Nintendo Switch is about to launch a family-friendly party game – and it’s from the Mario series

NINTENDO is no stranger to party games, having created dozens of them across its 35-year history.

One of the more bizarre party game series is WarioWare, the latest game of which is launching this week for the Nintendo Switch.

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We’ve gone hands-on with the game a few times in the past, but with the final copy of WarioWare: Move It in hand, we put it through its paces.

Believe me when I say I go to the gym regularly and, while I’m there, I’m doing all I can to strengthen my knees.

But it’s a work in progress, and while I can do a deep squat on command, I’m gonna feel a click on the way up.

WarioWare: Move It is a very physical game — it abandons button presses, for the most part, and replaces them with Forms.

This is a direct sequel to the Nintendo Wii’s WarioWare Smooth Moves, so it’s all motion controls, all the time.

The game even makes clear that you’re intended to stand up while playing – and that’s exactly where those creaky knees come in.

The Squat Form is just not reasonable for the knees of a 33-year-old that sits at a desk for at least 40 hours a week. 

A Squat Form of course also indicates that you’ll need enough space to stand up and, well, squat.

In fact, you’ll need enough space to stretch your arms out to your sides and spin in a circle.

Combine that with up to four potential players and, well, suddenly it becomes difficult to find the ideal environment to actually play WarioWare Move It.

Ring Fit Adventure is a game that demands space, and WarioWare Move It asks for just as much, but for a microgame collection.

That’s for the ideal play experience, anyway – you don’t have a JoyCon strapped to your leg here, so it’s much easier to “cheat” your Forms by mimicking the general position of the JoyCon.

Cheating your Form can make the movements you’re supposed to perform more difficult, mind, and some microgames seem entirely cryptic unless you dip into the Museum and play with it until you understand exactly what it wants.

One microgame might simply ask you to waggle a single JoyCon – easy enough – while another will ask you to intuit which button you’re supposed to press from a fairly vague indicator.

Once you understand a game, that’s it, you get it, and can complete it on command, but the quick-fire nature of these microgames should mean that you can understand what it wants in a split second.

A vast majority of the games here succeed with that, while a bunch of them are just unnaturally obtuse.

But let’s say you’ve got the space and the controllers (a JoyCon pair per player, and don’t forget wrist straps) for a full multiplayer game in the ideal conditions: WarioWare Move It is great fun.

The microgames are silly but satisfying — as long as you understand what it wants from you.

It does also move a bit fast at times, as if you don’t have the JoyCon in the right position by the time the game starts, the motion controls will be unable to detect your movements properly.

In other words, don’t look at your phone just because it’s not your turn.

Some of the microgames in this collection are genuinely brilliant and made me smile from ear to ear, whether that’s because of how silly they are, or how smart they were in their implementation.

Some of the others, meanwhile, just had me confused and frustrated, at least when I first encountered them. 

It’s difficult to reconcile how much I loved some aspects of WarioWare Move It, and how annoying other bits were.

I dreaded having certain Forms pop up in the microgame collections, while others got me excited to see what would happen next.

The single-player experience can certainly be a mixed bag, but that’s not what WarioWare is really about.

This is a game for multiplayer sessions with friends, and that’s where it thrives.

If you’re going into WarioWare expecting to while away the hours by yourself, it’s not going to work out.

But if you pull WarioWare Move It out during parties for kids, or with adult friends and a few drinks, then it’s going to be a sensation.

Move It is simultaneously the best WarioWare party game from Nintendo, and most awkward to actually play.

Score: 3/5

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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk