A bit of context before I start: in the middle of 2022, Pangburn and I had just finished up reviews of Ys: The Oath in Felghana and we were looking for something new to try out on the backlog. Now, as the overambitious planner I tend to be, I suggested that we play Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure, as a Wii game that I had bounced off of a year ago but had wanted to get back to for a while since. He agreed, and we were to get at it and quickly finish this one up because a lot of other impending 2000s era classics were on the docket in the months to come.
Consider this review my comeuppance, because I am directly responsible for Pangburn’s anguish and due to many schedule slips (and existential dread after many conversations before and after that review), I didn’t end up finishing the game until yesterday, playing it in splurts over the course of my holiday break. I always sympathized with his pain, but now, I think I can genuinely empathize with his struggle.
As a preface to discussing the game, we first have to briefly talk about difficulty in video games, particularly difficulty in the point and click adventure game genre. Difficulty in video games can usually be divided into two categories: the knowledge test (i.e. figuring out and knowing what to do) and the execution test (that is, actually performing the actions to progress). While the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive (as there is always some degree of learning on the fly/recognizing context clues and pairing that up with performance), difficulty in plenty of scenarios will tend to lean more towards one category than the other, and that especially tends to ring true in point and clicks; knowledge tests usually reign supreme due to the nature of the genre relying heavily on puzzles, and execution tests boiling down to a few timed environmental interactions or performances in included side minigames.
We can then think of Zack & Wiki as a successor to the classic point and click adventure games of the 1990s, especially those of LucasArts, whose work evolved into the 3D adventure game space with more intricate timing and precision placement puzzles as reflected in titles such as Grim Fandango and its infamous forklift puzzle. I bring up this particular model, because Zack & Wiki is in many ways exemplary of that exact style, for better or for worse. Simply put, Zack & Wiki takes many of the general conventions of the genre, and many of the classic weaknesses too, but its many “innovations” also led to the game becoming much more frustrating than the games it built off of.
There’s a very good video regarding difficulty in point and click adventure games by Yahtzee; while I won’t go into detail regarding all his points, one of his main takeaways is that a certain balance regarding puzzle difficulty has to be reached. You have to create puzzles that are not so simple as to where they can just be solved instantly (simple lock & key puzzles), and not so complicated as to where shaky logic/obscure environmental clues must be relied upon and players are instead incentivized to trial and error their way through the game. Yahtzee highlights the spitting puzzle in Monkey Island 2 as a good example of perfect difficulty, where he mentions that multiple locks (noticing wind direction, thickening your phlegm, and needing a distraction to move the finish line flags) require multiple keys (hearing a conversation regarding the wind as a factor, color mixing drinks, and earlier context clues with blowing your horn). As such, puzzles need to be both intricate and reasonably intuitive to give players that rush of satisfaction.
Zack and Wiki unfortunately tends to fail on both fronts with regards to this. Many of the puzzles are pretty damn simple, to the point where a good chunk of them are quite literally “fit a square peg into a square hole” environmental interactions. It also doesn’t help that many of the tools that you’ll get will be used once or twice and then replaced with another tool that you’ll obtain from solving that scenario; it’s in many ways a stream of classic inventory puzzles (using object A to solve problem B) with one lock and one key at a time. There are exceptions of course, for example needing to occasionally flip held objects to utilize the other side (like for instance, using a spread out umbrella to shield against wind and then using the hook side of the umbrella to snag far away chains) or shaking Wiki to transform animal tools back into animals for those specific interactions, but in general, these exceptions tend to be scant and are very obvious follow-ups when there exist few other approaches as dictated by the environment around you.
