Summary
Nintendo has had a very strong interest in motion controls for almost two decades now.WarioWare: Move Itis the latest plunge into the idea co-developed with Intelligent Systems, with many of Wario’s friends having to strike a few poses or take “forms” to handle the adventures found on Caresaway Island. When it comes to micro-game fun, players will certainly get what they’re looking for withWarioWare: Move It.
The wayWarioWare: Move Itworks is that it uses the Joy-cons to sense inputs based on the player’s “Form.” Simple poses lead to easy movements, like having to punch objects that are where the player’s controllers are meant to be, and other forms like Hand Model are fewer positions and more ways for the game to take advantage of lesser used features of theJoy-con controllers. However, these forms are hit-and-miss in terms of technical responses, and that can lead to player frustration.
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How WarioWare: Move It’s Gameplay Reinvents But Doesn’t Break the Mold
When many gamers think about motion controls, they think aboutpointing Wii Remotes at screens, or moving their body with Xbox’s Kinect in complicated ways.WarioWare: Move Itmay have an emphasis on motion controls in that all of its micro-games require some form of movement, but in many ways, it keeps its gestures simple and easy to understand. Often times it is simple twists and turns of the controller that are only easier to do in the pose in question.
The way that these poses works almost dictates that fans stand up to play unless they understand how the game works and will understand exactly what motion to do without needing to strike poses like “Big Cheese” and “Fashionista.” This is also how players canperform a Second-Chance Stancewithout needing to balance on one foot at times. However, it’s much better for fans to play the game standing up, as that givesWarioWare: Move Itless of a chance to read players' motions wrong.
WarioWare: Move Itmakes the great choice of sticking to its usual micro-game formula above all else, meaning that the motion controls are only how players quickly interact and solve prompts like “find the cat” by holding a Joy-con close to their ear or “examine the cake” to figure out how many flowers are on it and using the right Joy-con’s gesture window to signal the amount with their fingers. It keeps the game simple, fast, and fun, aswould be expected from aWarioWaregame.
That said, this is only if therequired motion inWarioWare: Move Itis even registered properly. As the game progressively gets faster and faster, players have less time to get into the required poses, and some mini-games are very lacking in terms of how well they respond to movement. Some can easily require only one Joy-con moving, while others seem to be completely off before the game even starts.
This isn’t even considering how the gesture window’s camera fails to properly detect players' fingers half of the time, meaning many Hand Model Form games fail right away.
AsWarioWare: Move Itspecifically uses the motion as a way to interact with games in the same way a controller would, keeping itself mostly to fast-paced simplistic gestures, there’s plenty of potential to be seen in motion controls on display. TheWarioWaremicro-games lend well to this approach, but when the game fails to acknowledge players making the proper movement, it can easily remind players of worse motion-activated experiences such asMicrosoft’s Kinect.
It just goes to show that while motion controlled video games have made great strides in the last several years, but there’s still work to be done in creating games that don’t suffer from irresponsive controls. Things have changed since theGame Boy Advance andWarioWare: Twisted, but until players and developers find a way to make motion controls more reliably responsive than they already are, these games will remain at least a bit frustrating at the worst times.
As the game progressively gets faster and faster, players have less time to get into the required poses, and some mini-games are very lacking in terms of how well they respond to movement.
