Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Capcom - Wii)
Release Date: October 23, 2007
Same Time As: Nicktoons: Attack of Toybots (Wii), Looney Tunes ACME Arsenal (Wii), Spongebob: Atlantis Squarepantis (Wii)
Why it should succeed: The Nintendo Wii is about immersion. The motion sensitive controller was designed, after all, to make players forget that they're even using a controller. Instead, they're swinging a sword, shooting a gun or fishing with a pole.
Zack & Wiki understands this idea better than any game we've played since WarioWare: Smooth Moves. The family-friendly adventure is loaded with interactive puzzles, ones that can only be solved by imagining yourself inside the game's virtual world. Need to shake a coconut out of a tree? Shake the remote, obviously. Can't get a key into a lock because it's upside down? Simply turn the remote upside down and - voila! - you're in business.
Gameplay like that, mixing creative thinking with real world common sense, is the reason the Wii exists in the first place.
Why it probably won't: Easy. Thename sucks. Only a boardroom full of toddlers, or marketing executives attempting to think like toddlers, could have strung together such a ridiculous series of words. No self-respecting gamer would dare pick this up in a store, regardless of how good it's rumored to be.
Of course, Capcom cares more about selling to kids than to the hardcore. But how's a clueless parent browsing the shelves supposed to know that this random, cartoony game is better than the other random, cartoony games we've listed above? They've at least heard of those properties, crap or not.
Personally, we preferred the original title - Project Treasure Island Z. Now there's a ridiculous string of words with some mystique.
