Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Nintendo Wii, £40. Age 7+
This ingenious adventure game puts the Wii's motion-sensitive remote to all sorts of weird and wonderful uses. Zack, an aspiring pirate, and Wiki, his flying monkey sidekick, are on a mission to put the scattered parts of captain Barbaros, the cursed pirate, back together. To reach each part of the pirate requires solving a complex sequence of puzzles, all requiring some grasp of logic, and they grow ever more difficult as the game goes on.
Stealing treasure from dancing natives or avoiding angry mechanical snow-sweepers is never as simple as you might imagine, while using the remote to shake trees, catch fish, turn hand-cranks and lift items takes a lot of practice. Make too many mistakes and you have to start the whole scene again, which can be extremely frustrating.
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Nevertheless, with its swish cartoon-style graphics and a loveable sense of humour, Zack and Wiki is one of the best games on the Wii.
Turok
Xbox 360, PS3. £50; Age 15
Long before Halo, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was a hit 3-D shooter that pitched a time-travelling Native American hero against hordes of deadly reptiles in a mist-shrouded lost world. This reworked version of the series sets the action in a sci-fi framework, with the new Turok as a mohawk-sporting scout taking a squad of muscle-brained Gears of War rejects against a clichéd rogue military force.
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The result is like Call of Duty meets Jurassic Park but it comes alive only when the dinosaurs appear. Blasting tree-climbing critters and fending off savage raptor attacks in the jungle is thrilling and setting up enemy patrols as dino dinner is good mean fun. However, when all you're doing is fighting the game's dumb human hostiles, it all feels a little uninspired and unchallenging.
Experimenting with the exotic weaponry does improve matters but overall this revamped game lacks pacing and polish. Turok is a decent-looking, competent slice of action but it will take more than that to bring it back from extinction.