What motive is there to get Wario out of his comfy couch? Treasure, of course! While watching a show about a master thief on TV, Wario comes up with a brilliant plan. He quickly whips up a "Telmet", an ingenious device that lets him venture into the TV world, where he plans to steal the show... and the treasure too.

The design for this game is simple: A base of the classic 2D adventure, mixed with just a little of Wario's modern mini games and topped off with a control scheme that gives a nice balance between button pressing and touch screen. The action takes place on the bottom screen, with the upper screen as your standard HUD containing your health, money, a map and other various pieces of information about your costumes. The graphics suit the game well: very good looking 2D sprites with an involving, yet not distracting, background. It has a nice selection of suitable music and sounds to accompany.

Controlling Wario is basic. The D-pad (or alpha buttons) and the stylus are all you need. You control Wario's movement with the D-pad, and use the touch screen to use his special abilities. Wario is able to wear different disguises, in order to gain new abilities, which allow him to solve puzzles in the area progress.

Disguises are changed by drawing on the screen around Wario. Once you have your costume on, you can then touch the screen, draw, and in one case (to our distain) blow into the microphone to use his special abilities. This is quite a unique and fun way of doing things but I find it has its drawbacks: sometimes the screen does not recognise the costume you draw. There seems to be a fine line to where the game recognises you wanting to start drawing a new costume, or using an attack. Since you can tap the screen anywhere to use some attacks, you can find that instead of starting to draw a new costume, you end up attacking. This can become quite frustrating after the 5^th time in a row when trying to change to Cosmic Wario but instead using a shoulder charge.

The difficulty of the game is on par with New Super Mario Brothers. It has a well balanced difficulty curve. You aren't thrown in the deep end, nor are you wasting too much time wondering when you get to the action. You may replay chapters as many times as you like in order to score a better time or money count, or to collect anything you missed.

Unlike New Super Mario Bros., this is a bit more involving than 'run from left to right to reach the end while killing anything in your way' type of game. Master of Disguise involves a bit more thinking and problem solving. The maps feel as though they are less complex versions of a Metroid or Castlevania game, giving you that free roam feel in a maze like environment. Each episode has a goal room and some sort of boss which you are aiming to reach. In order to get to these rooms, you need to solve the various puzzles and collect treasures, abilities, and quest items from the various chests littered about the map.

The game keeps a record of all the strange treasure items you pick up as well as the enemies you have encountered . You are also able to replay any of the mini-games that you have played during your main game.

The mini-games themselves are used to unlock the chests you find during your adventure. They are fun to begin with but soon become a little tedious. Most have a few variations, e.g. different pictures to colour and all have five difficulty levels. The mini-games can become quite hard as you progress, but you're still only playing the same few games that were around in the first level.

The game is easy enough to pick up and play for short periods of time. Ideally, it is more the type of game you would play when you have time to spare. Individual episodes may take up to an hour to finish. However, if you find you really do have to stop playing mid game, 'save hats' are never too far away. One of the costumes has a handy ability of allowing you to warp to the nearest hat. There is also an 'interrupt' feature, where the game creates a temporary save file known as 'suspend data'. This allows you to power off then resume play exactly where you left it.

Although this is not a tie in with the Wario World series, fans should still consider this for their collection. It is a very good adventure game with good exploration and quirky puzzles.