Wario Land : Shake It!
 Stumble it!
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Most gamers would find it difficult to recall the last time they played a classic 2D platform game with any real fun element, with most probably thinking back to the Mario and Sonic days, but the 2D platformer returns with Wario Land : Shake It!
The developers, Good Feel, could quite rightly be accused of playing it safe by taking a character from the legendary Mario game series and slapping him in the middle of a classic side-scrolling title, and to be honest they have made little effort to show any form of originality at all with Wario Land Shake It - everything you come across in this game has been seen many times before.
The game will sell, though, because of the simple fact that Wario is as stated a little earlier from the Mario series - and anything related with Mario usually means constantly ringing cash registers - despite some sections of the gaming fan base beginning to grow tired of the little plumber. Perhaps that is the reason this is a Wario title, rather than a Mario title - if the central character in this game was Mario himself, I feel it may have seen the beginning of the end for him.
The story begins as you, Wario, comes to possess a stolen globe from Captain Maple Syrup. That globe contains the Shake universe in it’s entirety, and you are told by a Merfle resident of Shake that the Queen has been captured and held - by the King. The King has also taken the Bottomless Coin Sack which gives him never ending riches. Needless to say it’s Wario’s job to track down the King and retrieve the Bottomless Coin Sack and to rescue the distressed Queen of Shake.
To play Wario Land Shake It, you will hold your Wii remote horizontally as if it were a classic NES controller - and the controls play out much the same as those classic Mario games, too. You move around using the D-pad, and will jump and perform attacks using the one and two buttons. The only twist brought to the game’s controls come thanks to the Wii remote’s motion sensitive abilities, allowing you to perform various moves in the game by shaking it or moving it in certain ways. This comes to the game’s aid a little, as without it there would quite literally be nothing new here that old Mario gamers wouldn’t have done before, but it still does not save the game entirely and you could not expect it too.
When you begin your quest through the Shake universe you will, as you probably expect, find a variety of world’s to play through - each with their own big boss guy waiting at the end to meet you. You will need to defeat each of the five bosses before you can track down and fight King Shake, but defeating each boss does not guarantee your entry into the next world. You must instead return each time to Captain Maple Syrup, with a hefty amount of coins, to purchase the map for the next world before being able to play through it.
Captain Maple Syrup also sells potions and heart upgrades, giving you extra abilities to use as you play or of course additional lives - which will come in handy during the tougher missions if you manage to find them. I say that because most are relatively easy going on the difficulty levels and there will be very little to challenge you to the point of frustration, which is actually a bad thing in my opinion. With platform games there is a fine line between being too hard and too easy, and this is definitely in the too easy category.
Following the storyline can get tiresome, but there are other things you can do as you work your way through the Shake universe. You can head off in search of three hidden treasures including an old curry and a mahjonh piece which can be found in massive treasure chests. The search for these hidden treasures can actually prove quite challenging, in contrast to the majority of the single player campaign, but again you will find yourself discovering them slightly quicker than you expected.
The graphics and sound can’t be faulted, but as mentioned earlier this can be considered a safe title, so it would have taken a major screw up to create faults in those areas. The game all in all is too easy and too familiar, leaving you getting bored quite quickly unless you are a devoted fan of the Mario series or a fan of classic games in general.
The background environments alone make the game worth taking a look at if you are a heavy-gamer, and by that I mean a gamer with years of gaming behind you. If you are a youngster, or have only recently got into gaming you will probably want to stay away from Wario Land Shake It as it has very little for you to get excited about - and we wouldn’t want you to waste your precious money, would we.
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