However, Zack and Wiki also performs the sin of doing the exact opposite; that is, making puzzles require so many steps from so many different places that the solution cannot be reasonably intuited from context clues, often with somewhat obtuse conclusions. One great example actually came up a couple of days ago when Pangburn and I were talking about the airship level. This is an “infiltrate the enemy base” stage where Zack & Wiki must sneak into Captain Rose’s plane, systematically eliminate or avoid enemy goons, and then escape via Rose’s personal vehicle, with tons of steps involved. One of these steps involves unlocking and then using a turret directly outside the hangar to not only destroy an air vent cover, but also destroy the already open hangar door. Pangburn actually got softlocked because he didn’t destroy the hangar door and some goons later lock the door and block the door controls, and after talking this through, we figured out why; there are no tells given signifying that the elimination of the door is crucial to solving the level. The closest I could think of comes earlier in the level, where after turning off a propeller, some alarm apparently goes off and a goon comes to check on the propeller controls. However, not once does the goon signal to check the hangar door controls from this alarm that they will mess with the controls and block Zack’s exit route, nor do any of the crew throughout the level’s runtime. You can leave the hangar door and air vent cover open (and in fact even leave Rose’s plane on with the engine running) without the goons noticing or taking action until they close the escape routes, at which point it becomes too late. Because this level is quite lengthy and requires so many different actions before the potential soft lock, I can’t fault Pangburn for not destroying the hangar door, and in fact planning so far ahead to secure the getaway gets easily overlooked when so many precise steps are necessary.
That actually leads me to what I think is the second biggest problem with Zack and Wiki: the levels are just too goddamn long. I won’t go too into detail regarding the death and ticketing system, as Pangburn has already described that sufficiently, but needless to say, the takeaway here is that there is a difference between making something difficult, and making something tedious. Performing the incorrect actions (often as part of trial and error, in fact) or running into hazards will result in not just a slight time loss from animations as is common of the genre, but in fact permadeath that requires you to restart the level or use a ticket (which has to be bought with money in the hub, and money grinding in earlier levels is another issue of itself) to respawn. That also doesn’t take into account that softlocking is extremely easy, because crucial environmental objects can be easily fumbled or destroyed and Zack doesn’t signify this softlock with an instant death or failure, but rather just the usual disappointed animation similar to more forgiving failures (such as accidentally inserting the wrong shape into a hole, where he obviously won’t die). However, not all environmental destruction resolves in softlocking either, because sometimes these objects and tools can be replenished… but not always! This inconsistency makes Zack and Wiki’s “checkpointing” system even more frustrating; how are you supposed to know what softlocks and what doesn’t without prior knowledge of events, and thus figure out exactly when or when not to restart?
The level design itself is also an issue with padding out levels, not just the puzzles contained within. Remember when I said that a lot of Zack and Wiki’s difficulty stems from simple inventory puzzles? Zack only has space to carry one item, which means you’re constantly throwing down items on the ground to replace them with something else, and backtracking plenty to recollect old items for follow up interactions. Furthermore, levels tend to be massive, and pathing is not great; players have to keep clicking around the level to specifically guide Zack to not run into obvious level hazards and die, even if this form of interaction is not particularly interesting. Compounding to this problem, levels often change their camera angles gradually as Zack walks around the stage (as opposed to classic point and clicks that lean heavily towards fixed camera angles for each room and immediately snap when absolutely necessary), so you might not even be able to click specifically where you want to go and have to keep clicking on the screen for Zack to keep up. The biggest culprit here is a level dubbed “Icicle of Prosperity,” where Zack has to continually drag up tools (many of which are heavy and slow down his movement speed) from the ground to a giant icicle up top on the same path, over and over. Needless to say, this issue annoys me because it could have just been solved by condensing single levels or allowing Zack to carry more than one item at a time; it’s just not engaging to watch Zack bumble from one part of the stage to the next, especially when failing to do so results in an entire restart of the whole process.
Okay, so if everything inbetween the action is extremely boring, then the action itself as execution tests should save the game right? Wrong. In fact, I would say that the motion control minigames actually contain some of the lowest dips in the game altogether. When the actions work and you can follow the given pose signified by the game (very similar to how WarioWare Smooth Moves expresses its starting states actually), then it’s fine; these are the simple actions like pulling a lever down, shaking a tree, pressing a button, and the usual fare. Conversely, when the motion controls don’t directly convert 1:1 with actions in-game, it is genuinely obnoxious. Again, I find myself agreeing with Pangburn regarding many of the worst culprits, so I’ll just elaborate upon a few of them.
