Zack & Wiki makes for an interesting pitch for Wii players' time. With Zack, Capcom has dipped into the rich genre of point-and-click adventures that, until now, have never really made a particularly worthwhile experience on consoles—they've realized, quite rightly so, that Wii's pointer is the key to making these titles work on the big screen.
At the same time, Zack isn't a lazy port of some existing successful P&C franchise. The first Wii-centric thing players will notice is the pop-up challenges that are meant to be addressed by manipulation of the Remote. For the most part, these work well; they fit the game well, the motions don't usually flake out, and they don't interrupt the flow. (Exception: one particular case, where the tediousness of the brute force you must apply is rather brilliantly used to drive the point home that you've not figured out the most elegant solution to a puzzle.)
Beyond the motion controls, though, Zack clearly realizes it's a console title, meant to be shared. Up to three additional players can pick up Remotes and use them to point at items on the screen or even sketch lines to illustrate a path they think the person controlling the action should take. My wife and I didn't use this particular functionality much, but we did find it most entertaining to tackle puzzles together, putting our brains together to make sure we were coming up with the best solutions. Zack makes it easy to drop in and out of this sort of gameplay, too; every one of the several challenges that make up the main game is self-contained, requiring little-to-no background in how previous challenges were completed.
The puzzles you must solve to complete the game's challenges run the gamut from merely entertaining to brilliantly devilish; there's literally no dull moment from start to finish. Nearly all are logical, at least in retrospect; while it's likely you'll be stumped from ime to time, at least, you'll not find yourself saying "I should have done what?" when you discover the real solution. Usually-helpful hints are provided (for a price) should you get yourself in a pickle, and you can even find out for free if you've done something to completely ruin your chances of completing the level—though, whether through fault of designer or what not, this failed to work for me once, leaving me banging my head in frustration for a wasted hour.
What's a little less brilliant is the way in which failure is punished. A number of the contraptions and puzzles in the game work in certain ways that are not immediately clear, and as such you'll need to engage in experimentation. The problem manifests itself because the points you score when you've finally solved a puzzle are deducted based on your performance, and having to find out how a contraption works usually results in a docking of this score. Ideally, if you're not specifically doing something wrong, it would be possible to score the maximum points on your first run-through without already knowing the solution to the entire level—especially considering you'll be needing to experiment in order to achieve the cool multiple solutions some levels sport.
While the main game is an all-around fun experience, the extras—making up the majority of the 500 "treasures" touted on the back of the box—are a sad exercise in how to bore the player. To acquire these items, which are almost all of the music/sound test/art variety, you must periodically give a handful of your in-game cash to a character who will "search for treasure" at a random point on the map for you. After you've completed the main game, you have the opportunity to search the game's levels for hidden "treasures", again using the services of this guy, who will very occasionally bring you hints on how to do so. It's far more interesting to replay the levels to search for alternative ways of completing them—with some boasting several of these.
If you're in the mood to be puzzled, you can't go wrong with Zack & Wiki. It's pure puzzling distilled down to its finest essence, and its theme—excellently realized through art and animation—is highly entertaining as well. The fact that it retails for $40 is just icing on the cake; there's more value here than many full-price titles. I hope the experiment pays off for Capcom; I'd love to add more titles like this game to my Wii library.
At the same time, Zack isn't a lazy port of some existing successful P&C franchise. The first Wii-centric thing players will notice is the pop-up challenges that are meant to be addressed by manipulation of the Remote. For the most part, these work well; they fit the game well, the motions don't usually flake out, and they don't interrupt the flow. (Exception: one particular case, where the tediousness of the brute force you must apply is rather brilliantly used to drive the point home that you've not figured out the most elegant solution to a puzzle.)
Beyond the motion controls, though, Zack clearly realizes it's a console title, meant to be shared. Up to three additional players can pick up Remotes and use them to point at items on the screen or even sketch lines to illustrate a path they think the person controlling the action should take. My wife and I didn't use this particular functionality much, but we did find it most entertaining to tackle puzzles together, putting our brains together to make sure we were coming up with the best solutions. Zack makes it easy to drop in and out of this sort of gameplay, too; every one of the several challenges that make up the main game is self-contained, requiring little-to-no background in how previous challenges were completed.
The puzzles you must solve to complete the game's challenges run the gamut from merely entertaining to brilliantly devilish; there's literally no dull moment from start to finish. Nearly all are logical, at least in retrospect; while it's likely you'll be stumped from ime to time, at least, you'll not find yourself saying "I should have done what?" when you discover the real solution. Usually-helpful hints are provided (for a price) should you get yourself in a pickle, and you can even find out for free if you've done something to completely ruin your chances of completing the level—though, whether through fault of designer or what not, this failed to work for me once, leaving me banging my head in frustration for a wasted hour.
What's a little less brilliant is the way in which failure is punished. A number of the contraptions and puzzles in the game work in certain ways that are not immediately clear, and as such you'll need to engage in experimentation. The problem manifests itself because the points you score when you've finally solved a puzzle are deducted based on your performance, and having to find out how a contraption works usually results in a docking of this score. Ideally, if you're not specifically doing something wrong, it would be possible to score the maximum points on your first run-through without already knowing the solution to the entire level—especially considering you'll be needing to experiment in order to achieve the cool multiple solutions some levels sport.
While the main game is an all-around fun experience, the extras—making up the majority of the 500 "treasures" touted on the back of the box—are a sad exercise in how to bore the player. To acquire these items, which are almost all of the music/sound test/art variety, you must periodically give a handful of your in-game cash to a character who will "search for treasure" at a random point on the map for you. After you've completed the main game, you have the opportunity to search the game's levels for hidden "treasures", again using the services of this guy, who will very occasionally bring you hints on how to do so. It's far more interesting to replay the levels to search for alternative ways of completing them—with some boasting several of these.
If you're in the mood to be puzzled, you can't go wrong with Zack & Wiki. It's pure puzzling distilled down to its finest essence, and its theme—excellently realized through art and animation—is highly entertaining as well. The fact that it retails for $40 is just icing on the cake; there's more value here than many full-price titles. I hope the experiment pays off for Capcom; I'd love to add more titles like this game to my Wii library.