Wario Land: Shake It!

"A fun game in spite of itself"

The Nintendo Wii continues to be a huge seller, enjoying almost unprecedented demand for a video game console. That said, however, Nintendo's been on the 'hate list' of many hardcore gamers, who have been ticked off ever since E3 2008; an event where Nintendo seemed to freely admit to the gaming world that their core gamers...are not as important as their new casual audience.

But WarioLand: Shake It! was supposedly targeting a more hardcore crowd, which I guess would explain its total lack of promotion, an obviously low budget, and absence from Nintendo's E3 2008. Yet then this game undercuts all of this with an embarrassingly easy difficulty, gimmicky controls, and "whoa I just beat this in a rental!" length. This is NOT a game worth its $50 price tag. And that's too bad, because had this game been sold for $20 or $30, I'd easily recommend it. WarioLand: Shake It! does nothing whatsoever that's even remotely new, but it does offer some solid fun.

Yeah, at heart, WarioLand: Shake It! is a fun game. Wario's easily one of Nintendo's most entertaining characters, and there's something inherently fun about controlling this greedy jackass, sidescrolling-style, through some very nice hand-drawn backgrounds. You can bop enemies on the head, pick them up, throw them, Wario can use his weight as an advantage to slide down hills and break walls, etc. etc. etc.. This is all fun stuff. The very minimal storyline is as follows; a princess is captured, and she's in possession of a bag of gold that offers its owner infinite ...gold. Wario wants this gold, and sets out to rescue her. You then go through a series of maps, each consisting of a few levels each, as well as a boss. In between maps you can head to the pirate ship to purchase additional health power-ups or to purchase the next area map with the gold you've collected along the way. The music's upbeat, nostalgic, and charming. As was mentioned, the graphics are nice and easy on the eyes. There are a couple fun bosses in there too and the final boss was certainly challenging and pretty fun to fight.

I had fun playing this but Shake It! is not a "good game," and this is due to several big issues. First and foremost, the "shaking" is extremely annoying. Throughout the adventure, Wario must shake bags of gold, he must shake enemies, he must do a ground pound to open doors....this is all controlled by roughly shaking the Wii Remote. Why? Why force the gamer to constantly waggle the remote when a button press would have worked just as nicely? I don't know, I really have no idea. A couple years ago, when the Wii first launched, maybe people would have been blown away by the whole "shaking controller" thing but by this point it's one of the most annoying aspects of this system....even 5-year olds will get tired of it quickly, letalone the hardcore gamers this game was supposedly targeting. I don't see why Nintendo felt the need to require so much waggle in this game; do they think kids won't care about the game without some sort of gimmick involved? I didn't need gimmicks to enjoy my good old Sega Genesis games back when I was a kid, I don't see why people are so convinced kids need them today.

But then maybe the constant shaking was added to justify this game's existence on the Wii as a $50 product (as opposed to a much cheaper WiiWare or DS game,) because the sad truth is, this doesn't play much different than past WarioLand games, which were done on the Gameboy Advance. Was this really only put on the Wii so Nintendo could pocket the extra $20 in cash they get with a $50 price tag? Here's my thought process regarding this game; the Wii is (hopefully) a 128-bit system, right? Nintendo therefore has the chance to make "THE BEST SIDESCROLLER OF ALL TIME!!!" with this type of horsepower....yet they chose to settle for a game that could be played on the GBA (and would have played better, too, since it likely wouldn't have featured the shaking,) ...hell, it's not even voice acted. Someone really neds to remind Nintendo that the Wii uses a nifty product called a "DVD" for its games, and that they don't need to keep making games as if to fit on a frigging cartridge. But...then again, it's pretty clear that Nintendo likes to keep every penny they steal from their casual userbase, so I guess paying voice actors for the game's 2 cutscenes (yes, a grand total of 2,) would have been too much to ask.

Overall, it's hard to recommend WarioLand: Shake It! because, frankly, this was a cheaply-made product, one that would be right at home on the GBA, yet made its way to Wii (for $50) and with annoying shake controls. The core gameplay here's pretty fun but it's hard to even enjoy that when everything from the gimmicky shaking to the game's short length, shockingly easy difficulty, "wow, the level's really over already?"-length levels, and required gold collecting undercuts this fun at every turn. Yes, you must "purchase" the next map before you can head there, leading to lots and lots of backtracking as you collect gold. Fun. I don't know about anyone else, but I personally would have gladly taken a few extra new levels over having to backtrack through old ones to progress, even if it meant a slightly shorter game. It's always too bad when such evident filler presents itself in a game, and in this case it still doesn't manage to stretch Shake It! to an acceptable length. The game's replay value's extended, however, by many optional missions and challenges throughout but since these don't provide you with any gold, there's literally no point whatsoever in completing them as they won't help you at all on your main quest.

I've thought this for the past year or so, and WarioLand: Shake It! seems to exist simply to prove it; Nintendo continues to be the worst part about the Wii. We have so many promising Wii games on the horizon, but none of them are from Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft seem to be doing everything with their 1st party lineups to take advantage of every ounce of power their respective consoles have and deliver amazing games....Nintendo's content to throw games like this at us; games made with no ambition whatsoever, games that belong on handhelds, games that are way too short and unsatisfying for anyone who'se even remotely experienced with video gaming. Rent WarioLand: Shake It!, it's a fun little game, but from a critical standpoint I just can't recommend it for purchase, as it's over-priced and does nothing to take advantage of the system it's on except to provide an annoying, and required, control gimmick. It's pretty sad, in a way, that in 2007 and early 2008 I really loved the Wii. Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3, and the amazing Smash Bros Brawl. These are great games from Nintendo on this system. Everything else they're making just seems to exist as a cash-in. There's no way the developers of WarioLand: Shake It! felt any passion towards this project, it's sadly clear that this game was just released to prop up an otherwise terrible 2nd half of 2008 for Nintendo. Hopefully better times are ahead, that's all I can say.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/09/09

Game Release: Wario Land: Shake It! (US, 09/22/08)