E307: Zack & Wiki Awesome Watch: Still Currently Awesome
The E3 demo of Capcom's Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure was a much more fleshed-out affair than what was shown at Capcom's Spring Gamers Day. It also happened to be a much more awesome affair, with an expanded set of playable locations showing off the puzzle adventure game's more diverse, non-jungle environments. I played through to completion one of the game's lava filled levels, tasked with putting out a series of fires to reclaim the room's haunted treasure, a piece of Barbaros' golden armor. How awesome was it? So awesome.
There are some frustrations that one may come across, but Capcom has largely remedied that by making the game fun, the load times short, and the attempts to retrying to finish much more palatable. It took me three attempts to make my way through the level, as the game suffers from/features trial and error attempts to unravel each level's series of puzzles. Presented with a water bottle and flowing water, I hurried back to the empty fountain vessel. That was wrong, I later discovered, as a hard hat apparently holds much more liquid.
Fortunately, Capcom's dev team has decided to reward players with getting it right the first time, giving them bonus points for a job done well and done the first time. You'll probably want to play through it a second time, just to perfect your score. The trial and dying frustration from early builds has been addressed as mulligan tickets will give you an opportunity to revive the your character.
There's a kind of playful atmosphere and cartoony logic that makes Zack & Wiki so—and I'm using this not insincerely, not in some gag-worthy way—charming. I longed for the opportunity to play it again, with a group of backseat gamers to help me through the tasks. It's really quite good.
Oops. I meant awesome.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment