Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Wii, 2007)

Do excuse the ponderously-long game title. This game is a puzzle game with a beautifully-drawn, fully-developed personality. As you collect treasure chests with the help of a sea-rabbit named Maddy, you'll get pieces of concept artwork, music and sound effect snippets, and video clips that are enjoyable to view and hear, and they also give insight into the massive effort that goes into creating a modern-day video game.

About the game itself: Truly a pleasure. When pieces of any given puzzle are solved, you receive HirameQ, the points by which your cunning and smarts are measured in the game. Many of the puzzles are quite challenging, but all are solveable. If you find you can't solve a puzzle, you may use an Oracle Doll to give you a hint, which are purchased from the Sea-rabbit pirate central, from a character named Granny. I used one, and I didn't need to, but it was late and I wasn't thinking real sharp. I would recommend never using them. I did use platinum tickets, however, and quite a few, simply in the interest of time. A platinum ticket lets you have a do-over, so you don't have to start the round from the beginning. These are also purchased from Granny.

You'll come to love the characters in what is a truly great and inventive game. Where a game like Super Mario Galaxy is merely gimmicky (ah, but what gimmicks!), this game is ingenious. Please buy it if only to support brilliant games.