Ahoy, me hearties! Pieces of Eight! It’s Guybrush Threepwood here, star of the classic PC titles The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, The Curse of Monkey Island, Escape From Monkey Island and Spanish For Beginners. You remember me, lad-oh-hearty-bucko! Some would say my games were the best point ‘n’ click puzzle adventure games about comical pirates ever released!
That’s why, when Digital Lard needed to present the lowdown on Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros’ Treasure, they called me, Guybrush Threepwood, in for the review. Why? Because I’m the king of point ‘n’ click puzzle adventure games about comical pirates! Plus I work for food. Dog food!
OK, let’s get started! Now, apparently, there is a company in Japan called Nintendo. They make a console called a ‘Nintendo Wii’. That’s pronounced like ‘we’. I’ve been told that it uses a device called a ‘Wii Remote’, that senses the movements of your hands, rather than the traditional button-based control pad system.
Oh, should I talk about the game first? Right.
Zack is a cute little pirate who is inexplicably mute. You know how Link and Mario are mute, but still everyone understands what they want? That’s like how Zack is mute. He is a pirate-in-training (just like I was, in my games!) and he has a little friend called Wiki who, despite being in a band of pirates called the Sea Rabbits, is actually a flying yellow monkey. He is also a bell that can be rung near enemies to turn them into useful objects.
My game had three floppy discs.
Zack and Wiki, like all good pirates, want to find some treasure, so logically they turn to the ghost of Barbaros – a shifty-looking pirate of legendary proportions who is about as reliable as a bootleg Tamagotchi. Under his, ahem, ‘guidance’, they explore the world and search for the hidden parts of his body. Once his entire body is exhumed, Barbaros will reward the lucky duo with his famous pirate ship.
Lucky.
The game itself is a collection of self-contained puzzles, each set in its own environment. To assist you on your way, you can discover items such as umbrellas and bombs and use these to manipulate your surroundings in your favour. The trials you will have to face are all unique – for example, in one adventure you may have to find a way to scare a giant beast away from your treasure, in another you may have to deal with a system of levers and switches. Each predicament the pirates face requires a fresh new approach and more insightful thinking, so it is very hard to get bored of the game format.
The functions of the Wii Remote are relied upon quite heavily, but sometimes it feels quite forced. You can wave the remote to shake snow off the top of a tree, use it as your hands when you need to shuffle a block puzzle around or pretend to throw a bomb with it, and while sometimes this adds a nice creative touch, you’re often left scratching your head with your hook-hand and wondering what the point is. In order to pretend to lift an item up with your Wii Remote, you have to click your way through an instruction screen that tells you how to hold the remote, and then you have to change your grip on the remote for five seconds while you pick up this object. There doesn’t seem to be much reasoning behind this other than to just shoe-horn in some of the Wii’s unique capabilities, even at the expense of gameplay.
It was a lot easier in my day. If you wanted to push something, you just had to click on the ‘Push’ button on the bottom of the screen. For example, ‘Push’, you would press, and then you would click on a parrot. ‘Push Parrot’. And then you would push the parrot. And it would fall and die. Didn’t need no Wii-motes to do that!
I was impressed by how this game played, but occasionally I felt let down. It seems unnecessarily harsh at times, killing you instantly when you make a mistake. Seeing as many of the puzzles are not always based on common sense and require some trial and error to get through, this is a very old school, antique method of dealing with failure. I mean, you couldn’t even die in Monkey Island, that’s how good it was.
No, that doesn’t mean I’m a lightweight.
I was split fifty-fifty by the puzzles. Some of them impressed me with their logical approach and fun methods of resolution, while others made me annoyed, tired and bothered. While you are given the chance to buy extra hints and lives, these are costly and the game is quick to deduct points from you for using them. Do I sound like I’m expecting the game to give me a free ride? I hope not. I just don’t like dropping dead when I’m experimenting with controls and getting my bearings in the level. I also don’t like dropping dead in general. It’s all well and good making a game challenging, but if all this results in is constant repetition as you have to once again work through the puzzle to get back to the point where you died, then the consumer is quickly going to give in.
All in all, it’s no Secret of Monkey Island. But, then again, can any game ever live up to that? No, and they are all fools for even thinking they can try. However, as it is unlikely we will get many point ‘n’ click puzzle adventure games with comical pirates in for some time, Zack & Wiki is the best of a bunch of over-achieving losers.
If you have patience, lots of patience, then Zack & Wiki is a rewarding game. The script is fun and witty, and the game does look good, even if I’m not sure about this whole ‘third dimension’ lark! Give me 2D anyday, nobody needs to see how fat the characters are. You can definitely get lost in the magic and intelligence of this fun little sea-farin’ adventure.
Agh, me hearties. Here be the scores! I'm a pirate!
Gameplay: 6 out of 10
Flawed by some difficulty issues and not exactly perfect controls.
Graphics: 7 out of 10
Better lookin’ than a freshly dug-up treasure chest.
Sound: 7 out of 10
Typical Wii sounds – nice tunes, but annoying, repetitive catchphrases and gibberish from the characters. Why can’t anyone on the Wii talk properly?
Value: 7 out of 10
With so many different puzzles, you’ll be on this for weeks. Very little replay value though.
Overall: 7 out of 10
I don’t understand why Wiki is a bell.