Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

"Q: How many ways can you think of to kill Zack? A: There just aren't enough ways!!"

I didn't enjoy a single minute of the horrible point and click puzzle game that is Zack & Wiki, not just because it is SO FREAKIN DIFFICULT IT MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM but also because there are seeminly a million ways to die in this game and you will likely die every single conceivable way before you actually clear a mission. For instance, did you know that you can actually get SWEPT to death in this game?!! Ridiculous, right?

After hearing about a puzzle game that utilizes the Wii remote's ability to emulate a variety of motions, I was at first incredibly interested. Then I read numerous reviews which were all extremely positive citing the cleverness and ingenuity of the puzzles. The reviewers loudly proclaimed that any true gamer should buy it to support unique, under-hyped, and badly titled games from our Japenese neighbors. Since the game was only $30, I said what the hell and took a chance by making the (terrible) decision to buy the game rather than rent it first. Never have I disagreed so much with the professional reviews. Capcom, how I loathe thee for making this piece of garbage.

The graphics? Underwhelming cel-shading. Some of the bosses look really neat with lots of cool details, but nothing else impressed me. The sound is also the same mediocre fair that we would rather mute than listen to, especially after being stuck on one stage for an hour or more (which is horrible considering once you know what to do, the stage would only take you ten minutes to beat, tops). And the story? Some pirates are doing what pirates do, looking for booty. Pirates are supposed to add a certain coolness factor, but just LOOK at Zack. To say the least, he is no Captain Jack Sparrow. The Wii remote seems to have the catastrophic flaw of only OCCASIONALLY doing on screen what you actually did to it in reality, meaning you will be doing plenty of screaming at the TV trying to get the freakin' pointer to actually point at what you want to point at or trying to turn the remote in the right direction to simulate turning a key in a lock, etc.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A VIDEO GAME THAT HAS MADE ME WANT TO STOP PLAYING VIDEO GAMES AS MUCH AS Z&W!! After just the first few levels, I was seriously struggling to find reasons to keep going, especially since I wasn't enjoying a single moment of it! Here's how a typical stage goes: You randomnly aim your Wii remote around the screen trying to find objects to interact with or enemies that you can turn into items. That's the easy part. Then you have to rack your brains trying to figure out how to solve the puzzles the way the game WANTS you to rather than another way which makes way more sense! For instance, in one stage you have to use a snake to scare a frog off a ledge that is a bit too high up for you to grab when you could have INSTEAD just grabbed a block and jumped on top of it to reach the damn frog! But the game doesn't want you to do that, of course, because Rule #1 in Zack & Wiki is that even if a puzzle has an incredibly simple solution, you HAVE to do it the hard way anyway.

When the game isn't completely insulting your intelligence, it is making you scream in disgust because of all the ways you can screw up a puzzle without even realizing it and then your only option is to start from square one again. This game also threw in a hint system which is (like everything in Z&W) horribly executed. The first hints are always something incredibly obvious, like "You're being chased by a monster and you need to outrun it" or whatever. And the hints are so expensive to buy that you're way better off just checking out an FAQ that you WILL need at some point, no matter how good at puzzle games you think you are. The game is what some may call too short at only about 20 levels, but I call it MERCIFULLY short. The amount of time you spend replaying stages will artificially increase the length of the game but I would not count that as quality time in the least.

Bottom line: It barely even deserves a 3 out of 10. Buy this as an April Fool's Day joke for someone you hate. Or buy it for yourself if you want to hate life.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/08

Game Release: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (US, 10/23/07)