- One level in the volcano section requires you to use a tennis racket to deflect fireballs towards specific targets. There are no context clues or hints given on how to navigate this; you just have to figure out on the fly that the timing of the hits determines if the shot goes left or right (similar to Wii Sports baseball). Pointing the Wiimote in the direction before swinging does nothing. This timing however, apparently has nothing to do with verticality, which becomes important when you have to lob a fireball upwards to hit the treasure chest. I hit multiple fireballs in the correct vicinity but kept undershooting the target before I unceremoniously nailed the target while doing the same exact thing.
- The anchor in the final boss fight is extremely stupid. You have to whirl your Wiimote like twirling a lasso, and then flick your Wiimote towards the sensor bar to unleash it when you feel the vibration. Here’s the kicker; these are emulated motion controls (there’s no built-in sensor in the Wiimote) so what is intuited versus what you must actually do is quite different. I learned from GameFAQs that you must instead, gently tilt the Wiimote and hold it in that direction to let go. It’s another classic case of the required action going against intuition and thus feeling like classic 2000s jank instead of a satisfying and tough execution test.
- Bonelich is hidden in a few levels, where he can be woken up to play in some rhythm minigames, shaking the bell in time with the prompts. Again, Zack and Wiki uses tilt sensors (to determine controller positions) over accelerometers, so shaking the bell is really more like slowly tilting the Wiimote towards the screen. Even more frustrating though, is that clearing Bonelich’s optional minigames is required to unlock certain Secret Treasure Maps, and for the life of me, I could never figure out the proper action for a sustained note in the minigame, since shaking vigorously only messed with the tilt sensors.
Thus, I now understand on a deeper level exactly what was so aggravating regarding Zack and Wiki’s motion controls, and it is an absolute shame that one of the supposed selling points of the game (that is, introducing difficulty through minigame execution tests that are supposed to be more intuitive and thus more immersive) is instead one of the most glaring weaknesses of the whole experience. All I’m saying, is that I think this would have gone a whole lot better if the game was released a couple of years later with Wii Motion Plus support so my sword swings and rotating blocks actually came out in-game as reflected by my outside actions, more similarly to that of Wii Sports Resort.
There’s one last particular moment that comes to mind as my least favorite section of the game (yes, even while considering the onslaught of motion control jank combined with exhausting and truly mental puzzling in the last hour of the game). The Frozen Temple world’s level “Keeper of the Ice” is a stage where the treasure chest is already in sight, but there’s a big catch; the level is guarded by a sweeper robot that turns on every 10 seconds to sweep up Zack’s footprints and will prematurely end the level if it collides into Zack at the end of any footprint trail. In other words, this is a forced stealth segment in a point and click adventure game, and is perhaps the worst forced stealth segment that I have ever had to suffer through in any game to date. You can either avoid the robot by hiding on a non-snowy surface (i.e. ice or any covered gazebos) or shaking nearby trees to cover your close footprints. It sounds simple but doesn’t translate well because as mentioned prior, shifting camera angles and questionable pathing make it tougher in practice to get exactly where you need to be within every 10 second interval, and you have to be standing in exactly the correct position in front of the tree (not just anywhere around) to be able to shake it. Couple this with one puzzle where you have to slowly carry a transformed goon totem across the map as well as the fact that halfway through, the sweeper bot will break the ice in the middle of the level and cut off a route, forcing you to take a more circuitous path around the stage, and you have what is perhaps the most drawn-out and absolutely miserable level in the entire game. One misclick or failed pathing interaction here means that you’ll have to spend another attempt slowly inching your way through the snowy garden, ten seconds at a time.
