Wario Ware Touched! Impressions

F

Fowler

Member
This game rocks hardcore.

http://fowler.1up.com/

Bliss on a card. Let me get my first nitpick out of the way first: The story sequences for the characters are too damned long. Look, I appreciate that those wacky interludes are what ties the game together and that they can be funny, but Wario Ware is a quick-hit game and they take TOO DAMNED LONG. I swear the Mona one clocks in at around five minutes, which is ridiculous.

Otherwise, complaints are thin on the ground. To be blunt, it rocks. Everything about this game is awesome. I love the little touches, like the title screen being a smorgasbord of interactive elements to play with, or the "level select" being a bunch of characters freely walking around on the touchscreen (naturally you can prod them and pick them up and move them around to your little heart's desire). Hell, the game even occasionally uses both screens to good effect -- either showing a bit more of the minigame, introducing a new element, or in one story sequence, used for a little flashback sequence.

All the old favourites are back as characters in this one. I've only played through four, but alongside Wario I've seen Mona, Jimmy, Dr. Crygor, Kat & Ana, 9-Volt & 18-Volt, and even WARIO-MAN from Wario Ware Twisted (the tilt-sensor-packin' GBA sequel, yet to see the light of day in the US). There appear to be more games per character than Twisted or the original, but I'm not too sure there.

I don't really want to spoil particular games (since that is most of the fun), but there's been a fairly decent variety and I will talk about a few. Thus far I've only ever had to use the stylus, so there's no word on whether the A button will be ever called into action, but since the stylus is more capable than Twisted's tilt sensor (which was basically a clumsy D-pad) there seems to be plenty to do. Some games call for:

Precision: Tap the tips of tiny fireworks to make them explode; Scrubbing: Rub wide areas of the screen to erase a picture from a blackboard; Speed: Rub the stylus repeatedly on a roll of toilet paper quickly to pull the whole roll out; Drawing: Mark out a safe path for a skiier; Something else entirely: Use the stylus to make a hand wave good-bye.

There have also been a few cool re-workings of older games. Two of my favourites so far are the dripping-snot game (different woman, this time you need to cut the snot instead of sniff it back in) or the pets (pet the cat to put it to sleep). Either way, the games are tons of fun.

I should note that it's pretty hard. Not amazingly so for Wario Ware vets (I had been playing the original virtually non-stop until Twisted came out), but it's certainly harder than Twisted. One thing for sure: The time limits are shorter. By the fourth character I was hitting time limits shorter than anything you'd experience outside the very highest speed setting on the other to games.

Oh, one more thing: This game is nuts. I say this because after every character you beat, you unlock a bonus. And the bonuses are just damned weird. The first one was a calculator -- an actual working calculator on the touchscreen that only allows you to add or subtract; no multiplication or division for you! There's also a countdown clock, a metronome and a plate of pudding. Yeah, a plate of pudding.
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Sounds awesome! Hard is good, i wanna get as many hours out of this game as possible. Import friendly? I saw one minigame where you had to complete some kanji or whatever it was.
 
Wario Ware DS: Fuck all NDS games (besides Advance Wars DS)

This is THE game that will make me like the Nintendo DS
 
My wallet is crying. Seriously.

Is there a lot of variation in the mini-games if they all use the stylus? I dunno, it sounds like they'd all be a bit similar, but that's probably just my boring imagination.
 
mumu said:
Sounds awesome! Hard is good, i wanna get as many hours out of this game as possible. Import friendly? I saw one minigame where you had to complete some kanji or whatever it was.
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Nothing that REQUIRES Japanese yet, though the usual "wait, what the fuck?" that comes from not being able to read the instructions is there. I actually like that though :-)

GDJustin said:
How are the bosses? Spoiler tag it if you feel like you must.
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So-so -- there's an awesome one involving flies (I say no more!) and a really crap one involving a bucket.

Wario64 said:
Wario Ware DS: Fuck all NDS games (besides Advance Wars DS)

This is THE game that will make me like the Nintendo DS
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So. Goddamned. Right.

Mr. Lemming said:
Since I see it mentioned in the impressions... is Twisted coming to the US?
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Yep, I believe so.
 
Great King Bowser said:
My wallet is crying. Seriously.

