Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

The Good
First and most, this is a freaking Lucasfilm (later LucasArts) adventure game, with all its complexities. For that, it's a small wonder it could get made on the humble old Commodore 64 at all.

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is Lucasfilm's second point & click adventure game released after Maniac Mansion. Story wise it's not a sequel, but there are many similarities and even references to it. The main similarity is that both use the SCUMM engine and interface, but the list of action verbs has changed. Beside that, shortcut keys were introduced, to help out the fiddly joystick cursor. The dialog output field is now two rows tall, thus conversations are easier to read (too bad talking only happens at the occasional scripted event in this game, as the interactive dialog tree was not invented yet).

The audio-visuals... I have to say, this is one of the worst looking best games ever, haha! As for me seeing the enhanced DOS version first, the C64 version was ridiculously ugly afterwards. Maniac Mansion was more stylized, with the characters having big heads, that went better with the "Lego brick" graphics of the C64. Here, the developers wanted to do more, and they just barely could make it to work. But it IS functional, so I don't mind it! All that, paired with those ridiculously awesome, more-powerful-than-necessary sound effects happening for every little mundane task, it adds up as a surreal experience. When the game starts and the intro cutscene plays, and get I hit by this brick of a graphics, then an excessive rendition of the intro theme starts to play on top of it, it gives me such a weird feeling that is unlike anything else.

Speaking of the intro, Zack McKracken has one of the most memorable game intro cutscenes ever!

Hmm, lets say something about the rest of the game quickly.

-There is the whole World to travel, famous landmarks to visit, many ancient mysteries to solve. (At least in the technological constraints of the system and era. But hey, Maniac Mansion was confined to a single house, so it's quite an expansion of scope!)

-Aside from Zak, there are three other playable characters (after reaching a certain point). Some complex puzzles require the orchestrated cooperation of multiple characters trough multiple remote locations or planets.

-Zak gains supernatural powers as you collect the artifacts.

-Travelling to Mars never has been cozier.

-It is very forgiving about the mistakes you make. Even if you get caught by aliens, the punishment in the brain washing chamber has just temporary effects. (Granted, not as failsafe as the later ones, but definitely better comapred to Sierra adventures.)

-It almost rivals Monkey Island in how many memorable gags it has.

The Bad
Technical wise:

-Lots of loading from the slowly Commodore floppy drive, and lots of disk swapping to be done too.

-For being a point & click interface, on an Atari-style joystick, it can be tiring on the long run. There is no support for mice in the Commodore version (neither the Neos nor the 1351). (There are the keyboard shortcuts though.)

Engine wise:

-As an early SCUMM engine game, the interface still has some jankyness to it. Instead of the expected features from the later games, there are many redundant verbs, while there is no "Look at", no "Talk to".

-There is manual "What is" exploration, as the cursor doesn't highlight interactable objects in the playfield to you.

-You have to construct the command sentence first, then have to do another click on the command line to confirm and make it happen.

-The inventory items have no pictures. Just the item names in a short text, that are often vague. The inventory list has been shrunk to just two visible lines (as a side effect of the increased dialog field).

Gameplay wise:

-It's probably the hardest LucasArts adventure, many difficult puzzles (it was designed to sell hintbooks after all).

-It definitely does not hold your hand. Most of the world is accessible from the get-go and it's easy to get overwhelmed at first. There are no chapters and not many clearly explained goals.

-There are still some possible dead end situation, or even the characters dying (granted, these only happen if you are excessively careless, but I mention).

-Lots of awkward sideview mazes to keep track in, some even in the dark (spells a cheap way of padding to me).

-The extra unnecessary jungle mazes. They're not even puzzles, you just have to wander aimlessly until the program decides you have arrived to your destination.

The Bottom Line
Oh LucasArts, where are you now... Back in the 80's, Lucasfilm/LucasArts was at the top of their game. It wasn't just all about riding the Star Wars success, at the time they really rocked the world! First, they did magic to the movie industry. And if that wasn't enough, they got into the fledling gaming industry and treated it just as good. It wasn't about doing the obvious movie tie-ins, instead they did a lot of innovation with original concepts: simulators with fractal generated terrain (e.g. Rescue on Fractalus), a proto first-person-shooter (Eidolon), the first graphical online MMO (Habitat), also re-shaped how graphical adventures are played and told their story (Maniac Mansion). Then LucasArts made a lot of adventure games, that were cherished for their smart writing/humor/and puzzles, the overall charm and quality of them. Until everything got to be Star Wars.

So, I have encountered the DOS version of Zack McKracken first, which is the better version. But I write this review about the Commodore 64 version, because that's more impressive one. Let me explain. Back in the mid 2000s, when I have discovered the old adventure games and got into the genre. "There is a Commodore 64 version? How could it possibly even work on that garbage?" Up until that point I only knew primitive little arcade games on this system, as the one C64 I have seen/played at my classmate's only had a datasette. So this game and Maniac Mansion were something on a new level, and it reignited my interest in the C64, wanted to see more, what else it is capable of. Since then, I did play both games on the real thing.