Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure:
Move over Hello Kitty, cuteness has a new address!
By Matt Kelly
When I first glanced at Zack and Wiki, I compared it to Banjo-Kazoiee - a typical run-around and jump-on-stuff while collecting some kind of items. There's been so many of these that you kinda don't pay too much attention to the initial announcements. Thankfully, Zack and Wiki turned out not to even be in the same genre as Banjo's adventures. In fact, it falls in a genre which gets very little attention nowadays. Say hello to the first point-and-click adventure game on the Wii. If you're scratching your head going 'point and wha?' think back to when companies like LucasArts we're in their prime, putting out adventures games like Sam & Max. Grim Fandango, and The Secret of Monkey Island (except the last one, that wasn't point and click and also kinda sucked). It's a genre that relies far more on your brain than your brawn and has suffered in the flood of action and strategy game over the years. Thankfully, Capcom has caught onto the fact that the Wii is pretty much perfect for reviving this genre and has done so splendidly. What you'll find in Zack and Wiki is one of the most polished and inventive games you've seen in a while. In fact, you should stop reading this review right now and just go buy the damn thing!
Oh, you're still reading? OK well let's talk about the game! Zack and Wiki are an unbelievably adorable pair of wanna be pirates, and brand new members of 'The Sea Rabbits'. Flying home to their island hide out in a hunk-of-junk plane, they come under fire by the notorious Captain Rose (again, totally cute). After being pretty much blown out of the sky, Zack and Wiki find themselves in the island's jungle. Here, they come across a treasure chest containing the talking skull of legendary pirate Barbaros, promising Zack and Wiki immense fortune if they find all his pieces and put him pack together. The story of Zack and Wiki isn't going to be what you remember this game for. There are a few twists in the plot but ultimately, it serves as the motivation for what you're doing.
The gameplay however is something that you will remember and is some of the most amazing we've seen on the Wii. Harking back to the days when not everything was a first person shooter, Zack and Wiki plays like "point-and-click adventure game" meets "staged based design". It's not a full blown end-to-end adventure such as 'The Secret of Monkey Island' for example, but rather you play through a series of puzzle filled stages. There are a few other modern developers returning to the style but no game does it as well as Zack and Wiki. There are also very few developers that have made such excellent use out the Wii Remote. Each stage is built around finding the chest containing a piece of Barbaros.
While you'll always know where it is from the start, getting to its location requires you to figure out the puzzles of the world. For example, you get a plain on top of a waterfall about to fall off the edge and kill you. Not good! You're also on a ledge with no way to get off, further not good! But there is a tree and another cliff about the one tree length away. So you've got to get that tree down and when you try to push it over, not only do you fail, a centipede jumps out at you! Thankfully Wiki can magically turn into a bell when you shake the remote which has the power to convert these creatures into various items. In this case a saw! And what do we do with saws? Chop trees down and escape to safety! This is a very basic puzzle early in the game, as you progress you'll find the difficulty of these puzzles goes up. What really stands out though is every single one of these puzzles, no matter how long you spend playing around trying to crack it, every single one of them make sense in the world of Zack and Wiki. There are so many modern games which either fail to give you a hint that makes sense, or tell you so bluntly the answer is obvious. Zack and Wiki strikes a perfect balance of being difficult and solvable when you put your mind to it. As you go on, puzzles become more complex, more difficult and occasionally throw the odd timing curve ball.
The creatures turned into items aspect of the game is really interesting, as you can also turn these back into their original creatures once again by shaking Wiki. Okay so you turned a worm into a straw, what happens when you find a fishing line and need to catch a fish? I'm sure you can figure that one out. It's this kind of design that really plays well in the game, the answers are pretty straight forward but figuring them out isn't. There are a lot of visual hints in the game, again so well designed that they don't give the answer away, but nudge you in certain directions of thought. There is also a hint an additional hint system built into the game where you can summon a fellow pirate to give you a hint if you get really stuck, though it will cost you. In a complete 180 degree turn to most modern adventure games, Zack can die. It may be that you get crushed by a boulder that you set off because you hadn't completed the needed stages of the puzzle to survive it, you might blow yourself up with a bomb or you may just plain get capture by some of the natives of the island. Any of these things will result in either the option to restart the stage or use a platinum ticket, which takes you back before your last major action. This is what saves the games lack of mid stage saving options as down the track a lot of puzzles are quite long and death inducing. While you wouldn't use a ticket 30 seconds after you've started, using a ticket after 20 minutes on a stage is what stops the game from being frustrating.
