🕹️ New release: Lunar Lander Beyond

Wario Land 4

aka: Wario Land Advance: Yōki no Otakara, Wǎlìōu Xúnbǎo Jì
Moby ID: 5588

Game Boy Advance version

great platform game. A bit short though

The Good
Graphics are very cool. Nothing especially spectacular, but they're done with style. The sound is quite amazing for a GBA game : there even is digitized speech. The tunes are good enough to be remembered. Gameplay is quite faultless : super level design, amazing. And I thought you couldn't do anything new with 2D platform games. How wrong was I ! And you got to fight great bosses !

The Bad
While the level design was great, it is a minor annoyance that the aim of a level is not to reach the exit but to collect 4 pieces of jewel, find the key, hit the portal switch and get back to the portal in a time limit. Miss a jewel or the key and you have to replay the level or you can't beat the game. Usually, it isn't very difficult to collect everything in the first run, but a couple of levels will frustrate you : "Where the h is that d jewel piece ?" will you scream.

Also, even with the occasional frustration the game can be finished in less that 10 hours, which is too short for me. Of course, you can play the game on hard mode or unlock a couple of secrets, but this isn't enough to keep the replay factor high

The Bottom Line
Warioland 4 is a very good 2D platform game, technically impressive. Level design is amazing. It's just too bad you can complete it in less than 10 hours.

by Xa4 (300) on January 16, 2002

Back to Reviews