This game always got so much love on Negative World, so I was surprised to see that it didn't have a discussion thread of its own! All of the praise was spread out across threads about Kirby's Epic Yarn and Nintendo's Return To 2D Signalling The End Of Motion Controls.
I blazed through it when I first played it ten years ago. But I've been sloooowly replaying it since September or so, and really delving into the missions, and you guys were all completely right, it's just as excellent as everyone here said. Every level is like a big interconnected puzzle that you need to fully understand in order to solve. I'm getting to some of the hidden levels now, and they're just awesome!
It's kind of funny how critics so obviously misunderstood this game back in the day. I remember when Braid came out, journalists were losing their minds because "it's an easy platformer where you can just skip all the puzzles and run through the whole thing!?!? waaaaah???
", and Wario Land: Shake It is the exact same way. If you're not doing the missions, then... why are you even playing the game in the first place?
Ironically, I actually don't think the art is as great as everyone says it is, lol. The animation that's there is beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it feels like there are only about ten different sprites in the game. It looks great and gets the job done, but I don't think that those handful of cartoons justify the game's existence alone. No, the masterful craftsmanship here is in the level design!
Anyone else play this game lately? Wario's kinda been missing since then, huh?
We all agree this is the best Wario Land game though, right? 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward platformers, and 4 is kind of a prototype for Shake It. 3 has some interesting Metroidvania stuff going on, maybe I should check that one out again! And what about World?
I've heard we're not supposed to speak of Master of Disguise...