Anyone notice you barely have to swim in Wario Land 4?

CM30

CM30

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Seriously. With the part exception of Wildflower Fields (10% underwater), Mystic Lake (where about 50% of the level is underwater) and Domino Row (about 10% is underwater), Wario pretty much never has to enter the water in any level.

Palm Tree Paradise? Optional area.

Monsoon Jungle? A possible death trap with the alligators.

Toxic Landfill? Optional areas.

Toy Block Tower and the Big Board? Just minor pits you have to jump over.

Crescent Moon Village? Optional areas.

Arabian Night? Trap to fly over, so avoidable.

Golden Passage? Trap to avoid.

The game wisely keeps the underwater gameplay to a minimum, at least for people not going for 100% completion.

Anyone else notice this?
 
I never had a problem with the swimming in Wario Land 2-4 (+VB) since you can freely swim in any direction you want, slowly or quickly (very quickly in fact) which is much better than the "jump-swimming" of the 2D Mario games (and WL1).
 
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I actually rather enjoy the swimming sections in the Land games (which isn't something I can say for a lot of games), but making it mostly optional is a design decision I can get behind, if anything giving the player a choice can often be an indicator of thoughtful level design.
 
Well, Wario Land 4 is a really short game (only 18 levels), so it makes perfect sense not to overdo the swimming mechanic.

CM30 said:
Golden Passage? Trap to avoid.
Click to expand...

Also, CM30, there actually is a room where you need to swim in thr Golden Paasage

Room218.jpg
 
I think it has just the right amount of swimming, not that swimming is even a problem in the WL series. Somehow Nintendo found a way to make Wario's swimming so much more satisfying than Mario's. I think it's because Wario swims quite a bit faster.
 
It's because Wario's able to swim in all directions, except downwards, which he can simply sink towards. It's almost as good as Frog Mario from SMB. 3 in that regard. Regular 2d Mario can only swim up, sink down, and move diagonally, sinking and going either left or right or swimming upwards and going either left or right.
Edit: downwards too. Wario's amazing.
 
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wariolandgoldpiramid said:
Well, Wario Land 4 is a really short game (only 18 levels), so it makes perfect sense not to overdo the swimming mechanic.



Also, CM30, there actually is a room where you need to swim in thr Golden Paasage

Room218.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah, forgot about that section.

But as people have said, it's probably a good thing swimming is so rarely needed in this game. I mean, the controls for it work, but underwater gameplay is just never as fun as on land gameplay, is it?
 
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