WarioWare: Get It Together! review — Crazy, funny, personable, and limited

WarioWare is the quintessential party game: crazy, fast-paced, silly, and a barrel of laughs. It forms a fun contrast with another recently released Mario multiplayer game, Mario Golf Super Rush. Whereas that game is strategic and methodical, WarioWare: Get It Together! is an all-out crazy game that requires you to react rather than think. It's very typical WarioWare, and it'll be great for your next in-person party, if you're fortunate enough to have one of those.

In probably the world's most literal interpretation of "writing what you know," the game's story is that Wario and his entourage are making a video game and discover it's infested with bugs that threaten to break everything. They enter the game personally to squash these bugs, with each member of the development staff having a different power within cyberspace. This time, the cast isn't just hosting the minigames; they're actually playable.

The cast is diverse, colorful, and full of returning characters, from Mona flinging a boomerang around to 18-Volt throwing discs he appears to conjure from his hair to Ashley lazily flying across the screen, not even pretending to care. The game encourages you to pick out a team of characters that work for you and use them throughout the story and within the multiplayer sections. One downside to that, though, is that the game sometimes forces you to use the characters you don't like in the multiplayer parts.

WarioWare: Get It Together!: What you'll like

Just to get this point across immediately, Get It Together! is very fun. It's fast-paced, silly, and encourages users to rid themselves of the bugbear of "serious gaming." It's best played in small chunks, with each of its world stages lasting roughly 20 minutes at most. The minigames, into which the game throws you right away, each last about 3-5 seconds, and involve you doing things like plugging a nose, pulling a fork out of a sword sheath, and other craziness that you won't have time to fully absorb. The games are hilarious when you notice them, and the game's strange, trippy visuals make an impression even if they're only on-screen for a couple of seconds.

The game is not what I'd call "hard." Some of the minigames can be tougher than others, but the game gives you enough opportunities to continue that even losing isn't a problem. You have four chances before it's game over, and even then you just pay a small coin fee to start over, and the game practically showers you in coins. My reaction time is relatively sluggish, and even I was able to complete the story within a few hours on my own. In co-op things were even easier, if a bit more frenetic. Each of the games is very simple to play even when you're only using one of the Joy-Cons.

The variety of games in the co-op modes was also refreshing. Each of the games will keep multiple players engaged, and there are some that will test the limits of even the most solid friendships. Balloon Bang, for example, in which players must complete minigames while the rest of their party tries to inflate a balloon, is a particularly silly and chaotic example. There's nothing so difficult that it can't be laughed at, and I doubt even the most competitive player could get worked up over a game like this.

Speaking of laughing, if you can pay attention in the middle of all the madness, Get It Together! is really funny. While playing the Nintendo Classics part of the Story Mode, in which the minigames are themed around various other Nintendo properties, I came across one minigame that was basically a teatime with the Fire Emblem: Three Houses characters and laughed my head off. It's very on-brand for WarioWare not to take itself or anyone else too seriously.

WarioWare: Get It Together!: What you won't like

There's one big thing missing from Get it Together!: a decent online multiplayer function. I get it, this is intended to be a party game where people sit in the same room and play together. But this is also the age of the pandemic, and most of my friends aren't in a position to come over to my house to play with me. It seems unfair that I can't play with them, especially if we both own copies of the game. And the Switch has so many good online multiplayer games, it feels regressive for WarioWare not to have the option.

While the slight character diversity makes for a fun cast, it can also cause issues in learning how to control them. Most of them don't have any special powers beyond a different form of movement, so learning new characters can be a pain. The cast is basically divided into characters that are useful and fun and those who aren't, and while your mileage may vary on who's who, I think everybody can agree there are characters in their game who go unused unless the game forces you to use them.

When I say characters will be neglected unless the game forces you to use them, I'm referring to the multiplayer games that force you and your partners to use certain characters. When my roommate and I were playing, we were repeatedly frustrated by the fact that we had to use characters we didn't like or weren't familiar with. Cries of "How do you play this one?" and "I don't know, I never use them!" happened at least three times in my house that night.

The multiplayer minigames are also hit or miss. Some of them are the same kind of chaotic fun as the story mode, but others simply don't have the same juice. The volleyball minigame is good for a couple of laughs but will get boring within a few minutes. The one that really baffled me was the Puck'er Up minigame. My roommate, who played with me, turned out to be very good at the hockey part of it, but every time she scored, she was obligated to play a minigame on a small screen. And every time she lost, the point would go to me. I won the game despite almost literally doing nothing, which didn't seem very fair (as my roommate very emphatically told me).

WarioWare: Get It Together!: Should you play it?

If you have people nearby who would be entertained by a funny and chaotic party game, then WarioWare: Get It Together! will be a perfect game for you. While the number of games and characters means that, inevitably, there will be some that are favorites and some that aren't, it also means that there's something for just about everyone in here. Once you get the hang of the twitchy gameplay, it's very easy to pick up and play.

On the other hand, if you're hoping for something that will entertain you for hours, or for something you can play with friends online, this won't be the game for you. As stated, while there's a lot in this game, not all of it is worth playing, and several of the multiplayer games force you to use characters you might not enjoy. It's not exactly the greatest game on the Nintendo Switch, but it'll be great for local co-op.