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No one was more excited than me when Nintendo unveiled their new console.  Now that a year has passed games that tap into the Wii's Potential are finally starting to trickle in.  One droplet of hope landing into the cavernous bucket of good titles for the Wii is Capcom's new IP Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure.  It’s a puzzle game in the style of those classic point and click adventure games that are unfortunately on the brink of extinction.  All of the puzzles are split up into separate levels, which take on average anywhere between 10-30 minutes to figure out the first time through.

Zack is a chocolate loving pirate boy whose best friend is a gold flying monkey, which he can turn into a magic bell (done by shaking the wiimote).  The content of the game is just bizarre; Zack's bell can turn living creatures like centipedes into useful objects like saws which can be used to cut down trees.  Zack's bell is also used to scare ghosts away from treasure chests, just like real life.  Upon opening the first chest you discover the golden talking skull of Barbaros, as famous pirate captain.  He asks you to search the island for his remaining body parts so that he can be reassembled. 

The game makes brilliant use of the wiimote and utilizes nearly all of its innovative features.  When using the saw you push and pull your wiimote towards the screen to cut down obstacles.  Zack and Wiki is one of the few Wii games to have that “hand in the world” feel.  Since its played with one wiimote your other hand should be free, making it the beer hand.  You’ll want a stiff drink handy trying to complete Zack and Wiki’s unforgiving puzzles.  Death sends you back to the beginning the puzzle and occurs far too often.  Even if you don’t die it’s easy to put the game in an unwinnable state, which is worse than death because you’ll waste time trying to fix the problem.

I like Zack and Wiki but some of the Wii controls sap the fun right out of this game.  There are a few moments in the game where I literally shut the game off and did something else.  The bell ringing mini game is incredibly frustrating.  Also, The precise racket swinging parts are impossible and can go straight to hell.

Aside from gathering Barbaros’ bones there is little reward for completing the puzzle.  You can play through the puzzles to get a better ranking but who really gives a shit?  I do recommend it to people that are fans of the Lucasarts glory years, but at the same time I feel like all these great puzzles are squandered on a bad IP.  Zack and Wiki has a great amount of variety and it’s a step in the right direction for the Wii.  Hopefully there will be more games like this in the near future.

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