Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Wii) - Review

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Developed by Capcom
Published by Capcom
Released October 2007
For Wii

Batten down the hatches! Hoist the main sails! Grab that golden helicopter monkey and ring him like a bell! There's puzzles to be solved and treasure chests to be raided in Capcom's Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure for the Nintendo Wii. You play as Zack, a mute and excitable young boy who dreams of being a pirate. Your best friend is Wiki, the aforementioned magical monkey. As the newest member of pirate crew the Sea Rabbits, you're being escorted by pilot and all around cool guy Johnny Style to your new hideout, when suddenly you're knocked out of the sky by Captain Rose and the Rose Rock Pirates and crash land on an island.

There you discover the golden talking head of the legendary Captain Barbaros, who promises he'll lead you to the famous Treasure Island and give you his flying pirate ship if you can find and restore all the missing parts of his body. For whatever reason, he was transformed into treasure and hidden in over a dozen well-guarded chests. The only way to recover these priceless chunks of his body is to solve lots and lots of puzzles in a variety of locations, like a jungle, a haunted mansion, and of course the obligatory fire world and ice world.

Though many have called Zack & Wiki an adventure game, it's almost purely a puzzle game. With almost no dialogue, and very little story, it owes more to Coktel Vision's Gobliiins series than it does to King's Quest or the Secret of Monkey Island. Each level is a large screen, usually with a clearly visible chest blocked by some obstacle like a monster or a locked door. From there, various objects in your environment can be manipulated, usually with some waggling of the Wiimote. For instance if you want to drop a vase on a bad guy's head, you don't just pick up the vase, click it on the hole in the floor, and watch it happen. You pick up the vase, click it on the hole in the floor, then turn the Wiimote on its side and "drop" it at the right time. You can also open doors, tip over beakers, saw down trees, and even swing a tennis racket at an oncoming fireball.

But it's Wiki who proves to be your most valuable tool. As your magical flying monkey bell, you just need to grab him by the tail and ring him near an animal (or even one of Captain Rose's goons) and a special transformation will be triggered. A frog turns into a bomb, a bat into an umbrella, and so on. Virtually every living thing you find can be turned into some sort of useful tool. They don't necessarily make logical sense, but that's the method to Zack & Wiki's madness. Only by implementing the strangest circumlocutions of reasoning can you do anything resembling planning ahead, and most levels will consist of you clicking on everything you can find until, near the end, you go "Oh, I get it, if I put the centipede into the Frankenstein machine, he'll turn into a flavored soda! Then I can make an invisibility potion."

As the game progresses, the reasoning doesn't get too much more complex, but the levels get longer, and the things that can kill you pop up more frequently. After each death, you can either restart from the beginning for free, or revive from a few moments before the fatal event occurred by spending a platinum ticket. Both platinum tickets and oracle dolls (for buying in-level hints) are for sale back at the hideout, using coins found during play. If you'd rather not replay the same 10 or 15 minutes over and over again, stock up on those platinum tickets. The oracle dolls may be useful on occasion, but the first time you get a hint like "You need to get the treasure chest from the dragon" (yes, thank you, I knew that) you'll want to throw the oracle dolls in the trash and use an online FAQ instead.

Wiki may have his limitations (though he's a flying monkey, he'll never fetch you anything out of reach nor grab your arms and fly you from danger), but two heads are still better than one. This is a great game to play with a friend or spouse. Though only one person can steer Zack at a time, another set of eyes can be invaluable for spotting puzzle solutions. While you're getting frustrated trying to catch a mole so you can whack him with a hammer, your clear-headed partner may notice a puzzle-based workaround.

The hard part may be convincing said friend or spouse to play with you in the first place, considering the game's aesthetic. Everything, from Wiki's inane musings to Zack's boyish appearance and perpetual candy bar munching, screams this is a game for children. Even the name itself is about as kiddie as they come. Of course, the puzzles are way too difficult for children (and, in parts, most adults), which is the same dichotomy that killed Xbox 360's super-cute and super-complicated sim Viva Pinata. So if adults find it cloying and kids can't make it past level two, who is this game for anyway? Kidults, of course! Grown-ups who enjoy doing "youthful" things. If you're over 21, childless, and own a Wii, you probably are one. It's okay, you're among friends here.

If you enjoy puzzles, and especially bizarre ones, this is the game for you. Even when you think you've clicked on everything and you're calling upon a FAQ for the tenth time, you'll read the solution and think, "Yeah, I probably should've thought of that." But a little bit of hyper-wackiness goes a long way, and if you play more than two levels in a row, you'll be ready to grab Wiki by the tail and swing him into a tree, especially since it'll take 12-15 hours to make it through the whole thing. The final few levels of the game also raise the reflex and timing quotients by quite a lot, so if you've gotten used to a methodical style of play, you're likely to get frustrated. Still, in the end Zack & Wiki is probably one of the best 3rd party games available for the Wii. It's remarkably well-designed, with fun uses for the Wiimote, and lots of opportunity for happy "ah ha!" moments, either alone or with a partner.

Grade: B