Warioware: Smooth Moves

Played on Wii

Warioware: Smooth Moves (GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly) is my fourth contact with the Warioware series. And it feels like all the previous iterations were just building up to this one. It arrived on the GBA. Multiplayer was added when it was ported to the GameCube. When it hit the DS it brought a more intuitive set of controls. And then it revisited the GBA to experiment with motion controls (which is the one title I missed). And now it’s here on the Wii, and the Wiimote makes it the best yet.

Warioware has always been crazy, and there’s a group of people that have always found it appealing. But bringing the whole experience to life with the motion controller makes it far more approachable. Seeing some ambiguous one-word explanation and being expected to press a button or do something on the D-pad just wasn’t that intuitive. But physically shaking that banana or turning that key is obvious. In the past, multiplayer with Warioware was a brutal matchup of those who knew the games and those who didn’t. But the gap is much narrower with Smooth Moves, making party style multiplayer viable after only a quick introduction.

I’ve said before that I want my games to be more exciting than reality. Warioware shows the exception to this rule. The microgames are generally the most mundane tasks imaginable (like vacuuming or sharpening a pencil). But throwing a set of these tasks at you in disorienting rapid succession somehow makes that all okay. And mixing those in with more fantastic tasks like throwing shurikens at impeding ninjas or lasering down giant monsters can’t help but make you smile.

The one complaint I have with Warioware is that although the controls are more intuitive they’re decidedly more flakey. There are times when you tweak out the sensor and miss a round even though you were doing the right thing. And if the game were less fun this would be really aggravating. But before you have a chance to really get mad a new game is coming your way and you’ve forgotten all about it.

Viva Piñata

Played on Xbox360

I usually wait until after I finish a game before I review it. But I’m pretty sure that Viva Piñata doesn’t have an end. I guess the closest thing would be getting all the achievement points. But given all the other games I have going on right now (ahem, new Wii), I don’t think that’s happening any time soon. So I’m going to jump the gun and tell you what I think now instead of later.

Viva Piñata received a lot of critical acclaim (links: GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly), and with good reason. It’s a charming game with adorable graphics and compelling gameplay. It’s hard to stop playing Piñata once you’ve started, because there’s always something to do in your garden. Advancing through the game and discovering all the creatures is genuinely fun. But there’s something about it that’s just… off.

The thing that initially confused (and disturbed) me about Viva Piñata is that despite all the cute creatures with personalization options, this is not a game about enjoying your piñatas. It’s about getting over attachments. You start the game intuitively caring a lot for your individual piñatas. But to advance in the game you need to grow heartless and start selling of your piñatas and feeding them to other Piñatas. You quickly learn to not get too attached to your piñatas because eventually you’re going to have to do away with them. Don’t bother spending money to buy a cute hat for your Newtgat, because half an hour later you’re going to be feeding him to that Badgesicle that just moved in. And definitely don’t stop to give him a name - just keep it at “Newtgat 2” so that it’s easier to say goodbye. As a game that’s targeted at kids (with it’s own Saturday morning cartoon and everything), that underlying message is kinda disturbing.

But hey, I can’t be too harsh. Because even as I’m sitting here preparing to retire Viva Piñata to the shelf for awhile, I kinda still wish I was playing it. My memories are filled with delightful moments of coaxing new creatures to join my garden and rejoicing when they finally decide to stay. But somehow my brain has blocked out all those other memories… like when I was too slow to call the doctor and my piñata died from some crazy candy fever… or when I had to put down my first Raisant because he picked a fight with everybody… or when garden filled up and I had to sell off entire species to make room for some new hotness…

Damn. It’s a wonder I don’t curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep after playing this game.

Perspective

One interesting aspect of the new Armory feature for WoW is that you can now go look up that bastard who corpse camped you for half an hour. Now I know that I was only one of 49514 (Contrast that with my lifetime kill count of 2372, which unfortunately I was never able to add that bastard to).

I play on a PvP server because quite frankly it makes everything just a tad more interesting. I’m one of those people that actually enjoyed Ultima Online’s PvP system. Nothing made your heart beat quite as fast as having the bounty board’s number one menace riding towards you. Likewise with WoW, the possibility of random PvP adds a wild card into what could otherwise just be a standard RPG grind.

However, PvP is only really fun when it’s relatively even. And unfortunately the design goals of the endless MMORPG gear grind are at odds with the design goals of fair PvP. Even WoW’s reward for PvP is just more gear. Which is a bulletproof “rich get richer” game design. That would maybe work if the PvP matchmaking brackets were based on gear value, rather than the mostly useless measure of Level (given that there’s a level cap and everyone’s at it). Supposedly they’ve fixed that and added a better matchmaking system for the Arenas, but those aren’t “casual” friendly as they require you to form a regular team of consistent players. Essentially leaving no real viable outlet for the occasional PvPer.

But this is all part of the appeal of MMORPGs, I guess. In a singleplayer RPG, you’re always the hero. You rise up and save the world. You’re special. But in an MMORPG, you’re competing against thousands of other potential heroes just like you. Which means you’re guaranteed to be outclassed by a large percentage of them, making your digital self just as mundane as your physical one.