MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Wario Land 5 (Demo), by Mario350
Review Author	Roo
Created	Aug 19 2021, 12:56 AM

General Commentary and Game Overview

Wario Land 5 doesn't exactly fulfill the title's lofty promise of building on the formula of its supposed predecessor, Wario Land 4. It doesn't really even build on the formula of Wario Land 1. It does, however, manage to be more playable than E.T. on the Atari 2600, which is a start.

Pros	+ It vaguely feels like a Wario Land game + The graphics are mostly decent
Cons	- The level design isn't very good - The sound effects are poorly chosen/edited - The music cuts off entirely for some godforsaken reason - The boss fight is laughably stupid

Impressions

Gameplay 4 / 10	The gameplay mainly consists of running around slightly open-ended-ish, confusing levels, looking for a crown (I think?) that opens the path to the exit. It's a decent enough idea, though the fact that both main levels in the demo let you skip either a huge portion of the level or the ENTIRE level just by walking to the left is a bit of a bummer. You can also collect gems, which don't seem to do anything at all. Fun. The engine is decent at imitating a Wario Land game. It's got shoulder tackling, it's got ground-pounding... and that's about it. It does have a few issues, like occasionally getting stuck on the scenery, but those aren't generally a bother. Of course, the creator of this game didn't actually make the engine (or even any changes to it, seemingly), so I probably shouldn't give them much credit. There's also a boss fight that consists of you charging into Captain Syrup ten times. She will occasionally damage you even if you're charging, which is obviously a very clever reference to her status as a ruthless, cunning pirate leader and not a bug. One more point-out-worthy thing is that you can get stuck on the first proper level if you don't ground-pound the tiles below the Mega Mole before going down. Boo.
Graphics 7 / 10	Most of the graphics are from Wario Land 4 and work well enough. For some reason, though, the first level consists mostly of Wario Land 2 tiles, which don't exactly go well with the WL4/SMW objects. One thing I have to give props for is the usage of Mega Moles as the enemies. Even if they don't fit the artstyle perfectly, it's still nice to see people using lesser-known beings from the Mario universe in their games.
Sound 5 / 10	The midis used as background music are decent, but not very remarkable. What's odd, however, is that the game plays two different midis back-to-back and then just... stays quiet. Not exactly the most pleasant way of implementing background music. A lot of the sound effects are either very odd (like a "you cleared [something]!" sound effect being used for killing enemies) or poorly implemented (the jumping and charging sound effects play like half a second after you press the button, for example).

Final Words

Not very good, but perhaps worth it if you're hankering for a "Wario Land-like" and have played through most of everything else.

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