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Quest for the Inane

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 38
Date: January 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I adore Wii. I use the Tennis feature on a regular basis to enhance my exercise regime. By getting lost in the game, I can work up a sweat, and I love deciphering how to improve my skills. So, when I broke my leg, I decided to buy a software that would engage my mind and love of puzzles as an added distraction. Sadly, Zack & Wiki are a great disappointment to me. Now, it might have something to do with my being 60, but I dearly loved Myst and rarely resorted to "cheat notes". With Zack and Wiki, I've constantly resorted to "cheat notes", because the game dissolves so fast when you make a mistake, that there's little chance of learning from those mistakes. I would absolutely encourage Wii software developers to work on puzzle games because I'd love to find one that "thinks" more like I do. I'll bet that as Wii is discovered by broader segments of the market, others will feel the same way.

This is supposed to be a kids' game?!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: June 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

40-plus hours of gameplay is no exaggeration, but you're a better person than I if you can get more than an hour or two into it without wanting to spike your Wiimote into the TV.

Zack & Wiki is a puzzle/adventure game with a heavy anime flavor; although the tiny amount of voice acting is in English, it's obvious that the actors are speaking their lines phonetically ("Sea Rabbits" becomes "See-Rabito," for instance). Not that I mind, except that it's sort of incongruous with the written dialogue. Other reviews have compared the gameplay to old-fashioned point-and-click adventures, but honestly, I don't think I would have made that connection if I hadn't read it beforehand; there are inventory items, but you don't keep them from one level to the next, and there's almost no plot to speak of.

To be fair, there are good things about the game; it's certainly original, and aside from the issue with the voice acting, the characters are pretty endearing; Zack's facial expressions are a hoot, and Captain Rose is adorable, in her anime-girl way.

Unfortunately, the thing that cripples Zack & Wiki is the gameplay itself. The designers made it possible to die, for instance; that wouldn't bug me, except that way too often, the thing that kills you is something that you never in a million years would have seen coming unless you either worked on the design team or you possess the gift of second sight. (Occasionally, especially in the "Flute of the Growlin' Goblins" level, the thing that kills you is the Wiimote misinterpreting the motion you're trying to make, or not make; in this level, there's a crank-operated gondola thing that sometimes keeps going even when you've stopped flailing your Wiimote.) What's worse, the game seems intent on punishing you, and punishing you dearly, whenever you do get killed; not only do you lose all of your money and points, but unless you've got an expensive "platinum ticket," you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the level. There's a hints system, but not only are the hints even more expensive than the platinum tickets, they seem to have no bearing on the progress you've made; if you've made it halfway through the level and you buy a hint, you'll most likely be told something that you figured out for yourself twenty minutes ago. (Plus, as you already know if you're reading this, we have an "internet" nowadays; why screw around with in-game hints when you can get all the hints you need from GameFAQs or any of a million other places? I'd maybe understand if Zack & Wiki was made back when there was no internet to be had, but the thing's only a year old. It's especially dumb when you realize that you can access that very same internet right from your Wii.) And yeah, you can go back and replay levels to recoup your losses if you want, but why not make it reasonably possible to get through them on the first try instead of artificially lengthening the gameplay by making you repeat everything?

To be honest, I have no idea who the designers had in mind with this one; the overall tone suggests they intended the game for younger players, but I'm a full-grown adult and I can't even get through more than five minutes with my sanity intact. I haven't beaten the game yet, and I'll probably keep trying, but at this point, it's more like a vendetta than anything else. (Plus, it seems a shame to waste the money I spent on it, although I have a feeling that ship has already sailed.) I should point out also that I totally saw the "plot twist" coming. Be smarter than me, and avoid Zack & Wiki at all costs.

The not-so-great aspects of Z&W

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: March 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you've read any other of the Z&W reviews, I'm sure you've heard all about the general game play and the games many positive aspects, thus with this review, I will be focusing on two issues I had with this title.

Z&W hits the player with many interesting and clever puzzles that often use the Wii remote in new ways, however, like all puzzle and point-and-click games, once you have solved these puzzles and finished the game, there's nothing left to do. Sure, you can play through the game again and find additional secret treasure or try to improve your score, but the fun in Z&W is in figuring out how to manipulate the game environment to get around the obstacles in your way, not finding randomly spawning secret treasure or beating your own high score. Once you've played through the game, replaying the game just involves recalling how you beat a level the first time. Nothing new is included.

One other issue with the game is the difficulty curve. The game is certainly meant to be a brain teaser and it does just that for the vast majority of the game. However, the last 2-3 stages, the difficulty shoots up in a very drastic way. Practically every wrong move results in death, as compared to the rest of the game where there is far more leeway. In the rest of the game, typically when you mess up, you can try again. In these last few levels, when you mess up, you have to start over. There was no steady increase in difficulty or sudden death moments throughout the game. It just happens all of a sudden on the last few levels.

I commend Capcom for trying to create a new IP. Should this game get a sequel, I sincerely hope the problems that I mentioned be corrected. However, due to the lack of replayability and the sudden change in difficulty, I must say that this title is a rental at best.