I feel somewhat guilty that I have to be this harsh towards a beloved favorite of many, especially when considering how many interesting ideas were at play. The potential of Zack & Wiki shines through so crystal-clear; the cel-shaded graphics more than hold up, there’s tons of charm in both the main cast and side character interactions, and the difficulty, when presented with cool challenges like the potion puzzle in “Mad Science” or the controllable robots in "Relics of the Past," provides that fun and thrilling rush. Unfortunately, there’s just so much downtime and slogging throughout the whole game with not enough world-building or gripping storytelling to keep me constantly engaged during its weaker moments. Needless to say, I can’t see myself returning to the game to tackle optional end-game content or recommending this to anyone outside of those looking for a prime example of why vanilla Wii motion controls can go too far. Capcom went on record in 2008 as rather doubtful that a sequel would be announced in the near future, and as much as I hate to be pessimistic, that sadly may be for the best.
Consider this review my comeuppance, because I am directly responsible for Pangburn’s anguish and due to many schedule slips (and existential dread after many conversations before and after that review), I didn’t end up finishing the game until yesterday, playing it in splurts over the course of my holiday break. I always sympathized with his pain, but now, I think I can genuinely empathize with his struggle.
As a preface to discussing the game, we first have to briefly talk about difficulty in video games, particularly difficulty in the point and click adventure game genre. Difficulty in video games can usually be divided into two categories: the knowledge test (i.e. figuring out and knowing what to do) and the execution test (that is, actually performing the actions to progress). While the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive (as there is always some degree of learning on the fly/recognizing context clues and pairing that up with performance), difficulty in plenty of scenarios will tend to lean more towards one category than the other, and that especially tends to ring true in point and clicks; knowledge tests usually reign supreme due to the nature of the genre relying heavily on puzzles, and execution tests boiling down to a few timed environmental interactions or performances in included side minigames.
We can then think of Zack & Wiki as a successor to the classic point and click adventure games of the 1990s, especially those of LucasArts, whose work evolved into the 3D adventure game space with more intricate timing and precision placement puzzles as reflected in titles such as Grim Fandango and its infamous forklift puzzle. I bring up this particular model, because Zack & Wiki is in many ways exemplary of that exact style, for better or for worse. Simply put, Zack & Wiki takes many of the general conventions of the genre, and many of the classic weaknesses too, but its many “innovations” also led to the game becoming much more frustrating than the games it built off of.
There’s a very good video regarding difficulty in point and click adventure games by Yahtzee; while I won’t go into detail regarding all his points, one of his main takeaways is that a certain balance regarding puzzle difficulty has to be reached. You have to create puzzles that are not so simple as to where they can just be solved instantly (simple lock & key puzzles), and not so complicated as to where shaky logic/obscure environmental clues must be relied upon and players are instead incentivized to trial and error their way through the game. Yahtzee highlights the spitting puzzle in Monkey Island 2 as a good example of perfect difficulty, where he mentions that multiple locks (noticing wind direction, thickening your phlegm, and needing a distraction to move the finish line flags) require multiple keys (hearing a conversation regarding the wind as a factor, color mixing drinks, and earlier context clues with blowing your horn). As such, puzzles need to be both intricate and reasonably intuitive to give players that rush of satisfaction.
Zack and Wiki unfortunately tends to fail on both fronts with regards to this. Many of the puzzles are pretty damn simple, to the point where a good chunk of them are quite literally “fit a square peg into a square hole” environmental interactions. It also doesn’t help that many of the tools that you’ll get will be used once or twice and then replaced with another tool that you’ll obtain from solving that scenario; it’s in many ways a stream of classic inventory puzzles (using object A to solve problem B) with one lock and one key at a time. There are exceptions of course, for example needing to occasionally flip held objects to utilize the other side (like for instance, using a spread out umbrella to shield against wind and then using the hook side of the umbrella to snag far away chains) or shaking Wiki to transform animal tools back into animals for those specific interactions, but in general, these exceptions tend to be scant and are very obvious follow-ups when there exist few other approaches as dictated by the environment around you.
