during those seconds and select them correctly from nine preset pieces. All-in-all these are fairly entertaining when you're stuck on the main game, but come no-where close to the Golf mini-game found in Warioland 3 which not only required more skill, but was much more fun.

In terms of sound, Wario's latest outing is a slightly mixed bag. On the one hand, the sound effects are generally good, with Wario having a good range of speech-bites and everything making the noise you'd expect it to. The background music, on the other hand seems a complete departure from the chirpy music of the previous games and the arrival of more atmospheric tracks which change depending on Wario's state (so it speeds up if he's rolling fast, slows down if he's turned into fat Wario...etc.). Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to suit the game too well, and often doesn't seem to have much tune at all, making it hardly memorable.

Fortunately, the gameplay of the original games has been retained for this latest title, with the usual array of moves returning as well as some new ones (including the ability to run and smash many blocks at once by holding down the R-Trigger). Despite the lack of a great mini-game, there's enough variety in the main quest to keep you playing the game, and the variety of the levels is very good (often with each level offering something new for you to discover).

Overall, while Warioland 4 certainly offers the series a graphical overhaul, it has lost some of the nicer parts of the previous games, such as the ever-changing map screen in Warioland 3, which not only was affected regularly by your progress in each level (revealing new levels to be completed), but also changed from day to night, or the multiple endings of the second game, which provided immense replay value even after the main strand of the quest had been finished. This is still a good game, though, and fans of the series shouldn't miss out on it, but we can only hope that Nintendo will go back to it's roots more for the fifth episode.

Marc Hull

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Review Summary:

Warioland 4 is a graphical evolution from the Game Boy Color games, with lots of fractal and transparency effects used to give it a polished, '16-bit' look to match it's main contender, Rayman. However, some of the best features of the previous games seem to have been missed out, such as the evolving map, multiple endings and a good mini-game. Even so, this is worth a purchase.

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