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Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure game review
THE LOWDOWN Capcom for Wii Graphics: 8.0 Sound: 8.0 Gameplay: 9.0 Replay Value: 7.0 Overall Score: 8.5 Pros: Loads of cool puzzles; funny moments; makes good use of the Wii controller. Cons: You find yourself repeating many of the same steps again and again and again; next to no voice acting. |
Zack is a boy in an oversized pirate costume who has joined the Sea Rabbits pirating organization. His pal Wiki is a gold monkey with a helicopter-like tail who can turn into a magic bell. These buddies are on the hunt for treasure.
Zack may be clumsy and silly, but he’s the boss as far as Wiki is concerned. Although Wiki is smarter, leads the way and gives clues, he usually says, “Good one, Boss,” when dim-witted Zack finally catches on.
That pretty much sums up everything you need to know about the characters and storyline. There is a rival group known as the Rose Rock Pirates and also the mysterious Barbaros, a ghostly pirate whose body was turned to gold and scattered through many puzzles, but these are mere distractions.
PUZZLE MAGIC
Make no mistake—Zack & Wiki might seem like a short game, but it will keep you going for hours.
The first levels are simple, teaching you how to interact with the world and solve puzzles. The landscapes in each level are carefully camouflaged puzzles—a path to treasure lined with deadly secrets. You might deal with enemies, and you definitely will deal with wicked contraptions. You’ll also need to put things together in combinations to get the right result.
Wiki’s magical bell abilities come in handy. You can turn frogs into bombs by ringing Wiki. Wiki’s ring turns centipedes into saws and snakes into extendable arms. It also makes enemy spirits disappear.
Say you find yourself on a level with a sleeping goblin and a giant fish. You could turn a frog into a bomb to disable the goblin, then string a worm on a fishing hook to reel in the big, dangerous fish. There might be a few mini puzzles along the way.
A puzzle like this could take you 20 minutes to solve, but it might take place in an area no bigger than the space in a two-story house.
And that’s one of the easy puzzles. By the time you’re done with the jungle, through the frozen woods and into the volcano, you’ll be looking at hour-long puzzles that you can’t even hope to solve on your first try.
The bad news is that Zack generally dies when you fail. You can lose a lot of time and effort should Zack pull the wrong lever or step on the wrong tile. Fortunately, you can buy him extra lives to preserve your progress.
GREAT SIGHTS, LIMITED SOUNDS
Visually, Zack & Wiki is more like a cartoon than a game. The settings are colorful and you can generally tell what Zack is thinking just by looking at the expression on his face.
The game uses the Japanese anime style of cartoon, so you will see symbols familiar only to people who watch these cartoons. (The Pokémon cartoon show offers a sampling of this animation style.)
When Zack is startled, he jumps in the air, his eyes pop out of his head, and his mouth might open wider than a pizza or close into a squiggly line. Either way, the results are hilarious.
Now for the bad news: The voice acting in this game is practically nonexistent. The talking is little more than a word or two in Japanese combined with long exchanges of word balloons.
The audio in this game gets a score of 8.0 because it includes good music and excellent sound effects, especially for traps and explosions. The voiceover gets about a 2.0, which would be for Wiki’s high-pitched, girlish voice. (Wiki is supposed to be a boy, but he sure sounds like a girl.)
CONTROLLER ACTION
Zack & Wiki has about a dozen Wiimote movements that work pretty well. The game has a point-and-click interface, letting you use the Wiimote like a mouse. You point and click to pick up stuff such as coins, rocks and plants, to climb ropes, vines and ladders, and to open doors.
But that’s not all you do with the Wiimote. To ring Wiki like a bell, you hold the Wiimote up over your shoulder and shake it like a bell. To use a centipede saw, you pull it back and forth like a log saw. There are fishing movements, cranking movements, flipping movements and more.
In most games, such as WarioWare: Smooth Moves, you do these types of motions for only a few seconds at a time. In Zack & Wiki, you get these movements in a long continuous chain. They work well.
Zack & Wiki is a very solid game that requires a lot of brain work and not much in the way of twitch and reflexes. This game isn’t for everybody, but if you enjoy knocking your head against some really fun puzzles, you’ll definitely get a charge out of it.
Read 20 comments about “Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure game review”
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What’s going on in this picture? Why is that dog's huge tongue hanging down? What is he thinking or saying?
May 5th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
This is such a COOL GAME!!!!!!!!!!! (= (= (=
April 21st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I have this game…IT ROCKS!!!!
April 14th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
great game, one of the best on the wii! make sure to buy it! the parts with the airships are especially cool.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
cant wait to get it
March 7th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
ROCK ON
March 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Its cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I LOVE IT
February 10th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I love this game! The art style in this game reminds me of The legend of Zelda: The wind wakers art style. You get a felling of accomplishment when you finally solved a puzzle that you’ve been stuck on for a while. Ive been stuck on a certain level for a while though.
February 9th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
i’m so addicted to this game that i can’t put it down. it’s clever, makes great use of the wii remote, and really gets your brain working. if you like puzzle type games, then this one is for you.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
it is realy good