Zack & Wiki - Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

[Review originally written by Doopus]

Where to start, well really with this game it can be summed up in short as follows; If your an old school gamer who liked classics such as Secret of Monkey Island or Treasure Island Dizzy, you will love Zack & Wiki.

Zack & Wiki in its simplest form is a puzzle-adventure game. It starts off with deceptively easy, and you may be fooled into thinking this is a kids game, but trust me, if you play through the first couple of levels the puzzles start to become a lot more taxing and the game really comes into its element.

You play Zack, a young pirate who is followed by his little flying golden monkey called wiki, who is in more than one way very reminiscent of Pikachu, but don't let this put you off.

You start out escaping from your ship thats just been attacked by some rival pirates and end up freeing the ghost of the legendary pirate Barbaros.

When I say 'free' though you only free his skull, and the game then sets you off travelling to free the rest of his skeletal anatomy over a range of different puzzle filled levels in different area's of the world.

To help in solving your puzzles you will come across different objects that can be manipulated in a variety of ways. The first one being your little golden monkey friend who you can shake and turn into a bell to change other monsters usable objects, crazy I know.

The reason I found this game so entertaining though is that it was made for the Wii, and what this means is that all of the different objects you get from keys, to saw's, to grabbers you have to mimic the action with the Wii-Mote to actually perform the action required.

This in itself adds an all new dimension to the game and to the puzzle solving as some items can be used in different ways depending on how you move the Wii-Mote.

All in all, this is a really fun game, the puzzles are interesting and will have you coming back, the only downsides I found were on a few occassions the character would get stuck in the background and couldn't be moved, meaning you had to restart the level. Also the option to get a clue on hard puzzles is way too easy which makes it very tempting to just get a clue and pass through the puzzle, rather than stretch your mental muscles and work it out.

I'd definately say its worth playing, but its not got any real re-playability as once youve completed it theres no real hook to go back and do the puzzles again. Overall I would say a 7 out of 10.