Review: ‘WarioWare: Move It!’ is more of an exercise in frustration than actual exercise

I’m not entirely sure whether I was being naive, or optimistic, but either way, my hopes were dashed the minute I booted up WarioWare: Move It!. As a longtime fan of the franchise, I was looking forward to another collection of delightfully bizarre minigames (oops, I meant microgames) and equally bizarre characters. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the second half of the title.

In an incredibly disappointing move (pun intended), WarioWare: Move It! requires players to play the game using a pair of detached Joy-Con. This puts a damper on the system’s portability, but it also means you can’t play using a Pro Controller. This is, for better or worse, a dual Joy-Con game through and through, with very little flexibility. To top it off, there are a few microgames that require you to drop your Joy-Con, which means that you’ll need to dig out the controller’s straps, which if you’re anything like me, have been collecting dust on a shelf for the better part of seven years.

It’s a shame that WarioWare: Move It! essentially forces players to play the game with Joy-Con while standing the whole time (oh, did I not mention that sitting is not recommended?), because there are some truly excellent microgames on offer. After winning an all-expenses-paid vacation to Caresaway Island (with series regulars like Mona, Kat, Jimmy T, and 9-Volt in tow), Wario and Co. will explore the island, unlocking new chapters that focus on a given character and how they’re choosing to spend their time while on vacation. For example, our titular hero (antihero?), finds himself being chased down through the island’s lush jungles, while Mona opts to explore the surrounding waters in the hopes of finding a mermaid.

Regardless of which character you’re actively playing, the core gameplay loop remains the same. Each chapter has a group of microgames to work through, which eventually culminate with a boss fight. This is pretty standard stuff for the franchise, but what’s different is how you’ll play through them all.

As I should have expected, WarioWare: Move It! is a motion-control game. By which I specifically mean, it can only be played using motion controls. I struggle to remember a time when I used any of the Joy-Con’s buttons. Instead, before each minigame, you’ll be prompted to hold and position the Joy-Con in one of a handful of poses, or “forms” — this might involve holding them above your head (Sky Stretch), stacking them on top of each other like an arcade joystick (Knight), or even placing them up against your cheeks (Lovestruck).

To be fair, these goofy poses are part of the game’s charm, and it’s hard not to chuckle when you’re lifting your arms to pick a giant nose, or bending prison bars as part of a daring prison escape. The series’ trademark humor is present and accounted for, it’s just a shame that it has to be locked behind motion controls. Sadly, gamers who aren’t able-bodied might struggle with this one, which is a shame when you consider that it wouldn’t have been impossible to include a more traditional control scheme for a majority of the microgames on offer. Sure, it wouldn’t have meshed well with the overall direction, but it would have gone a long way to accommodating those with limited mobility or those who prefer to play on the go. Heck, I even got a bit winded after playing for 20 minutes or so, but that might be a reflection of my poor workout habits and less about my actual range of motion.

If the idea of flailing your arms and prancing around your living room for hours on end sounds like a terrifying prospect, you can relax. As is standard for the franchise, it’ll only take two or three hours to work through the entirety of the story. There are microgames to unlock, high scores to beat, and a multiplayer mode that strips away the cutscenes and storyline in favor of getting you from one minigame to the next in minimal time. Still, these extra modes and unlockables aren’t going to appeal to everyone; your mileage may vary.

When you take into account that Nintendo’s had a stellar year with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it’s easy to look past the missteps that WarioWare: Move It! has made. To its credit, it serves up an endless parade of creative and hilarious microgames that can stand toe-to-toe with the rest of the series. It’s just a shame that it’s shackled by an inflexible control scheme and a criminally short story mode.

This review is based on the Nintendo Switch version of the game. A copy was provided to We Got This Covered by Nintendo.