Summary
A great attempt, but it lacks the clarity and the refinement of later LucasArts adventures
The Good
There are plenty of things to admire in "Zak McKracken". First of all, it is a very large game. No other LucasArts or Sierra adventure came even close to Zack's titanic proportions. The only other true epic LucasArts ever made was
Grim Fandango, that was created much later. With its abundance of locations, "Zak" became one of the first serious globe-trotting adventures, with an epic feel of Indiana Jones movies. Also, it had some cool sci-fi elements, a lot of archeology, ancient mysteries, and other important adventure game ingredients. After "Maniac Mansion" with its small word, "Zak" was a great step forward.
The game world offers much interactivity. Alone Zak's apartment is home for all possible items, many puzzles, and some nice touches of realism such as turning lights on and off, listening to the messages on the answering machine, etc. Since you can't die as easily as in most early Sierra adventures, exploring takes an important place in the game. Especially in the beginning of the game it is fun to fiddle with things, collect items, moving and turning on stuff, and so on.
There are really a
lot of locations in "Zak". Not only you get to explore many countries, you actually also travel to a different planet! Most of the locations are fairly small, but considering the year the game was released in, the scope of it is almost majestic. You can also travel to many locations almost since the very beginning of the game, and aren't required to visit different cities and countries in a particular order. This non-linearity added a really great realistic touch to the game.
The game also had excellent graphics (especially the EGA remake), with detailed backgrounds and large characters.
The Bad
The troubles start when the adventure develops into advance stages. When you only control Zak, the whole inventory-stuffing, objects-poking aspect is still interesting, and fumbling with all kinds of useless stuff you possess is amusing. The variety of locations is also great. However, when you start controlling three other characters, and are free to visit many locations, the game gets really confusing. There's no real sense of accomplishing tasks here: you wander around, switching characters like a madman, and desperately trying to figure out where the next clue might be. One of the most annoying features is the inability to have a common inventory (or to exchange items by using a special device, like in
Day of the Tentacle), so if you suddenly decide Melissa should have that guitar, while Zak might feel more comfortable getting the egg back, you have to actually make the two necessary characters
meet each other, which means more unnecessary traveling, loss of money, and so on.
Despite what the advertisment for the game says (that you have to do something really extraordinary in order to get stuck in the game), I found myself getting stuck quite a few times, with the only possibility to restore a previously saved game. Of course, it wasn't like in Sierra adventures, but Sierra adventures had at least ten times less puzzles and less items.
Now, the puzzles in "Zak" are not only pretty illogical - they are confusing. Very few clues are given to you, and the more the game progresses, the more items, characters, and locations pop out, and the more impossible the puzzles become. The puzzles are far from being as amusing and as finely crafted as in later LucasArts adventures. After completing, with great effort, approximately one half of the game on my own, I continued playing with a walkthrough in hand.
The game's humor is actually pretty mild, compared to "Maniac Mansion" and most other LucasArts' adventures. As for the plot, it starts out very interestingly, but there's very little real development in it, and it's not focused enough. Without the great mechanism of branching dialogues (and with very few dialogues in general), the game seemed somewhat dry.
The Bottom Line
It is not as original as
Maniac Mansion, and it doesn't have the perfect structure of later LucasArts masterpieces, but it is nevertheless a worthy addition to the library of adventure games, and its sheer scope is very impressing. If it weren't so confusing, and had a little bit more direction in the plot, it could have become one of the top adventures of all times.
