Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988)

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988), designed by David Fox, Ron Gilbert, Matthew Kane and David Spangler, developed and published by Lucasfilm Games LLC

Zak McKracken is not a good game. Out of all the classic Lucasfilm point'n'click adventurers, it is the game, that has aged the worst. It has bad puzzles, it relies heavily on mazes, you need money to get around, there are dead ends and so on and so worth. In many ways, it is the worst designed adventure game Lucasfilm games ever published, competing with some of the worst Sierra games. And yet, despite all that, I still like it. I just can't put down my rose-tinted glasses when it comes to Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders.

It all starts with a dream. Zak is in his bed... alone... again. Instead of his regular dreamy dreams, Zak has a bizarre dream of Mars and the face of Mars, as well as a black-haired woman and Groucho Marx look-a-like cowboy and giant nose glasses. There's a map as well and a strange device with crystals.

The next day, Zak is at work, complaining to his boss, that he wants to write something else than the usual sensational newspaper articles he scribbles for the National Inquisitor. His boss insists on it, as there's a two-headed squirrel sighting in Seattle and he needs his best man on the job. So off there Zak goes only to find out that two-headed squirrels do exist, but so do strange crystals embedded in strange statues hidden in secret caves.

Zak takes the crystal back home to San Fransisco, where he delivers it to the woman of his dreams, literally as Annie Larris is the woman he dreamt of in the introduction. Annie then proceeds to tell him of the alien invasion threatening the Earth. Caponians are using a stupidity machine to make people, well, more stupid. She also allows Zak to contact two Yale coeds, Melissa China and Leslie Bennett, who are on Mars. The duo built a spaceship of an old van after they saw a dream of their own. From hereon forwards, you can, and have to, control four characters in order to save the Earth from the aliens led by Elvis.

I guess that paints you the picture of what kind of an adventure Zak is. It isn't serious in nature if you were for some reason headed in that direction. It also was the second point'n'click adventure Lucasfilm Games published. They had done adventure titles, but the other game in this particular style they had published earlier was Maniac Mansion, which does some of the same mistakes Zak does, but somehow, Zak manages to do more of them. In a word, Zak is more like the adventure games other developers were doing at the time. It feels old school in a bad way.

One big reason why I think Zak hasn't aged well and why I can't really overlook the many issues it has is that it feels somewhat directionless and bloated and stuffed with a huge amount of backtracking and trial and error, especially in contrast to Maniac Mansion, which was a much more self-contained game, set in the mansion of the Edison family. Zak tries to feel larger, with its scenes set in Mars and the possibility to globetrot all over the planet, but in doing that, it kind of ravels apart, turning into a bit of an annoying mess.

This really shows in the way puzzles are designed. For example, you have to at one point travel into a jungle, from where you need to find a scroll. But even before you go there, you need some meta insight you can't have if you haven't played the game before and aren't using a walkthrough. You get the scroll by manipulating a bird. But before you can do that, you need to learn how to use a blue crystal, which allows you to control animals. After you can do that, you still need some bread crumbs, which you can only find from back home, San Fransisco, but only if you ring a doorbell of the bakery 3 times, stuff a stale loaf of bread in a trash compactor and open it with a wrench found from a toolbox you can buy from a store near where Zak lives.

That's the level of meta-knowledge you need to solve quite a few puzzles. You might find the bread on your own, but you might not figure out how to turn it into crumbs, so you might get stuck for a long time in trying to figure out how to control the bird that refuses to come near you. It doesn't help one bit, that almost every location is hidden behind a maze you need to travel back and forth. Then there's the need for money as the plane tickets aren't free, so you need to keep a constant eye on your bank account. On each character.

Still, I do like Zak McKracken. I like the idea of it. The idea of being a tabloid writer for a sensation rag. That is a kind of a profession you don't often see presented in games. Zak is not an action hero, he's a wannabe writer, who gets mixed up in some bizarre business because of a dream he, and three other people, had.

I also like the sense of humour Zak has. Granted, the writing is somewhat sparse, especially because you can't look at things nor is there a way to talk to people. The humour shines through the game though, despite the way it is written.

It is a bit of a shame Zak McKracken wasn't done later, say like after the Secret of Monkey Island. By that point, the SCUMM system would have matured and the developers at Lucasfilm would have found their own brand of game design that made many of their games classics that still play nice today.

In all likelihood, there will never be a remastered version of Zak McKracken, as it would have to be more or less completely remade for it to work today. Unlike with Day of the Tentacle, for example, Zak just has too many gameplay issues to translate into a modern adventure title as is. No amount of shinier graphics can fix gameplay issues. Just look at Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded, which was redesigned with a heavy hand, but not heavy enough.

Would I recommend Zak McKracken to new players? No, if they don't have any experience with other old Lucas adventure titles. Conditionally, if they do have experience and perhaps a bit more strongly if they have muddled through games made by some other developers of the era. You do know pretty immediately if you like it or not. Zak has the first impression that is rather true to the end.

As a side note, Zak McKracken is one of the few Lucasfilm games that have managed to get a fan-made sequel. I don't really like Between Time and Space, it feels like they missed what made the original work, but as far as free fan games go, it is technically very well made.