Stuck on the Music challenge

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: April 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My five year old son and I played this together (he has to have my help because there is a lot of reading). We had a good time progressing through the challenges until we got to the musical bone guy. I spent three hours trying to get past him with no luck (my son fell asleep he was so bored). We can't progress any further. The tips online all say to practice, but I don't want to waste anymore of my time. This game is essentially worthless to us now, and we've only had about two hours of game time out of it.

Q: How many ways is there to kill Zack? A: Not enough!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: April 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I didn't enjoy a single minute of this horrible point and click puzzle game, not just because it is so insanely difficult but also because there are seemingly a million ways to die in this game and you will likely die every single conceivable way before you actually clear a mission. For example, did you know that you can actually get SWEPT to death in this game?!

I have no idea why everybody else is praising Z&W. The graphics? Underwhelming cel-shading. 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. 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 more sense! For instance, don't bother to try hopping on a block to get to an out-of-reach item--that would just be too simple! 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 and are so expensive to buy that you're way better off just checking out an FAQ that you WILL need at some point. 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 and there are no sidequests or reasons to replay Z&W anyway. Buy at your own risk.

Great game, but marred by interface and tedium

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 21
Date: November 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got Z&W to play because of all of the great reviews. People said it was hard and perhaps that is why it never sold as well as it should have. I am offering a bit of criticism here, although I did find the game fun over all:

I would suggest another reason: the interface is needlessly irritating. Everything you want to do takes about two more clicks than it should. Just doing the first scene in the plane is an exercise in never-ending clicking that just makes you want to quit right there before getting anywhere. Later in the game, I certainly don't need it to always keep telling me how to use items I have used before and I every time I pick up a tool, I don't need the little animation telling me that I found it.

Once you get past the irritation of the first stage and the story gets going, you get to the first set of levels which are interesting and fun. Then, about on the third map, the puzzles become, not more complex, but just more irritating. You will often have to die multiple times on a long stage just to discover something, and you have the choice of using a ticket and losing a ton of points or just going through the tedium of solving the entire stage again. The puzzle points are designed to be awarded to a person playing through the stage after already knowing it, not for the person who is clever and figures it out on the first try.

The arcade elements often add a bit of tedium and not much challenge. You just run around a bit more to finish the stage rather than actually adding to the challenge (e.g. the snow dragon's breath stage)

There is often no indication what a particular action will do until you do it. So you click on the baby dragon's head thinking you are going to pet it, but instead you smash it on the head. A small non-modal prompt explaining the action would be more useful.

The puzzles themselves are often interesting and well thought out. It is a shame that they didn't think about the flow of gameplay and a bit more about how tedious the game can become...

Maybe not for everyone

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 9
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My 5 year old received this for Christmas. We've only tried it a few times, because he gets pretty frustrated with it. It requires a lot of reading and he doesn't read very fast yet. He's pretty good at video games and I'm sure in time he will enjoy it. It's a really cute concept.

Zack & Wiki Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 21
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got this game as a present.. Well let me say... I guess it got good reviews but I feel like I lose brain cells every time I play it.. There is a plot... But the goo and gaa makes me nuts... Besides the main characters annoying habit of eating chocolate every ten seconds... If you have brain cells and want to keep them I would say not the game for you...

not a great game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: July 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

this got great reviews... it was not engaging.. really slow.. Puzzles are hard,, which not good. I'm sorry I listened to the experts..

Wow, Nintendo Wii's 2007 Suprise Sleeper Hit.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 60 / 62
Date: October 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game probably went unnoticed by many gamers, myself included. At first glance, the title makes it out to be some cartoon network type of sloppily put together platform. But it is anything but. What it is, is Capcom's wink to old school gamers. Those that enjoyed classic Sierra adventures of decades past.

Using the wii remote, you point to where you want Zack to go, and with his companion Wiki (a yellow monkey who sounds even cuter than Pikachu, or more annoying, depending on how you feel about the yellow rodent), he travels accross 8 distinct worlds. Varying from tropical Islands to Lava filled caves. The characters are colorful and enjoyable. Zack for instance is always chewing a chocolate bar, his favorite food. Even when he's falling to his likely death. This injection of humor is a welcome addition compared to the serious and gory games of late on competing systems.

There is actually a bit of puzzle solving in this game the further you get. As you have to tinker with your inventory and find out what combines with what. And how to use the wii remote uniquely to solve the next puzzle. The Wii remotes use in the solving of puzzles is great. As it uses the sensor and gyro in many different ways.

Overall this game is a 4 out of 5. And the only reason I give it a 4, is that I feel the Wii's discs are large enough to fit full voice acting. What we get instead is sort of a banjo kazooie type emoting of sound effects. However each character has about 5-10 different things they will "blurt out". For instance, Wiki: "Zacku. ." if talking to Zack. "oohhhhh" if finding something interesting. Sometimes they will even speak a line of words. Usually in japanese or a made up babble language. It gets the job done. But my preference in point and click adventures is full on voice acting. A'la the later Leisure Suit Larry games, Later Monkey Island games, and so on. .

Taking that all in brings me to this conclusion. Zack and Wiki is one of the top games on the Wii. And deserves a slot in any gamer's collection.

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