However, Zack and Wiki also performs the sin of doing the exact opposite; that is, making puzzles require so many steps from so many different places that the solution cannot be reasonably intuited from context clues, often with somewhat obtuse conclusions. One great example actually came up a couple of days ago when Pangburn and I were talking about the airship level. This is an “infiltrate the enemy base” stage where Zack & Wiki must sneak into Captain Rose’s plane, systematically eliminate or avoid enemy goons, and then escape via Rose’s personal vehicle, with tons of steps involved. One of these steps involves unlocking and then using a turret directly outside the hangar to not only destroy an air vent cover, but also destroy the already open hangar door. Pangburn actually got softlocked because he didn’t destroy the hangar door and some goons later lock the door and block the door controls, and after talking this through, we figured out why; there are no tells given signifying that the elimination of the door is crucial to solving the level. The closest I could think of comes earlier in the level, where after turning off a propeller, some alarm apparently goes off and a goon comes to check on the propeller controls. However, not once does the goon signal to check the hangar door controls from this alarm that they will mess with the controls and block Zack’s exit route, nor do any of the crew throughout the level’s runtime. You can leave the hangar door and air vent cover open (and in fact even leave Rose’s plane on with the engine running) without the goons noticing or taking action until they close the escape routes, at which point it becomes too late. Because this level is quite lengthy and requires so many different actions before the potential soft lock, I can’t fault Pangburn for not destroying the hangar door, and in fact planning so far ahead to secure the getaway gets easily overlooked when so many precise steps are necessary.
That actually leads me to what I think is the second biggest problem with Zack and Wiki: the levels are just too goddamn long. I won’t go too into detail regarding the death and ticketing system, as Pangburn has already described that sufficiently, but needless to say, the takeaway here is that there is a difference between making something difficult, and making something tedious. Performing the incorrect actions (often as part of trial and error, in fact) or running into hazards will result in not just a slight time loss from animations as is common of the genre, but in fact permadeath that requires you to restart the level or use a ticket (which has to be bought with money in the hub, and money grinding in earlier levels is another issue of itself) to respawn. That also doesn’t take into account that softlocking is extremely easy, because crucial environmental objects can be easily fumbled or destroyed and Zack doesn’t signify this softlock with an instant death or failure, but rather just the usual disappointed animation similar to more forgiving failures (such as accidentally inserting the wrong shape into a hole, where he obviously won’t die). However, not all environmental destruction resolves in softlocking either, because sometimes these objects and tools can be replenished… but not always! This inconsistency makes Zack and Wiki’s “checkpointing” system even more frustrating; how are you supposed to know what softlocks and what doesn’t without prior knowledge of events, and thus figure out exactly when or when not to restart?
The level design itself is also an issue with padding out levels, not just the puzzles contained within. Remember when I said that a lot of Zack and Wiki’s difficulty stems from simple inventory puzzles? Zack only has space to carry one item, which means you’re constantly throwing down items on the ground to replace them with something else, and backtracking plenty to recollect old items for follow up interactions. Furthermore, levels tend to be massive, and pathing is not great; players have to keep clicking around the level to specifically guide Zack to not run into obvious level hazards and die, even if this form of interaction is not particularly interesting. Compounding to this problem, levels often change their camera angles gradually as Zack walks around the stage (as opposed to classic point and clicks that lean heavily towards fixed camera angles for each room and immediately snap when absolutely necessary), so you might not even be able to click specifically where you want to go and have to keep clicking on the screen for Zack to keep up. The biggest culprit here is a level dubbed “Icicle of Prosperity,” where Zack has to continually drag up tools (many of which are heavy and slow down his movement speed) from the ground to a giant icicle up top on the same path, over and over. Needless to say, this issue annoys me because it could have just been solved by condensing single levels or allowing Zack to carry more than one item at a time; it’s just not engaging to watch Zack bumble from one part of the stage to the next, especially when failing to do so results in an entire restart of the whole process.
Okay, so if everything inbetween the action is extremely boring, then the action itself as execution tests should save the game right? Wrong. In fact, I would say that the motion control minigames actually contain some of the lowest dips in the game altogether. When the actions work and you can follow the given pose signified by the game (very similar to how WarioWare Smooth Moves expresses its starting states actually), then it’s fine; these are the simple actions like pulling a lever down, shaking a tree, pressing a button, and the usual fare. Conversely, when the motion controls don’t directly convert 1:1 with actions in-game, it is genuinely obnoxious. Again, I find myself agreeing with Pangburn regarding many of the worst culprits, so I’ll just elaborate upon a few of them.