Is there a lot of variation in the mini-games if they all use the stylus? I dunno, it sounds like they'd all be a bit similar, but that's probably just my boring imagination.
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Thus far... no. There's a greater variation here than Twisted anyway, which (though very good!) generally was "wave it left/right".
 
mine shipped today from play-asia. They have stock now. £27 shipped airmail to the UK (think thats $50?)

I hope its better than twisted which I liked but, like fowler, I found limited by the interface.
 
mrklaw said:
mine shipped today from play-asia. They have stock now. £27 shipped airmail to the UK (think thats $50?)

I hope its better than twisted which I liked but, like fowler, I found limited by the interface.
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How long does shipping take with Play-Asia?
 
i vaguely want a ds for this and feel the magic. but it seems ludicrous to buy a console for a couple minigame collections, which are almost by definition short and extremely shallow. oh well.
 
Despite the length, I like Feel the Magic better than Wario Ware for the GBA.

Maybe I'll actually like the story elements in this one if they fit with the gameplay.
 
drohne said:
i vaguely want a ds for this and feel the magic. but it seems ludicrous to buy a console for a couple minigame collections, which are almost by definition short and extremely shallow. oh well.
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Yeah, but they OWN. They might be short, the games might be shallow, but they're tons of fun, and the Feel the Magic's presentation is unmatched by any other portable game to this point. You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you skipped them, sir.
 
If any game is gonna make me shell out for a DS, it's gonna be this one.

That and the fact that I have no way to play my GBA carts anymore since I gave my SP to a lady friend and sold off the cube and player. Guess I do need a stinkin' DS after all!
 
drohne said:
i vaguely want a ds for this and feel the magic. but it seems ludicrous to buy a console for a couple minigame collections, which are almost by definition short and extremely shallow. oh well.
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haha, wario ware has lasted longer than any game I've played this gen.
 
Justin Bailey said:
haha, wario ware has lasted longer than any game I've played this gen.
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Yeah, as long as there are elevator stages we're all set for infinite gaming goodness.
 
i've been replaying the original wario ware on gba, for the first time in a long time, and i think i like it more than ever. some of the little game setups are just hilariously weird or ugly or stupid, and that they're gone by the time you finish laughing makes them even funnier. you forget that aspect of the game -- really the best aspect of the game -- when you play it regularly.

but it seems like wario ware is a counterpoint to more traditional games, something you play inbetween sessions of astro boy or castlevania. still, if the ds has dropped to $99 by february or march, i'll have a hard time resisting this.

edit: of course you can play the elevator levels for high scores, but this is purely a matter of acclimation and reflex, and it's impossibly shallow. when you lose, you can't say "well, that didn't work; i'll try this instead." there's nothing to think about. your brain can't find purchase. a lot of games are unfairly called mindless, but wario ware genuinely is.
 
Raoul Duke said:
If any game is gonna make me shell out for a DS, it's gonna be this one.

That and the fact that I have no way to play my GBA carts anymore since I gave my SP to a lady friend and sold off the cube and player. Guess I do need a stinkin' DS after all!
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"Damn Carl, I thought you knew about them hoes"

I'm hoping you're a ATHF fan
 
Hoping desperately for a March Price Drop...would pick up Mario/Wario and a DS along with Jungle Beat. Best. Birthday. Ever.
 
dunno about airmail 'bubble pack', but should be fairly quick. My wario ware twisted came in about two days, but that was TNT courier.

I don't know where they ship from, but airmail from Japan usually gets to me in 2-3 days.
 
Very very nice impressions Fowler, thanks! I'm soo tempted to import this, but it'll be out in just a few months and I think I can wait it out. You got me quite hyped though.
 
mrklaw said:
mine shipped today from play-asia. They have stock now. £27 shipped airmail to the UK (think thats $50?)

I hope its better than twisted which I liked but, like fowler, I found limited by the interface.
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Damn all I have to pay is $50 to get this baby early!?
 
Haha, one of the new characters is a little goth witch girl with awesome spooky Halloween J-Pop music (don't really have any other way to describe it). And she has one of the best games ever:

There's a fire on a mountain and you've gotta position something to put out the fire. It's a statue from a fountain. A statue of a little boy peeing. So you gotta move him so his pee puts out the fire.

I'm going to bed now -- it's 6am damnit -- but I'll answer whatever questions I can tomorrow!
 
Johnny Nighttrain said:
so what's the deal with multiple DS multiplayer? is it in there or not? if it's in there, that's gonna be the only thing that prevents me from importing.
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There is no multiplayer. It was stated upthread.
 
