The second game in the WarioWare series to be released on the Switch, following 2021’s WarioWare: Get It Together!, WarioWare: Move It! is a successor to WarioWare: Smooth Moves. And it plays like an extended version of the bonus stage from Smooth Moves that prompted you to increase the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome by both using the Wii’s Wiimote and Nunchuk controllers. Here, though, both of the Switch’s Joy-Cons—and, as such, both of your hands—are required for every miniature task that’s thrown your way.
Considering the dearth of new ideas that Move It! brings to the table, you may recognize rather quickly that there wasn’t a whole lot of terrain worth covering with this conceit the first time around. For starters, there are several “forms” (different positions that players take to complete microgames) that have been wholesale recycled from Smooth Moves. Take “Tug-of-War,” which now has you stacking both Joy-Cons on top of another (rather than holding the Wiimote by both hands) to simulate pulling onto a rope. And each of your hips, not just one, will need to get intimate with a Joy-Con if you plan to complete “The Big Cheese.” These types of two-handed twists on older concepts register less as innovation than as lazy repetition.
Move It!’s lack of substantial improvement over prior WarioWare games extends into its single-player campaign, which one can complete in less than two hours, what with the lifesaving “pose” that you can perform reliably refilling your health meter and making failure all but impossible. While completing story-based objectives in a WarioWare game has always served little purpose beyond getting you accustomed with physical actions that you’re expected to pull off at a moment’s notice during a random microgame, Move It! recalls the equally lightweight Get It Together! for the way it really leans into its charming art direction, cast of colorful side characters, and quirky humor to distract us from how little is going on gameplay-wise.
Even with all of these deficiencies, the game can be fun in the moment, especially when you’re grooving to the sheer ridiculousness of a microgame. One minute you’re catching fish between your legs by doing squats, and the next you might be contorting your body to punch snakes in the face. There’s still a few too many microgames that, unless you have psychic-level powers of intuition, kill you almost instantly, but that’s par for the course for a WarioWare game. Of course, not helping matters in that regard is the Switch’s often extremely dodgy motion controls, which are finicky to the point of annoyance. (There’s also a few that involve directly interacting with the controllers’ IR cameras that will, invariably, result in continuous failure).
Move It! can only be played in an environment where players are able to move around freely, as there’s no portable option available. Since the Switch’s biggest technical innovation is its ability to inhabit both the handheld and home console sphere, one can’t help but feel like, by avoiding the alternative, Intelligent Systems is trying to take the easy way out here and simply build on what it’s done before. But the developer has only provided a slight variation of a better, more thought-out experience. Ultimately, Move It! ends up sharing far too many similarities with its overweight, zigzag-shaped mustachioed protagonist, as both are crude, frequently annoying, at times entertaining, and, above all, carbon copies of something else that’s far more polished.
This game was reviewed with code provided by Golin on November 3.
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