Wario Land: Shake it! is the latest side-scrolling platformer starring everyone’s favorite anti-Mario, Wario. But can Wario still find success in a side-scroller after years of (totally awesome) microgames?

The story begins when a magical fairyesque creature (called a Merfle) from the world of Yuretopia (which exists inside of an ancient globe inside of a museum), seeks help after his people and queen are imprisoned by the evil Shake King (that’s his name, Shake King!), who also stole Yuretopia’s greatest treasure, the bottomless coin sack. The only “hero” the little merfle can find, however, is Wario. Of course, Wario doesn’t care too much about saving Yuretopia from the Shake King so much as he just wants to get his hands on the bottomless coin sack. That Wario!

The Gameplay in Wario Land: Shake It! works similar to previous Wario Lands, you still run, jump and charge your way through your obstacles and foes. Only now you also use the Wii remote to perform various tasks like throwing your enemies into each other, pilot submarines and, of course, shaking every bit of money you can out of giant sacks of money. In may seem simple at first, but thankfully the game has an added depth to it thanks to the different missions that are found on each level, some of them can be simple like getting a certain amount of money, while others can get difficult like getting through a stage without taking any damage or without defeating any enemies. It adds plenty of replay value to most of the levels but sometimes you just don’t feel like redoing a stage to get every mission done (at least not at first) and can sometimes feel a bit tedious.

Special mention has to go to the beautiful art style of the game. Every character is entirely hand-drawn, all of the animations move fluidly and nothing looks choppy, it all looks amazing in motion. The music can be fun, but unfortunately it’s not all that memorable.

All in all I would say that Wario Land: Shake It! is a very solid and entertaining game, although as I said, it can get a bit tedious at times and it can get somewhat repetitive. But I still think it is a very fun game with beautiful animations. This game now has me wondering if a Mischief Makers sequel could be possible on the Wii. One can only hope.

I’ma Wario, I’ma gonna win!

(1 votes, average: 7.00 out of 10, rated)

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