Review: Wario Land: Shake It (Wii)

Tue, Oct 28, 2008

In recent years, Mario’s money-grubbing cousin Wario has found his way into the Nintendo spotlight. He holds his own in Mario Kart; he’s unstoppable in Super Smash Bros. Brawl; and his popular WarioWare minigame collections have had critically acclaimed outings on Game Boy Advance, DS and Wii.

But it wasn’t always this way: back in the 90’s, Wario used to star in some of Nintendo’s very best portable platformers.

Now, seven years after Nintendo seemingly dropped the Wario Land franchise, Wario has finally returned to his money-grubbing platformer roots with Wario Land: Shake It. The question is, will patient, loyal fans be satisfied?

That all depends on their tolerance for repetition.

Compared to 2007’s critically panned Master of Disguise, Shake It looks like quite the game at first glance. As the first Wario Land on home console, the game is polished and pretty; the story (one-time foe Captain Syrup offers Wario a bottomless bag of coins in exchange for rescuing the residents of the “Shake Dimension”) is blissfully forgotten after a single animated intro; and of course, the game features Wii motion controls that shake things up a little.

But it became clear, three hours and 33% into the game, that your $50 doesn’t buy you a whole lot of depth to go with that flash.

To challenge the Shake King, rescue a Queen and claim your giant moneybag as reward, Wario Land: Shake It tasks you with defeating the bosses of the five differently themed realms of the Shake Dimension… each themselves guarded by a mystical seal that can only be unlocked by the power of four Shake Dimension denizens… who just so happen to be caged up in the four levels immediately preceding the boss fight. Standard Wario fare, to be sure.

With few exceptions, each of the game’s game’s 20+ levels play out exactly the same way. Proceeding from the stage’s extreme left to extreme right to find the caged half-bird, half-elf creature, Wario invariably shakes the cage, triggers an alarm, and must backtrack through the entire level before a timer runs out. This is repetitive, to be sure — but the real problem lies in how underwhelmingly easy each level can be.

Rather than fill the game’s levels with clever puzzles and nastily placed enemies to provide a challenge, Wario Land: Shake It makes each level easy to complete within the space of ten minutes — I beat all save one on my first try — and then relies on the player to take up the game’s optional missions, searching for treasures and completing the level with qualifiers like “Get 55,000 Coins” or “Don’t fall in the water” to make up the difference.

While we are fond of a few of the puzzles required to unearth treasures (one in particular had us racing a explosive chain reaction in order to climb up a staircase before it collapsed), goals won’t have you spending much more time rooting through each individual level. In fact, it’s far more likely they’ll have you retracing your steps.

There’s typically only one correct path that Wario can take in order to get the required number of coins, or complete the stage in a certain amount of time; and as soon as you screw up one segment that relies on speed, there’s no way to redeem yourself. Especially considering the surprising lack of widescreen support (Shake It just adds status bars on either side of the screen in 16:9 mode), more often than not you’ll miss that critical jump, be unable to complete the mission, and thus forced to retry the entire stage… adding further repetition to the experience.

For a game supposedly built around the Wii control scheme, it’s also surprising how few motion controls there actually are — but those we did see were most certainly the game’s high note. Wario’s ground pound (above) amusingly shakes the entire stage, knocking around obstacles and foes alike; you can shake foes vigorously to produce bulbs of garlic; shake coin bags to collect their contents; and throw objects (and enemies) using the Wiimote to aim. In later levels, Wario can play gymnast, shaking the Wiimote up and down to swing on bars, and command three vehicles by tilting the Wiimote in the intended direction of travel.

Wario fans will be disappointed to learn that these motion-sensitive moves come at the price of Wario’s transformations. Though Wario can still be set on fire to break through one type of block and turn into a snowball to crash through another, the vast majority of status effects are no more — Wario simply takes damage until death.

Speaking of death, there is one section of the game where it comes for Wario fairly often — Shake It’s painfully pattern-based boss fights. Though we enjoyed battling two of the six bosses, quickly determining their weak spot while dodging attacks aimed at our own noggin, the other four were among the most predictable we’ve ever played, with attack sequences that we could memorize instantly — but still filled with enough cheap shots to wear Wario down to his last heart container.

If you live by the motto “If at first you don’t succeed,” there’s plenty of replay value to be had in Wario Land: Shake It, with treasures to find and missions to complete in every level, hidden maps that open up additional levels, and game tunes to unlock upon completion of each set of optional goals.

But at the end of my eight-hour tour of Wario Land: Shake It, I had seen more than enough.

We may think that Wario Land: Shake It should be relegated to rental, but don’t take our word for it — try it out for yourself! We’re giving away our own review copy to one lucky GameCyte reader. Just comment below about your own tolerance for repetition in video games, provide a valid email address where we can contact you, and you’ll be entered to win. We’ll pick the best commentor one week from today.