Reinventing the wheel isn’t easy. When you’ve had a formula that worked well for its time, however far past that time we’ve come, creating something new from it that works today is difficult to say the least. Zack & Wiki, released in stores this past week for the Nintendo Wii, does exactly this.

A decade or two ago, older gamers enjoyed the great stories and critical thinking inspired puzzles that were the basis for the classic point-and-click adventure titles that graced the PC, and eventually the older home consoles. Titles like The Monkey Island Series, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and even Maniac Mansion and the Hugo games packed the fun into clever jokes and brain twisting puzzles that had entire communities popping up on a very young internet to solve them together.

Zack & Wiki takes the formula that made these games great and reinvents it for home consoles on the Wii. The game’s title and cutesy appearance do nothing to convey how ON-THE-MONEY this game is when it comes to bringing that classic PC adventure game experience to the sofa. It’s a game that can’t properly be described except to tell people that they need it, and should buy it (or at least play it.)

It could also help to read reviews from credible video game news and review sites. For this I offer the following:

IGN: 9.0 (read the review here)
1up.com: 9.3 (read the review here)
Gamespot: 8.5 (read the review here)

This game is so terribly difficult to advertise for that it needs word of mouth to get it sold. Selling copies of this game will make sure there will be a sequel and will prove that great 3rd party games that DO sell well exist on Nintendo consoles.

BUY ZACK & WIKI!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.