Have I already reviwed this game? Who cares. Wario Land II

[A Genius]

If I have reviewed this game before, I hadn't gotten all the treasures and beaten the final evil level yet. I only did that a few hours ago. Wario Land II, anyway, is a direct sequel to the first Wario Land, and this time around, Mario's out of the picture completely. His role in the last one was miniscule anyway, so it'll be hard to notice. Either way, this is one of the first video games I ever actually beat, and when I say beat, I don't mean completely, I only got one of the endings, I think I finished up all but one of the endings when I was about, oh, 12, and got the last one a couple of hours ago, I'm not really sure what I'm talking about here, I'm not stringing coherent sentences together, and... NEXT PARAGRAPH!! Eh, I'm not funny today.

Anyway, the story is that Captain Syrup steals Wario's treasures , and he goes to get them back. There are... six endings. One of them you get when you get all the treasures and map pieces.

You get those things inside the level, treasures you get by finding a door with a dumb little minigame in it, map pieces you get when you beat another dumb little minigame after you complete a level, when you collected all of them, a THIRD dumb minigame will be unlocked, which is vaguely like the old Flagman Game and Watch game, only with only one game mode (but the game mode included is more varied). Minigames are nothing special.

It's the main game that's fun. hroughout the game, Wario will have to get himself smashed, impaled, frozen, killed, zapped, burnt, zombified, etc etc, and he'll end up living through it all to get smashed, impaled, frozen, killed, zapped, burnt, and zombified again! You have to respect that.

Some of the levels in here are really EVIL. The really last level is the most vile of all. Most of the haunted mansion levels also piss me off. The bosses kick ass, though. You'll fight a pirate bird, a hobo, any number of giant monsters with pitchforks (titled "spearmen" even though they don't carry spears and they're not men), a giant bee, Captain Syrup in the command of a number of machines (My favorite is the one where she ride a trolley and controls a robotic giant Pitchforkdude from above), and, most peoples' favorite, a rabbit that plays basketball. How do you beat him? You win in a game of basketball. But there aren't any balls (actually, the rabbit has plenty of balls, but you get hurt if you touch them), so you have to roll him into a ball and throw him in the basket. Crazy fun.

Music is nice and catchy. The main theme is cool, the boss theme is good, and the final boss them is also pretty nifty. There are some other good themes.

Graphics are great. Wario looks very good, and his enemies look nice. Some more animations would've been interesting (they added a lot more animation in the sequel), but I'm not complaining. Also of note: I've only played th black and white version. The screenshots of the color version do not look very good to me, but that's life, and I'm not reviewing that version). The big quip on graphics is that there are CONSTANT slowdowns. Every time Wario gets hurt, and there's more than one enemy on screen, there's a slowdown. It sucks.

Replay value, well, with 50 levels, 50 treasures, 50 map pieces to collect, a bonus minigame (that kind of sucks), and a secret level (which is a time attack stage), there's plenty to come back for. Only problem is, once you've unlocked everything and gotten a good time on the final level, that's pretty much it. It's gonna take you a looong time to do all that though, so no worries there.

Overall, you shouldn't miss this game. That's it. That's all I'm saying.

Oh and I'm going to take a nod from Douglas, and use a pros'cons type rating system.

Pros(e)
Great graphics
Nice, memorable music
Lots to explore
Very difficult (but not too annoying)
Waluigi isn't in it (Hey, I can list that as a pro for every game ever made. What pros does Goemon GB boast? Waluigi isn't in it! Hooray!)
Fun gameplay
Relatively high replay value

Cons
Poorly done minigames
Slows down a lot
Those enemies that look kind of like skunks that shoot electricity at you
Zombie Wario moves too damn slowly (I didn't mention most of these cons in my review, did I? Meh.)
The monsters carying pitchforks are called spearmen, even though they don't carry spears and are clearly not men.

Rating: 8/10

-A Genius (How the hell did they get the name, "SPEARMAN"? Jesus!)

[Chunky Is Teh n00b]

You suck. Waluigi is teh roxxors!

Comment on that Spearman thing, have you ever played Megaman?

[ February 16, 2004, 07:00 PM: Message edited by: Chunky Ate Teh Marshmallows ]