You know you're doing something wrong when year after year you don't receive any Valentine's Day cards - unless you count that time when I opened somebody else's because it got wrongly delivered to my house, or that time where a group of friends decided it would be funny to fashion me a secret admirer who only wrote the words "You wish" inside - I was disappointed to say the least on both occasions! But then, isn't any mail better than none? That's what I wonder when I glance at the clock to see that it's just past four in the afternoon and hope for the mailman to arrive pretty much died five hours ago, so now I'm officially single without a glimmer of hope of securing a date on Valentine's Day. But rather than wallow in my own pit of despair for the rest of the day, I decided to kill time the way that any single male would do with the house to himself - I played with my Wii.

The game I chose was one that has been built from the ground up with love and affection, a game that is exclusive to a console that is loved by the world now - the perfect couple. Of course, I'm talking about Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure for the Nintendo Wii. And truth be told, I really love it too!

At its heart, Zack & Wiki is a point and click adventure game, so lovers of Discworld and those fond of Broken Sword will feel right at home on the first date. You control Zack and you're a pirate with your trusty friend Wiki, who looks and sounds an awful lot like a flying Picachu. Naturally, as pirates, you'll want all the treasures of the seas, except in the world of Zack & Wiki, pirates don't sail - they fly. And in the opening five minutes your little airship gets hijacked by bigger, meaner pirates, who steal your treasure map as your airship plummets to the ground. However, as luck would have it, you crash into some proper treasure - you find the first part of a disassembled robot pirate who agrees to give you his legendary ship, should you find all his other body parts and piece him together, so for the first few chapters of the game you go around, finding hidden pieces and doing your pirate duties in order to climb those pirate ranks. Yarr!

I won't say any more about the story, but I will say that it's very well told in places. Zack, Wiki and all of the other characters they meet on their travels each have their own vibrant personality - be they likeable or loathsome - so you really start to enjoy the swashbuckling tales of this dynamic duo. And while the characters aren't voice acted in any of the FMVs or in the game itself, each character has a gibberish grunt or cry before their text speech appears, which always sets the tone for how you should read it. I suppose you could describe it as functional, which is a good way to put the rest of the sound that you can hear throughout the game - music where you'd expect to find it and sound effects for every object you have to interact with.

Interaction, unsurprisingly, is the key element of gameplay in Zack & Wiki. You won't need your nunchuk for this game either, so you can put that away. With the wand in your dominant hand, it's time to start solving puzzles - and in this game, you'll really need to get your thinking cap on, as it can be really testing in places. On one of the first levels I spent time surmising that this rattlesnake might like to eat the sleep mushroom I had found under a rock - and he was fed it numerous times too, but a sleeping snake didn't make much of a difference to getting nearer to the level's treasure chest, until I realised that what the snake really wanted was a rock dropping on his head, causing him to go wild and scare off the local inhabitants so I could spike their soup and put them to sleep in due course. Some might call that trial and error, and in a way it was, but then there are other moments where you just use sheer genius to solve puzzles in ways you couldn't imagine, such as cutting a key from water and ice with blocks and moulds in order to open a door, Crystal Maze style - it's all very rewarding when you get it right, but unfortunately not very nice when you just can't figure out the next logical step. But if you're getting frustrated then you could always return to base and pick a new level from the map and return to the level in question later.

Of course, Capcom wouldn't leave you without help if you really needed it, so they've added an Oracle system where you pay for advice. The price for advice escalates every time you use up a token, so you either use them wisely or not at all if you're a hardcore puzzler who prefers no help at all! The Oracle always gives good advice in her crystal ball, but she never outright tells you what to do - help usually comes in the form of pictures of objects along with a little riddle, so fear not proud adventurers, you still might spend ten minutes cracking the Oracle's code even if you call upon her for help!

Zack walks to where you point and click and checks out any object that can be viewed if you click on that too. You can explore with the camera by holding Z and checking out the full level before actually walking there, which could save time or help you uncover some hidden objects off the screen that you might find useful. When you find objects that you can check out or interact with, you normally use your Wiimote to perform the interaction - so if you're pulling a lever then you hold your remote upright and pull it back, just like you would if you were in Zack's shoes - or if you're holding a key then push the key in the hole and turn the Wiimote until the door opens. It's the little things like this that keep you engrossed in the gameplay at all times; from the puzzle solving to the performing of the final act that brings the brain work together, you're always part of the game from the second you start playing.

While most puzzles are quite hard, but rewarding when you get there, some puzzles are downright insane and seem impossible to get there without dying. It's true, there are times when I wouldn't have known that I was going to get killed by that robot enemy until I actually got killed and buttons I have pressed hoping that it would advance me on in the level that instead triggered off a trap and sent me to an early grave. When you die, you have one of two options. You either start again (but at least you'll know what to do to get where you were, and what not to do in order to avoid death again) or you can buy a revive token and be resurrected moments before your death occurred. While death is certainly frustrating, it's nice that Capcom gives casual players the option to revive for a nominal fee, while giving hardcore players that ultimatum to start again and do things properly!

One thing's for certain though, Zack & Wiki sure is a joy to look at; the graphics are really exceptional. Cel-shaded characters and environments are only half the picture here, because if you look closely, you'll see that everything has been drawn with careful detail to being quite careless. You have big hats on small heads, things that aren't always in proportion, there are big, clichéd mountains of doom with scary faces that don't look scary at all - more cute and approachable if anything - and then you have what is portrayed as a gang of hardcore pirates that turn out to be a bunch of adorable walking, talking bunny rabbits, Zack & Wiki breaks all the rules of what good visuals should be, yet still manages to take it to the next level and exceed expectations in every single way. With its side-on approach it's easy to see where you're going next and also really easy to explore the level when freeing the camera; breaking away from tradition has really worked for this title in terms of visuals.

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros Treasure is a fantastic title - and what's more, it's exclusive to the Wii. But then you only have to look at this game to see that the Wii is where it belongs, and I feel that people who bought a Wii in the first place, for its unique approach to gameplay and its idiosyncratic style, will want Zack & Wiki for those exact reasons - and I couldn't blame them either! There are hours of gameplay to immerse yourself in and if you want to play Zack & Wiki like you would have to back in the early, harsh days of adventure gaming, with no revives and no help, then you can spends ages on one level figuring out what to do and what to avoid to not get killed. Once you've completed the game there's still reason to go back to uncover hidden treasure, and even to complete the mini-games that music maestro Bonelich sets you, with his harsh, pure evil ways - he's the reason to snap your Wiimote in half and mail it to Capcom with the words "YOU'RE NEXT!" written on it - but I promised myself that I wouldn't lose my temper again over that music timing mini-game, so I'm damned if I'm going to let it get the better of me now! Despite trial and error sins and occasional bouts of frustration, Zack & Wiki is oozing with charm and chic, so just buy it, because this game is the reason you bought your Wii in the first place - for the love of gaming.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).