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Hidden Gem Spotlight

posted by nikki at 12:39 pm.

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Today’s hidden gem: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure
Released 2007 by Capcom for Wii

Why haven’t more people heard of this game?

Zack & Wiki is a point and click puzzle game, that was seriously overlooked when it was released and hasn’t fared much better since. Of course that might have had something to do with the fact that it came out just two weeks prior to Mario Galaxy. It didn’t get a lot of attention at the time.

The premise of the game is that Zack, a chocolate-guzzling pirate, and Wiki, his flying monkey companion, are on a quest to find the lost treasure of the famed-pirate Barbaros. Instead, they stumble upon Barbaros himself… or at least his gold-encrusted disembodied head… who promises them everything they want and more if they can just reunite the pieces of his body (which, naturally, are made of gold and jewels… otherwise this would just be gross).

The object is to progress through the world map by solving the puzzle in each level in order to reach the chest that contains a piece of Barbaros’ body. You do this by picking up, manipulating, altering, and using various items scattered around the level. Different Wii-remote gestures cause different reactions, and some levels have multiple solutions, making some of them quite challenging. And for the completists out there, there are dozens of collectibles to find throughout the game to complete a number of albums.

The game is single player, but I actually found it to be immensely entertaining to play with a group, trading off the Wii-remote off every level. It’s fun to help out the person who’s playing the level. It’s even more fun to laugh at them hysterically when they’re not seeing the obvious solution.

You can even play a demo level online (click the Gameplay tab to get to it)… but I think it loses something without the full Wii-remote experience.

Nikki Blight: is still trying to find that damn princess... when she's not writing fresh code for the217.com.