Touch! Drag! Spin! Rub! Draw! Blow!

Three seconds on the timer, and the game has just presented a bunch of balloons. You know what you have to do. You frantically jab the screen, the last balloon disappearing from the screen at that crucial second. Before you have time to collect your bearings, the game starts hurling fruit at you, and your stylus transforms from a pin into a blade. Swiping them as they fly across the screen, you barely have time to congratulate yourself on a job well done before the game throws another challenge into your face. This time, you need to blow on the screen. You stare, mystified, at the handheld, thinking 'what the…' – but before you're given a chance to complete that particular sentence, the challenge ends, your final life drops down from the upper screen. You lose.

Poke! Wisper sweet nothings! (yes we know our pics are japanese.. sorry)

You see, sometimes, life throws unexpected things your way. Perhaps you've had one of those days where every minute is taken over by one strange, baffling event after another; one of those days where you're asked to do something so bewildering that you can't even question the reasoning behind it – you just do what you're being asked to do, and move on, because you know that sometimes life doesn't offer any explanations for the most befuddling experiences.

As you might now realise, WarioWare: Touched! has a lot in common with one of those days.

Like the previous games of the franchise, Touched! is essentially a compilation of hundreds of random, bizarre 'mircogames' that last a few seconds each and force the player to suspend disbelief (yes, the game did just ask you to iron a shirt) and employ lightening fast reactions in order to succeed. There are plenty of different 'characters' that you can select as you progress, each with a varied selection of microgames that usually revolve around a set theme. No buttons are needed throughout the game – the only methods of control are the touch screen and the microphone, which soon proves to be a double-edged sword. While using the touch screen controls is delightfully instinctive and simple, the microphone by comparison is awkward and ridiculous, throwing the freedom of playing the game on public transport or among cynical friends out the window straight away. Thankfully, only a small proportion of the microgames actually require you to blow into the screen, but it's still a problem that should have been considered.

How that mouse got stuck there in the first place is anyones guess.

But this is only a minor flaw. Like the previous games, WarioWare: Touched is a wonderful amalgam of insane, creative, brilliantly intuitive three second bursts of sheer lunacy, which threaten to consume your life – it will lock you into a world of sheer madness and will refuse to let you out. Which is fine – you won't want to leave. The graphics retain their unique artistic feel that captures the essence of lunacy and brilliantly impulsive gameplay that Wario's new franchise offers, and reflect the bizarre nature of this excellent title.

Now made even more instinctive and straightforward thanks to the stylus, the game encourages you to poke, tap, scribble and rotate your way to victory. There is a massive amount of microgames to discover, all held by the individual characters you come across as you play though the modes. The boss stages for each character, unlike the regular microgames, do not require a time limit – however, they are considerably more challenging than the standard 'poke finger up nose' (seriously) games. They make equally good use of the DS features, thankfully, and provide a refreshing challenge for the easily bored gamer. Though how you could become bored with the arbitrary psychosis of Touched! is beyond us.

Never before did we hate having so much loo roll.

If, inexplicably, you're still looking for more entertainment from this highly amusing title, the new addition of a 'Toy Room' allows you to unlock and play with a multitude of little novelties such as yo-yos and paper aeroplanes – while most of these are little more than mindless distractions, hidden gems such as the two-player-on-one-DS Ping Pong game make for a pleasant diversion.

The fact that this game is outselling Super Mario 64 DS in Japan is a testament to its quality. Trust us when we say that WarioWare: Touched! is the very best DS launch title, and is practically guaranteed to keep you entertained for months. A must-have.