The use of the Wii remote is the icing on the cake. All the various items and objects you have to use through the game all get the waggle treatment in a very natural way. The sawing through the tree mentioned early will have you making sawing motions with the remote, pull a switch will get you to pull in the direction you want to pull it. If you loved having to interact with the various locks and switches in Metroid Prime 3, you're gonna love the way these have been designed. But it doesn't stop there, not all objects have a single use. Flipping the remote will spin the object around so it can be used as part of another puzzle, like a crank with two ends for example. At the end of the day Zack and Wiki is so well designed it could have easily got by with just IR pointing but motion controls add a lot to the depth of some of the puzzles in there, making more use of the items you have rather than overloading with dozens of items that are useless for that section of the puzzle.
Graphically, Zack and Wiki looks hot! If we were watching it at something higher than 480P, it could have been mistaken for a computer animated movie. The game isn't truly cell shaded, rather it uses very flatly toned 3D objects to give it a toonish look. The character design is wonderful and you can't help but fall in love with the folks you encounter in the game. You'll find everyone is really emotive and lively. While there's no voice acting to be lip synced with, it doesn't matter as everyone conveys what's going on with big bold cartoony gestures. The environments are bright, lively and a great setting for puzzle solving. It's also one of the few modern game environments we've seen that doesn't make you go 'hey wait a sec, that looks ugly' when you see something a little askew. Why? Cause the game just looks flat out awesome all the way through. The game also does something very few games do well with their animation, and that is be funny. So many games out there play the comedy card and just don't get it right especially in the slap stick style that Zack and Wiki uses. It may be that the timing is a bit slow, it may be that you don't really get the impact of someone being hit in the face, or a million other things. Zack and Wiki on the other hand times and animates everything so well, even those not normally impressed with slap stick may have a giggle. It's that good.
Sound is probably the only thing in the game that isn't amazing, but it's still damn good and ridiculously cute. Sound effects and the environments soundscapes are great, and add real life to what's going on. The little bit of voice work in the game is really just character muttering or laughing, with the odd piece of Japanese speech such as Wiki calling out for 'Zaku' (Zack). These little speech bites may annoy the odd person but you'd have to have a heart of coal not to go 'awwww' as Wiki calls after Zack.
Summary:
What there is in Zack and Wiki is awesome, absolutely awesome and hopefully will shape a lot of what we see during the Wii's lifespan. From top to bottom the adventure has great design, graphics and sound. So why isn't it getting a 10 out of 10? Length basically. Zack and Wiki is a fairly short game with little replay value. Unless you really enjoy seeing the characters antics or improving your stage score, this isn't going to get a second play through until you've forgotten how to solve everything. The score system in the game is based around how quickly you solve puzzles and how many times you get them wrong. It's cool but not really that much of a challenge.
Gameplay - 9.3
Insanely clever puzzle design, great use of items and the Wii remote controls pretty much sum up why the Wii is awesome.
Graphics - 9.4
Amazing art direction, fantastic animation and absolutely adorableness of all the characters make Zack and Wiki pure eye candy.
Sound - 9.0
No complaints but nothing to write home about either. Cool music and cute voice samples add to the overall appeal to the title.
Replay - 7.0
Not a game you'll play through again straight away but 12 months down the track you'll pop it in and have the same fun all over again. Score system is a tad pointless though.
Overall - 9.3
One of the most amazing Wii games out there, innovative design and game play that keeps you challenged with out being frustrating. Also an excellent new spin on and old genre. Had the game been longer, it would have scored higher. Go buy it right now. No, seriously, now.
Submitted by Robtot
13/03/2008
1140
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Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure
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