Templar Wizard said:
nice impressions fowler, but with one BIG mistake:

the tilt-er is not a clumsy d-pad. oh you got it wrong...oh so wrong.
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<shrug> Functionally it is. Of course, half the fun is waving your limbs around fairly spastically...

Socreges said:
Fowler, Touched or Twisted?
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Hrm. It's early yet, and both games are great, but thus far Touched. Still, don't let that turn you off Twisted -- it's fantastic and a totally unique experience.
 
Personally I prefer Twisted over Touch so far after a day of messing around with it.

The motion sensor may have just been a d-pad, but I had a lot more fun swinging around like mad than tapping the screen with a pen. Touched is pretty good, but I dunno the games just haven't grabbed me as much as the previous two. Sure, some are great. But this is the first MiW where I've gone "huh?" more than a few times on mini-games trying to figure out wtf I was supposed to be doing and that's with being able to read Japanese.

I'm not sure what I feel about the stylus as the control method. On 80% of the games it's perfect, but there's a few games where the detection is funky (for example the flower picking on Mona. I tested that in the zukan for a bit and there were random times when hitting on a petal for 3-4 secs straight would not do anything). The parts where the detection seems off aren't many, but still it's frusterating when you lose a life or die because the game isn't picking up your movements. The motion sensor was always incredibly precise and so I never once felt cheated like I have a few times already in touched. (To be fair, this might be because my stylus alignment was off. I re-calibrated my stylus and it seems to be fine now)

Also I miss the tons of unlockables that were in Twisted. All the little toys and statues and cds were really awesome and the game kept rewarding you for playing.

On the plus side the graphics are fantastic. The color pallette and resolution of DS really shine with this game. I'd easily say it was the best looking game of the launch ones I picked up.

Still Touch is a very fun game, but I'm finding not as GoTY amazing as Twisted.

btw, I think my game glitched/froze once. During the Mona section before the games actually start there is a part where she is on stage with a guitar and it says "play!" and it showed a guitar on the bottom screen and I couldn't do anything. I tried touching everywhere and using all the buttons, trying to strum the guitar, trying to do anything and it wouldn't work. Finally I yelled into the machine thinking maybe the mic was being used and finally something happened and the band started playing, but then it still said "play!" and I couldn't do anything again. Eventually I just reset and skip straight to her games the next time.
 
I thought twisted wasn't quite as good as the original - bit too much repetition of mechanic - just steer/tilt to avoid/catch.

The ones that make you go mental are the best. The umbrella balancing is fantastic, and I almost inevitably end up thrashing the GBA around when it gets unbalanced! Anyone tried it on the DS yet?


Looking forward to Touched! (still)
 
mrklaw said:
I thought twisted wasn't quite as good as the original - bit too much repetition of mechanic - just steer/tilt to avoid/catch.

The ones that make you go mental are the best. The umbrella balancing is fantastic, and I almost inevitably end up thrashing the GBA around when it gets unbalanced! Anyone tried it on the DS yet?


Looking forward to Touched! (still)
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I tried it on the DS and it was pretty much the same. A little tougher to use since the DS is big and heavy, thus a little less fun to use. Still playable though in case you don't want to bring your DS and GBA with you on a trip.

Also can anyone else playing this tell me if they experienced a glitch at that part where I had to resest the system to get out? Otherwise what do you normally do in that scene? I wanna know what I missed.

thanks,
 
Fowler, about that minigame you highlighted:

that statue is the "dakara" sports drink cherubim from a series of popular advertisements here in Japan. they always drink the drink, chat some, then pee at the end of the commrecial.

Sawaru is okay but I'm afraid my initial impressions are Mawaru > Sawaru ... Mawaru just FELT like a cool new system of playing. Sawaru just feels ... I dunno. Less complete, less challenging. And I agree about the Mawaru sensor always being 100% fair, while some of the Sawaru games have input issues.

Bebpo: I had issues with that part of Mona's, too. It says "'Hiku!" ("Play!") so I just kept strumming back and forth over the fingerboard part where you play a guitar. It worked, but took 15 seconds or so to register each time.

Also, I want to nominate Mona's FIVE MINUTE UNSKIPPABLE introductory sequence for some sort of special "fuck you" award.
 
When its all said and done watch them give it a 6.6!


Edit: I think I'm gonna order this ofr my wife today for Christmas!
 
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