I just took a little trip to Wario World. I am so glad to be back. Don't get me wrong, I had fun there; it's just that parts of the trip were SO aggravating.

Wario has finally made his way to the big time. No longer confined to the small spaces of a Game Boy, he's brought his particular brand of platforming to the big (as big as your TV is) screen via the GameCube. But, is this a good thing? Well?

Nothing that fantastic on the graphics front. There are some nice designs on the enemies and some of the levels. Out of the thirteen levels (broken into four areas of three and one final mega boss) there are five that are boss-only levels. The remaining eight aren't particularly expansive and don't really give us all that much as far as backgrounds. The environment is pretty darn interactive though, with pillars that you can pick up and use as weapons and some levels where a butt-stomp (Wario's jump and smash move) will get you mired in sand or snow. The enemies also have some pretty good AI. They'll follow you around and gang up on you when you're trying to do something. Sometimes 2 & 1/2D, sometimes full 3D, the camera usually doesn't become an issue. You get some limited control of the angle, which keeps you from running into a cheap death, while not giving too much away.

There are some good sound cues, like when you can hear a nearby Spriteling that needs to be rescued from its prison (just one of the things about this game that reminded me heavily of Rayman 3). The music is okay, though nothing quite memorable. The only real voice is that of Wario himself - I love his evil laugh, but I hate his squeal when he falls. It runs through me like a bad burrito.

The gameplay is pretty much par. Get coins. Find treasures. Use Wario's signature moves, like the aforementioned butt-stomp, charge move, making stunned enemies living weapons, and lots of punching. They did a nice little job of translating Wario's gameplay to the 3D realm of the Cube. But, there wasn't anything really special there. Particularly since all the moves you have at the beginning of the game are the moves you have to the end. Nothing gets added as you go along. All other parts of the gameplay do a good job of getting more difficult as the game progresses. With the first three levels I was truly worried that we had another "way too easy" game on our hands. That worry soon evaporated. The further I got into the game, the better the chance that I would have to use a continue. That is the way it should be. Puzzles became more intricate. Remembering where to backtrack got harder. Hidden levels were more progressively hidden.

However, there were some aspects that got a little too difficult, particularly in the Hidden levels. They start out with climbing one ladder or jumping across one block. They end up with spinning cogs that you have to jump from one to another while evading spiked balls that are trying to knock you off. I tell you; in the later stages I was cursing like a drunken sailor (some of our writers know exactly what I mean) and punching the arm of my chair - especially after hearing Wario's girlie squeal again after the 12,946th time I fell off of the same friggin' platform. Difficult is fine, but some of these hidden levels had me ready to throw my beloved GameCube out the window.

You need to get through all these hidden levels though, if you want to get all the items and unlock all the extras. Every time you complete one of Wario's statues (of himself, of course), you get another half unit of health (marked by hearts, of course - this is a Nintendo game). The more Spritelings you free, the better the ending you get. And, the best of these extras, if you find all the treasures of a level, you unlock a little sample version of Wario Ware to download to your GBA. These little games are an Attention Deficit Disorder patient's best friend (go here to read a review of the full game by our very own Krispy).

I kinda liked this game. It was, for the most part, fun. Nothing unique or special, but fun nonetheless. The excruciatingly hard later hidden levels could have been toned down a bit. I also wish that you didn't have to complete a whole level in order to save - no mid-level saves here. There's no real urge to go through the game again, except to find things that you could have found on your first run-through. But, I don't know. I guess there's something about playing the bad guy (even if it's an evil Mario) that appeals to me.

Maybe that's why I keep rooting for the shark in Jaws.