- One level in the volcano section requires you to use a tennis racket to deflect fireballs towards specific targets. There are no context clues or hints given on how to navigate this; you just have to figure out on the fly that the timing of the hits determines if the shot goes left or right (similar to Wii Sports baseball). Pointing the Wiimote in the direction before swinging does nothing. This timing however, apparently has nothing to do with verticality, which becomes important when you have to lob a fireball upwards to hit the treasure chest. I hit multiple fireballs in the correct vicinity but kept undershooting the target before I unceremoniously nailed the target while doing the same exact thing.
- The anchor in the final boss fight is extremely stupid. You have to whirl your Wiimote like twirling a lasso, and then flick your Wiimote towards the sensor bar to unleash it when you feel the vibration. Here’s the kicker; these are emulated motion controls (there’s no built-in sensor in the Wiimote) so what is intuited versus what you must actually do is quite different. I learned from GameFAQs that you must instead, gently tilt the Wiimote and hold it in that direction to let go. It’s another classic case of the required action going against intuition and thus feeling like classic 2000s jank instead of a satisfying and tough execution test.
- Bonelich is hidden in a few levels, where he can be woken up to play in some rhythm minigames, shaking the bell in time with the prompts. Again, Zack and Wiki uses tilt sensors (to determine controller positions) over accelerometers, so shaking the bell is really more like slowly tilting the Wiimote towards the screen. Even more frustrating though, is that clearing Bonelich’s optional minigames is required to unlock certain Secret Treasure Maps, and for the life of me, I could never figure out the proper action for a sustained note in the minigame, since shaking vigorously only messed with the tilt sensors.
Thus, I now understand on a deeper level exactly what was so aggravating regarding Zack and Wiki’s motion controls, and it is an absolute shame that one of the supposed selling points of the game (that is, introducing difficulty through minigame execution tests that are supposed to be more intuitive and thus more immersive) is instead one of the most glaring weaknesses of the whole experience. All I’m saying, is that I think this would have gone a whole lot better if the game was released a couple of years later with Wii Motion Plus support so my sword swings and rotating blocks actually came out in-game as reflected by my outside actions, more similarly to that of Wii Sports Resort.
There’s one last particular moment that comes to mind as my least favorite section of the game (yes, even while considering the onslaught of motion control jank combined with exhausting and truly mental puzzling in the last hour of the game). The Frozen Temple world’s level “Keeper of the Ice” is a stage where the treasure chest is already in sight, but there’s a big catch; the level is guarded by a sweeper robot that turns on every 10 seconds to sweep up Zack’s footprints and will prematurely end the level if it collides into Zack at the end of any footprint trail. In other words, this is a forced stealth segment in a point and click adventure game, and is perhaps the worst forced stealth segment that I have ever had to suffer through in any game to date. You can either avoid the robot by hiding on a non-snowy surface (i.e. ice or any covered gazebos) or shaking nearby trees to cover your close footprints. It sounds simple but doesn’t translate well because as mentioned prior, shifting camera angles and questionable pathing make it tougher in practice to get exactly where you need to be within every 10 second interval, and you have to be standing in exactly the correct position in front of the tree (not just anywhere around) to be able to shake it. Couple this with one puzzle where you have to slowly carry a transformed goon totem across the map as well as the fact that halfway through, the sweeper bot will break the ice in the middle of the level and cut off a route, forcing you to take a more circuitous path around the stage, and you have what is perhaps the most drawn-out and absolutely miserable level in the entire game. One misclick or failed pathing interaction here means that you’ll have to spend another attempt slowly inching your way through the snowy garden, ten seconds at a time.
