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Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Developer: Capcom? Based on: Mega Man Legends, your childhood, the innate human love of monkeys and pirates, and being smarter. |
Games | Wii | Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Article by Anthony Rogers | July 13, 2008
On paper, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure is a terrible idea, and probably shouldn't have sold a single copy. I’d love to have been at the board meeting where the designers explained the concept. "It will be a fanciful, Saturday morning kid’s cartoon art styled game about a boy pirate and a flying, golden monkey. It will feature Zelda-like environmental puzzles that are too hard for most adults...," they’d begin. Then, under the puzzled gaze of the board members, they'd quickly add, "Oh, and it’s a point-and-click style adventure game, too."
Yes, at first glance Zack & Wiki appears to be designed to appeal to as few people as possible. There’s something deliciously sick about hiding an often sadistically hard puzzle game behind cutesy graphics that will almost certainly ward off anyone who could actually beat it, especially when it’s using a control method that -- realistically speaking -- pretty much died off years ago. The developers who pitched the idea had to have been lying through their teeth to get it green-lighted. Honestly, I can't think of a better example of how to design a game with no audience to sell it to.
Zack & Wiki's basic setup sounds fun enough, though perhaps teetering a bit on the "for kids" side of things: Zack, a mostly-silent boy who wishes to be the world’s greatest pirate, travels the world seeking treasure with the assistance of his magical simian pal, Wiki. The two work for a gang of rabbit pirates called The Sea Rabbits, whose ranks include the cowardly Johnny Style, an ace airship pilot sporting a sweet pair of aviators. The group frequently clashes with the Rose Rock Pirates, lead by a young lady named Rose and her groups of Goons. After one such run-in, their plane crashes on an island, where Zack and Wiki find the enchanted skull of the famous pirate Barbaros, who promises to lead Zack to Treasure Island and give him his legendary ship if he’ll help reassemble his body and break his curse. This provides the basis for the game: Each level contains a cursed chest at the end with a random golden body part. Aside from one or two segments later on, though, there’s pretty much no plot after that, an unusual choice given that story is usually the driving force behind these kinds of adventure games.
Oops, there goes half the potential point-and-click fan audience right there.
The main attraction of Zack & Wiki, then, is solving each level’s environmental puzzles to reach the cursed chest. Aside from providing occasional emotional support, Wiki assists Zack by transforming into a bell that can, in turn, transform enemies and animals into a variety of useful objects. This is where the game improves upon its adventure forefathers, for rather than forcing you to manage an inventory crammed full of tools until you can decipher the obscure logic behind each object -- a major point of frustration in many adventure games -- Zack & Wiki features a core set of items that crop up in each level. Once you’ve figured out how to use each one, it’s simply a matter of using them in tandem to navigate through the environment and reach the goal. Deftly avoiding the genre’s biggest pitfall is definitely a plus, but "not as annoying as most games like this!" hardly seems like something to crow about in a bulleted list on the back of the box, so let’s move on.
The tools you use in each level all take advantage of the Wii Remote in some unique way; this is presumably the biggest reason Capcom gave the entire project the go-ahead in the first place. For example, ringing the bell is as simple as shaking the remote, while using the extended-reach tool (a sort of next-gen Finglonger) requires thrusting the remote forward and using A and B to pinch the object you’re reaching for. The nice thing here is that the required motions on the Wii Remote tend to work more often than not, though when it doesn’t -- sword fighting on one of the later levels comes to mind -- it can be a bit frustrating. Odds are, though, that the people willing to play this kind of game, and certainly the ones who will get through the difficult puzzles, are also the same group that will be most critical of the Wii Remote’s functionality in the game. Do the Wii controls for each tool add to the game? Certainly; but even so, while your dad might think it’s cool to use the Wii Remote as a torch or a drill, but he’s still probably not going to play the game on his own.
Still, "Innovative use of the Wii Remote!" is certainly something to help trick Joe Consumer into buying this game he’ll hate, so there’s that!
It’s a good thing the rest of us will enjoy the tricky puzzles then, right? Well...no, not exactly. To put it bluntly, a fair number of us will think some of the puzzles in Zack & Wiki are too hard. Even worse, half the time, a simple mistake means you die. Now, the currency in the game pretty much only goes towards buying two things: Crystal balls, which you can use at any time for an (often useless) hint from a fortune teller, or Platinum Tickets, which you can redeem at death to avoid having to start the entire level over. (Hint: You want these.) Ticket prices go up the more you buy, though, so saving them for the longer puzzles is probably a better idea... Just be aware that being stingy with your tickets is definitely a one-way ticket to an aneurysm. The puzzles are creative and you definitely feel smart for figuring them out, but dying when you make a simple mistake or just want to poke around can be frustrating.
In retrospect, though, the constant specter of death does serve a purpose: It forces the player to really think before acting. This notion is enforced further by the game’s "Hirame Q" point system, which ranks you on how clever your action was (i.e. "Did you do this step in the process in the right order?") and how many times it took you to do said action (e.g., if you attempt to pull that lever that’s out of reach without the snake grabber, you’ll only get half the points you would have if you did it in the correct order and had the snake first). Every step of a level will grant you points, and the tally at the end determines your rank on the level. It’s both rewarding and insulting at the same time, as this is essentially the gaming equivalent to someone praising your intellect or commenting on how dumb you are for every single action you take. More points are good for several reasons, though, so the game is employing both positive and negative reinforcement all at once -- the smarter you are, the more points you get, but if you don’t think about what you’re doing, you’ll either die or pay a price. It's a good way to get players really using their noggins. Brain Age? has nothing on this game. Capcom should have definitely slapped "You’ll get smarter by playing!" on the back of the box. Missed opportunity, really.
If you’re one of the ten people in the world still willing give the game a shot despite all its seeming missteps, you'll actually find a lot to love about Zack & Wiki. You shouldn’t let the puzzles scare you away, for despite constantly judging you to the brink of insanity, they’re incredibly well-designed -- just what the doctor ordered if you play Zelda games for the puzzle-solving aspect...and it goes without saying that, just like Zelda, looking up the answers in a FAQ will ruin the best part of the game. Likewise, the childish art style shouldn’t deter you, either. While certainly cutesy, the characters are quite charming, with loads of light-hearted, Disney-esque personality. Think of the graphics as the exact opposite of Gears of War, and you’ll get the picture. Besides, if I were a betting man, I’d put good money on this being a plus for many of this particular site's audience. The game is also a particularly robust example of the Laputa Effect, packed with sky pirates, hidden treasures, and ancient technology, an aesthetic that generally goes over pretty well a certain GameSpite-reading demographic. In particular, Zack & Wiki recalls Capcom’s own beloved Mega Man Legends? series: Rose and her numerous, identical Goons are nothing but Tron Bonne and the Servbots repackaged, and Wiki is just a golden Data the monkey. (Seriously! It’s the same damn ape.) Oh, and did I mention the game has a lot of Capcom references throughout, from character sprites as hidden treasures (including the Blue Bomber and some sort of bionic soldier) to a rhythm minigame that uses classic Capcom tunes (like music from Ghouls 'N' Ghosts? or the Wily Castle theme from Mega Man 2)?
For all its quirks, Zack & Wiki actually does have a target audience. Think of the game's existence as a litmus test of sorts: If you’re still interested after knowing what it is, you'll love the game by simple virtue of the fact that you’re okay with the design choices. Honestly, I wish they’d make games for the "Capcom fanboy that loves puzzle and adventure games and pirates and is OK with cartoonish, Miyazaki-inspired characters" subset of gamers more often.