Wario World INFO BOX SYSTEMS GameCube PUBLISHERS Nintendo RELEASE DATES Europe - 06/20/03 NA - 06/24/03 Japan - 05/27/04 Nintendo goes to Treasure to, once again, make an awesome action game. Only this time the game isn't so much awesome as it is mediocre. There are four world's within this game, each with two levels and one boss battle filling them out. The levels are stocked with all sorts of Treasure for you to find. Of course, if you're not into collecting treasure then you can pretty much just skip past all of it and run to the end of the level. It's too bad the majority of the levels are incredibly dull. The game is supposed to be a platform/brawler of sorts, but the whole brawling part is pretty much left untouched as you can easily run past the majority of enemies. There are times when you are suddenly forced to fight off a set of baddies for a few seconds which only ruins the flow of the game. You are forced to fight them simply because you're supposed to fight in a game like this, but you've probably been skipping all the enemies so what better way to get you to fight then to force you to? I think a better level design would have eliminated any need for those forced fights. Anyway, the levels are designed in similar fashion to those from the Crash series, or maybe just the early Crash games (I never did play a lot of that series) in that you have a fixed direction for the most part but the levels are still completely in 3D. More like a 2.5D sidescroller I suppose. The boss battles are, of course, big and exciting. Some bosses are easily beaten in the standard 3D platformer method of simply running in circles to dodge attacks while you wait your turn to fight back, while others have you jumping and running all over the place. There's fun to be had with the game, but the levels are pretty unexciting, the game is short, and it's not hard at all. There are a couple of interesting sections in the levels, such as when you can only see your reflection in a mirror, so your up and down directions are reversed, or all the quick platform sections that are handled in a similar fashion to the secret areas in Mario Sunshine. And if there's simply not enough there you can always go back to collect all the hidden treasure.