Woah Dave! (3DS) - Review

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 09 November 2014 / 3,065 Views

Woah Dave! is a retro-style action title in the vein of the original Mario Bros. arcade game. It is also the first title in the Micro Visions line of games from developer Choice Provisions (formerly Gaijin Games). I jumped right into the action and was utterly confused as to how to play. Thus, Woah Dave! actually made me do something I almost never do anymore - read the manual just to understand what was going on in the game. Apparently Dave is the unlucky fellow who is all that stands between the world and its destruction at the hands of an alien invasion.

But the titular Dave character you control does not even seem to be human, instead being visually represented as a yellow square with eyes and blue pants. The promotional art used in the digital manual has a surrealist 80s vibe that unfortunately does not transfer over to how the game actually looks while playing. The background visuals of the stage do however transform the longer you survive, preventing the look from remaining overly static, and the music is delightfully upbeat and nostalgia-inducing.

Eggs and Skull Grenades fall at random from the sky. The eggs will hatch into Green Aliens over time. The newly hatched aliens will then make their way to the bottom of the screen and hurl themselves into lava, at which point they rocket into the air, emerging as more advanced Lava Monsters. The speedier Lava Monster will continue this pattern, becoming Pants Jumpers before reaching its ultimate form as a winged Eyebat. The skull grenades explode after a few seconds with a rather small blast radius. You instantly die if you touch any alien, are close enough to an exploding grenade, or fall into the lava below.

You control Dave by either moving the Circle Pad or D-Pad. Tapping the B button will cause him to jump, while holding it will make him jump and glide slowly down afterwards. You automatically pick up any item you come in contact with, assuming you are not already holding one. You can then throw the item using the Y button. Once you get the hang of the controls and mechanics, disposing of unhatched eggs and other nuisances quickly becomes second nature.

As you play longer and collect more coins eventually aliens in flying saucers show up to cause trouble and destroy some of the stage’s platforms. These nefarious extra-terrestrials require two hits from thrown object to be defeated. A Woah Block will fall from the sky occasionally. The Woah Block looks similar to the POW block from Mario Bros. and performs a similar function. When thrown onto the ground it will destroy all items and enemies on the screen, replacing them with pennies. After some initial skepticism the gameplay began to suck me in with its fast-paced addictive quality.

Your high score is determined by how many pennies you collect. Unfortunately there are no online scoreboards so you will just be competing with yourself or anyone else you let play your copy of the game. It quickly gets annoying inputting initials after each round of play (except when you write it as ASS - that will always be funny). The game has two difficulties, Normal (if you can call it that) and Bonkers, which is unlocked after collecting $1.50 worth of pennies in normal mode. Both modes are complex enough to test your reflexes and adaptability to the randomness the game throws at you.

There are 13 achievements to unlock for accomplishing tasks such as collecting 1,000 pennies, defeating 10 enemies with a single Woah Block, and destroying your first Eyebat. Woah Dave! costs $4.99 from the Nintendo E-Shop which is a tad pricey for such a one-note game. This also has to do with the fact that digital games on dedicated gaming platforms such as the 3DS have yet to achieve price-parity with the lucrative and more economic mobile market (Woah Dave! Is currently available for the much more palatable price of $1.99 on the App Store).

I would have liked Woah Dave! a lot more if it were a minigame found in a bigger title or even part of a retro arcade-inspired collection. As a standalone game at this price, though, it really only offers momentary thrills that are not compelling enough to keep you coming back for more.