There's a fine line between a derivative cash-in and a worthwhile continuation of a classic's legacy, and while Wario has lately been more closely associated with the former - Master of Disguise, the awful DS entry and a series of increasingly madcap micro-game collections bear witness to that notion - Wario Land: The Shake Dimension is, in relative terms, a welcome return to form for Mario's flatulent evil twin.

Although it stops short of innovation, trading any aspirations of evolving the admittedly excellent formula of Wario Land 4 for a retread of its tried and true gameplay mechanics, neither is Shake Dimension an exercise in self-indulgence; nostalgia is certainly an important factor in its success, but even without the rose-tinted pedigree of memory, it's a pleasant place to spend the five or so hours it takes to probe its ultimate borders - any longer than that, though, and it would be in danger of outstaying its welcome, hand-drawn sprites or not.

A lavishly animated cut scene courtesy of anime powerhouse Production I.G. sets an appropriate tone for the whimsy to come. Captain Maple Syrup is a pirate femme with an eye for treasure and when she steals an ancient globe from a museum she stumbles upon her most prized booty yet: a bottomless coin sack. The trouble is, the wicked Shake King who rules the world of Yuretopia has the sack. So she sends it to the Wario with a note that appeals directly to his wanton greed, meaning to steal it back from him if and when he can free Yuretopia from the iron fist of the Shake King.

Princess in distress be damned; Mario's moustachioed alter-ego is all about the treasure. There are five levels and a boss in each of the worlds to explore over the course of Shake Dimension and in each there are three choice pieces of loot for you to find, as well as innumerable bags of gold. With enough gold you can buy maps from the impromptu shop that Captain Maple Syrup has opened up, which clear the misted-over locations that are inaccessible early on, or else you can save up to purchase extra heart containers, cut scenes and background music. Progression through the five story areas is simple, as you'll have accumulated enough gold by the end of one world to unlock the next, but there are some challenging secret levels and a host of other extras for completionists to shoot for. There is, for instance, a selection of so-called missions to complete at each stage of your inner-space jaunt, ranging from a first-rate few that push gameplay in unexpected directions, much like the best achievements and trophies, to the downright uninspired - collect so many coins or escape such-and-such a level with so much time left on the clock. These missions are largely forgettable but will no doubt be appreciated by the dedicated few are determined to wring 100% out of Shake Dimension. Nevertheless, they're a fairly transparent means of extending the half-life of an already ample experience; some, in fact, positively demand that you repeat stages you've already mastered simply to satisfy different arbitrary conditions. More imaginative requirements could have made the missions inestimably more compulsive but they come off, in the end, as a little cheap.

The level design, too, disappoints. There are standout stages - at least one for each world - but between them is some criminally repetitive filler, apparently copied and pasted from arena to arena. You perform the same few actions to solve the solitary sorts of puzzles that Wario encounters; you shake your Wiimore to knock an unstable platform down to your level or pluck a bad guy from its buttstomped funk to throw at a coloured switch. You waggle the Wiimote to pivot around poles and angle cannons to careen through destructible blocks, opening secret areas or alternate pathways through many stages. The motion controls are rudimentary but functional; tedium does occasionally creep into the equation, and the constant waggling required to keep up Wario's momentum during certain sequences can be rather tiresome, although none of the Wiimote integration disappoints as much as the unimaginative spaces that you must traverse. Screen after screen proves devoid of anything to do but run mindlessly and joylessly forward. The puzzles are neither interesting nor demanding and you'll often come across the solution before you bump up against the correlating obstacle, which does away with the fun of discovery and the rewards of exploration in one fell swoop, all for the sake of casual-friendly simplicity. You won't need precise jumping skills, a sense of timing or an eye for detail; Wario favours brute force over all these traits, and brute force is easy. A few shakes of the Wiimote and you've taken down the final boss, as empty a victory as that ultimately is.

And yet, there are moments when Shake Dimension arrives - as much by accident as by design, one imagines - at good, old-fashioned fun. In particular at the outset, until the basic mechanics become familiar and repetitive brain-strain sets in, there are levels that, if not challenging, are at least perfunctorily entertaining. The return trips through each stage, a mechanic carried over wholesale from the superior Wario Land 4 on GBA, are refreshingly breathless and rewarding, but when - too soon - they become part of the formula, the initial novelty of tearing through previously inaccessible paths above or below the main thoroughfare of the levels quickly wears off. And that's largely the problem with Shake Dimension; it can be agreeably diverting in moderation but nothing in this game exists without twenty other indistinct instances of itself. Developers Good Feel are plainly content to take a good thing and repeat it ad nauseum, but we should not be; whatever worthwhile aspects there are in Wario's latest adventure, they're spread too thinly and obscured by dogged repetition. The Shake Dimension sadly never approaches the glorious highs of Mario's recent reinventions; New Super Mario Bros. is a more soulful retread of the two-dimensional glory years and Super Mario Galaxy innovates where the Wario franchise must if it means to regain some semblance of relevancy. In such standout company, Nintendo's only core-oriented holiday '08 release is a disappointment. It's fragmented, flat and uninspired.

Curious and curiouser, then, that it's not half bad. There's fun to be had if you can temper your expectations - prescribe yourself a few stages a day and Shake Dimension is brief enough to please, if not to excite the particular flavour of fervour that most of Nintendo's first-party releases are met with. Largely, however, it's redeemed by a startlingly pretty face. Production I.G.'s involvement doesn't begin and end with a few cut-scenes; from character animations to background vistas, they've a hand in every aspect of the art design, and - particularly on the Wii's comparatively low-fi hardware - it's astonishing to see the difference that such attention to detail makes. The hand-drawn animations hark back to the halcyon days before the dreaded polygon made the edges of everything hazardously sharp and Wario moves with an authentic flair that even the much-vaunted NaturalMotion technology recently showcased in LucasArts' Star Wars: The Force Unleashed cannot match. His characteristic quirks are captured so faithfully that it's an honest-to-goodness pleasure to see him shake his bottom or pick his nose - and a damn shame that the actual gameplay doesn't match up to such stellar presentation.

Aesthetically, Shake Dimension is every bit the equal of Super Mario Galaxy's game-of-the-year good looks, and the good news keeps coming - it sounds pretty decent too, even if the Zelda-esque intro music is a leap and a bound from what you'd anticipate. Production I.G. are the real stars of the show, however; reinvigorating the look of the 2D platformer in much the same way that Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Braid pushed the artistic envelope, the renowned studio excels even itself.

If Mega Man 9's retro stylings stand as an example of gameplay over fancy graphics then Wario Land: The Shake Dimension demonstrates that the inverse, too, can elevate an average experience. Sadly, Good Feel haven't provided enough in the way of innovation to the table to make Wario's latest pillaging of treasures and tropes a truly worthwhile experience, nor are their attempts at imitation anything more than adequate. Beautiful vistas are all well and good and while there's undeniably a decent amount of fun to be had, it's unfortunate that Nintendo's empty schedule has thrust such an inadvertent emphasis upon this title, because Shake Dimension is a missed opportunity however you look at it.

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).