Game Soup

When I reviewed Infernal Racket a couple years ago, I wondered what would be next for developer Game Soup. Would it be a sequel? Maybe a different kind of platformer? Never would I have guessed that their follow-up would be a self-titled WarioWare clone set in a restaurant. Game Soup is a fast-paced mini-game collection where you only have a few seconds to master each stage and complete the order. It's fun, but is it different enough to stand out? I'm not so sure about that.

Set in a Japanese eatery, Game Soup is a speedy mini-game collection that will test everything from your reflexes to your memory. The idea is to work your way through 24 random bite-sized stages, all of which will take only a few seconds to complete. But don't let the length fool you, because it's not as easy as it sounds. The mini-games are all radically different, with entire stages dedicated to dodging, button mashing, destroying objects, matching objects, killing enemies and everything else you can think of.

If you can complete the two dozen random stages without losing four lives, then you'll be swept away to fight a boss, which in turn will unlock new modes. Assuming you can survive all of these challenges, you'll open up harder versions of the mini-games, as well as a marathon mode that will keep going until you run out of lives. This is definitely the most fun part of Game Soup, though I also like the increasing challenge that comes from the standard campaign mode.

Part of the appeal of WarioWare was how it used our nostalgia for Nintendo to sell us on this crazy concept. I worried that this might put Game Soup at a disadvantage, but that clearly isn't the case. Instead of using licensed characters, they just parody a bunch of classic games, including Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, Pong, Kung Fu, Plants vs. Zombies, Doom and many more. They also work their own Infernal Racket characters into the action, which is fun.

If there's a knock against these mini-games, it's that there aren't enough of them. There are only 46, which feels a bit light. To put it in comparison, the original WarioWar, Inc.: Mega Microame$! debuted with 213 mini-games. Of course, at $3, this is a fraction of the price. But that doesn't make the game any less repetitive. It won't take more than ten or fifteen minutes before you start getting sick of some of the more common stages, and the harder versions you end up unlocking don't change enough to keep them fresh.

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Another knock against the game is that it's not always clear what you're supposed to do. The stage will tell you to spray the wall with graffiti, but how? It turns out that all you have to do is press the action button a bunch of times, but there's no way of knowing that without trial and error. And that's the case with a lot of the mini-games. Some are obvious, but there are so many that aren't at all intuitive. The first few minutes of this game are rough, and it's not until you've figured out what these levels want that it starts to become fun. That's a problem with a lot of games in this genre, but it's especially bad here.

That said, I do like the look of the game. I complain about the paltry collection of levels, but they all look radically different. The game convincingly pivots from a Japanese dating sim to a soccer game to a snake game. I also really like the final boss fight, but maybe that's just because I'm a big fan of classic shoot 'em ups. While I thought it was mostly tasty, I was hoping that Game Soup would be a little more filling.

Much like the developer's first release, Game Soup is too shallow for its own good. The mini-games are fun after you learn what they want, but there aren't enough of them and the ones that are here are too repetitive. On the other hand, I do love the look of most of the stages, especially when they parody classic games. I wish the game would have played more into these old school references. Game Soup is fast and often funny, but the repetitive stages and lack of originality left me hungry.