he first 15 minutes of Zack & Wiki are going to send many 18 to 34-year-old male gamers running for the hills. This game is extremely cute – anime cute. Our chibi pirate hero, Zack, is on a quest to find untold riches with his flying golden monkey pal, Wiki. After plenty of wacky antics, the duo crash lands on an island and finds the floating head of Captain Barbaros. The head promises Zack a fancy ship and tons of gold if he’ll collect the remaining 16 pieces of the old pirate’s body. While the intro can be jarring, the characters do eventually become tolerable and maybe even a little bit charming.

Players will traverse jungles, ice caves, volcanoes, and a haunted house to seal the deal and collect loads of treasure along the way. An intuitive mouse-style point and click interface moves Zack around puzzle stages of increasing size and complexity. Shaking the remote briefly transforms Wiki into a ringing bell that will change certain enemies into useful tools (centipedes become saws, frogs turn into bombs, etc.). Once you click on interactive objects, the camera switches to first-person mode and allows you to do things like pull levers, twist keys, and hammer spikes. Most of these actions work without a hitch and really sell the interactivity, but some motions are hit or miss – I had particular trouble with fishing and music motions.

You’ll be ranked on every stage based on how quickly you figured out the puzzles, how many hints you used, and how many lives you lost. Good scores will increase your pirate ranking, and cash rewards allow you to purchase the services of a treasure scout (there are hundreds of things to collect) or buy more lives and hints. The difficulty ramps up nicely, with early stages ranging from 10 to 20 minutes and later puzzles running over an hour. It’s extremely satisfying to deconstruct each level piece by piece, and the hint system minimizes hair pulling. Plus, the later ship battles add a welcome dose of action to the generally slower-paced gameplay. In the Wii’s expansive gutter of shoddy third-party ports and minigame garbage, Capcom is showing that it’s possible to make something original and fun. I just hope that the presentation doesn’t kill Zack & Wiki’s chances.