I had never beaten a Wario Land game before, having only played Shake It on the Wii for a little while around the time it released, so after hearing all the praise for the series in recent years, I decided to finally give it a proper try, and went for the game that's most easily accessible at the moment, being Wario Land 3, since it's included with the Game Boy app on NSO.
I was mostly familiar with the fast-paced wacky zany gameplay featured in Wario Land-inspired games like Pizza Tower or Antonblast, but it seems that style stems mostly from Wario Land 4 and Shake It, because Wario Land 3 is certainly not frantic at all like those games! In fact I was surprised to see a fairly methodical Metroidvania platformer! It's interesting to see the usual facets of a game of that genre applied to a platformer, like revisiting previous levels after getting new power-ups to explore a path that you previously couldn't reach. That satisfying sense of getting progressively stronger is also present, of course.
Though I do feel they went a little overboard with the concept, considering there's other elements in stages that impede access to certain areas that are dependant on finding specific treasures in other stages, and they're not linear at all, meaning for example that a treasure from the last world might open a new path on a stage from the second world. The game always tells you which stages are affected by the treasure you acquired, but sometimes it's multiple stages at once, so you better memorize it or grab a pen to write them down.
It's charming seeing how the treasures you collect visually affect the world map to open up new levels, like getting a bunch of chemicals that make a volcano explode and open a huge crater in the middle of the map, which can then be explored as a new level. As for the levels themselves, it's fun to explore them and solve the many puzzles scattered across them to get the treasures, some of which can be fairly tricky. You also gotta be observant and pay attention to roadblocks that you can't overcome on your first visit so that you know exactly where to return once you get some power-ups or specific treasures.
However, there is a MASSIVE caveat for my enjoyment with this game: I completely and utterly abused of the rewind feature, since I played this on the Switch. You see, this game's level design wants to screw you up every step you take, with every stage being littered with enemies or hazards that either immobilize you for a few seconds or bump you back to a previous section of the stage after you spent a while getting to that point. Even the bosses exhibit that behavior, with any minor mistake making you exit their arena and make you work your way back just to get another shot at it, so every boss basically has a one-hit kill.
I guess it makes sense for a game associated with Wario to be constantly giving you the middle finger and annoying you, and I usually do my best not to use save states or rewind, but this one is way too infuriating to deal with. Maybe if I played the game on original hardware when I was a kid I'd have the patience to deal with the bullshit, but nowadays I don't have the time nor the patience.
So yeah, I liked experiencing Wario Land 3 thanks to the rewind feature, but I'm sure I would've dropped it if it wasn't for it.
I was mostly familiar with the fast-paced wacky zany gameplay featured in Wario Land-inspired games like Pizza Tower or Antonblast, but it seems that style stems mostly from Wario Land 4 and Shake It, because Wario Land 3 is certainly not frantic at all like those games! In fact I was surprised to see a fairly methodical Metroidvania platformer! It's interesting to see the usual facets of a game of that genre applied to a platformer, like revisiting previous levels after getting new power-ups to explore a path that you previously couldn't reach. That satisfying sense of getting progressively stronger is also present, of course.
Though I do feel they went a little overboard with the concept, considering there's other elements in stages that impede access to certain areas that are dependant on finding specific treasures in other stages, and they're not linear at all, meaning for example that a treasure from the last world might open a new path on a stage from the second world. The game always tells you which stages are affected by the treasure you acquired, but sometimes it's multiple stages at once, so you better memorize it or grab a pen to write them down.
It's charming seeing how the treasures you collect visually affect the world map to open up new levels, like getting a bunch of chemicals that make a volcano explode and open a huge crater in the middle of the map, which can then be explored as a new level. As for the levels themselves, it's fun to explore them and solve the many puzzles scattered across them to get the treasures, some of which can be fairly tricky. You also gotta be observant and pay attention to roadblocks that you can't overcome on your first visit so that you know exactly where to return once you get some power-ups or specific treasures.
However, there is a MASSIVE caveat for my enjoyment with this game: I completely and utterly abused of the rewind feature, since I played this on the Switch. You see, this game's level design wants to screw you up every step you take, with every stage being littered with enemies or hazards that either immobilize you for a few seconds or bump you back to a previous section of the stage after you spent a while getting to that point. Even the bosses exhibit that behavior, with any minor mistake making you exit their arena and make you work your way back just to get another shot at it, so every boss basically has a one-hit kill.
I guess it makes sense for a game associated with Wario to be constantly giving you the middle finger and annoying you, and I usually do my best not to use save states or rewind, but this one is way too infuriating to deal with. Maybe if I played the game on original hardware when I was a kid I'd have the patience to deal with the bullshit, but nowadays I don't have the time nor the patience.
So yeah, I liked experiencing Wario Land 3 thanks to the rewind feature, but I'm sure I would've dropped it if it wasn't for it.
Phantasm
12 days ago