Safecracker review

Ever since they noticed that the Wii remote is good at pointing and clicking, The Adventure Company have been determined to shovel as many lame PC ports as possible into our game shops. The latest, Safecracker, is precisely the sort of flat, pre-rendered rubbish we’re used to, but with some surprisingly hardcore puzzling squished on top.

As one of those expert safecrackers we’re always hearing about, you’ve been hired to rummage through a dead man’s drawers in order to find his will. The old dude was a safe enthusiast, you see, so before he shuffled off this mortal coil, he somehow locked his doors and put loads of increasingly hard-to-crack safes everywhere. Yeah, cheers for that. The game throws stumpers at you from the very beginning. If you’ve ‘played’ Myst these logical minigames will be familiar – you’re left to figure everything out on your own. But while Myst had the illusion of freedom and some beautiful environments, Safecracker’s mansion is just tiny and bland.

You may be able to use the Nunchuk to look around – unbelievably, that’s progressive in a game like this – but switching between areas requires clicking at a designated spot and waiting three seconds for it to load. Your pay-off for unlocking each safe? Another bloody safe, of course. Then another. Then they find you the next morning dead of frustration. The puzzles themselves are okay but nothing new and certainly no reason to subject yourself to such an excruciating experience.

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Horribly dated and lazy, this mind-numbing puzzler only exists on Wii because of motion controls. Thanks a lot, motion controls.

Feb 27, 2009