I feel somewhat guilty that I have to be this harsh towards a beloved favorite of many, especially when considering how many interesting ideas were at play. The potential of Zack & Wiki shines through so crystal-clear; the cel-shaded graphics more than hold up, there’s tons of charm in both the main cast and side character interactions, and the difficulty, when presented with cool challenges like the potion puzzle in “Mad Science” or the controllable robots in "Relics of the Past," provides that fun and thrilling rush. Unfortunately, there’s just so much downtime and slogging throughout the whole game with not enough world-building or gripping storytelling to keep me constantly engaged during its weaker moments. Needless to say, I can’t see myself returning to the game to tackle optional end-game content or recommending this to anyone outside of those looking for a prime example of why vanilla Wii motion controls can go too far. Capcom went on record in 2008 as rather doubtful that a sequel would be announced in the near future, and as much as I hate to be pessimistic, that sadly may be for the best.
11 Comments
Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, this was a game that I really, really wanted to like based off of its outward appearance/concepts and the praise that it had received elsewhere, but unfortunately, looking at it from the outside was a lot more enjoyable than actually playing through it myself. If a few of the questionable design decisions were curtailed here and there and the motion controls were implemented with Wii Motion Plus (or removed altogether), then I think this game would have held up much better. As is, it's just another unfortunate product of its era that feels too gimmicky with the added emulated motion control minigames.
This one is such a shame - I played it at release and felt much the same way you guys did. As a bigtime adventure game guy I was really excited to see Capcom's take on the genre leading up to, but yeah, they ate it hard. Instant disappointment (and extreme frustration).
I do wonder if Capcom will ever change their mind and try another variation upon the point and click adventure genre though... Wadjet Eye and Amanita Design at least seem to have a solid grasp for indies.
Bought and played this on release and made it very far but never went back to beat it and now I'm too damn lazy to setup the wii or wii u to finish it. I enjoyed it quite a bit but do agree that levels felt extremely long from what I recall.
They own Clock Tower so it would be nice to see another CT point and click shrug
Now that's another series I haven't gotten into but have heard great things about. If I ever get the stomach to try the games out then I'd definitely be interested in a modern take for Clock Tower
Clock Tower is pretty short and sweet but it still scares the fuck out of me ngl
You know, there comes a point in which I really must ask myself: Am I basing my thoughts on a game purely off of memories and nostalgia? If I am truly honest with myself, that is the case for a lot of the games I grew up with. This one is no exception and this particular review has really made me see that. I am sure there is a psychological term for it, when you shut out the negatives of something to further glorify a subject and treat it as perfection. See, when I played through this game even just a few months ago, I think I was legitimately annoyed by some of the things you mentioned, but it never came to the forefront of my mind purely because I was having fun reliving these levels. But I must acknowledge that pretty much everything brought up here is completely valid. The puzzles are not actually that well-made. Some of them include wayyy to much walking around and preparation, to the point where the majority of actual puzzle segments last no more than few minutes, but you'll still spend 30 in a level. Just simple, very glaring issues like this, that I cannot see because my memories of this game either ignore it or have me thinking about completely different details. Like, I absolutely love this game's atmosphere. The music, the sounds and theming is just something I am always so excited to go back to. I love the characters and their personalities and the concept itself of turning things into objects is one I still stand by being pretty great. But none of that saves the overall product. Jank controls and bad level design just will outweigh any positives about the world-building, since the core mechanics are just not there. You and Pangburn are correct. This game is extremely flawed. And to anyone without a biased viewpoint, finishing this game can leave you with a great amount of disappointment, especially because there IS potential for something great. I think that it's just extremely difficult for someone like me to acknowledge that, especially with how much this game meant to me and my childhood. Really good review.
Thank you so much! Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, I really wanted to like Zack and Wiki for its take upon the point and click adventure genre + utilizing the appeal of the Wii, but unfortunately the more I delved into the content, the more frustrated I became that it not only had a lot of lacking puzzles and tons of padding/downtime, but also seemed to represent some of the worst aspects of Wii jank via the often poor motion controls. I totally get why this game is so coveted by others, I just wish that I could give the same love to the game as them... but I'd be lying if I said that I'd recommend this to others after my very exhausting experience.
I think this is why people hate the wii
TheQuietGamer
1 year ago