By the way, don’t count on your avatar or your surroundings to provide clues in opening the safes. Granted, your character will sometimes make comments while trying to open a safe that are hints to solving the puzzle, but they are few and far between. You’ll occasionally find a few letters and diary pages, but they tend to provide insight to the quirky Mr. Adams and his family, rather than help you figure out a puzzle.

Safecracker requires you to use the Wiimote, replacing the mouse needed in the PC version. However, execution of the Wiimote as a mouse was poor. A standard PC mouse lies flat on your desk; therefore, you have greater control of the cursor to manipulate small knobs and switches on the safes. On the other hand, since you have to aim the Wiimote at the TV, the cursor is often very jittery. It’s very frustrating to use the Wiimote to try and carefully aim the cursor at a tiny knob or button when the cursor jumps around. Movements that can be accomplished in seconds on the PC version can take an extra minute on the Wii because you’re busy trying to line up the cursor just right.

There is no reason to purchase Safecracker for the Wii. The puzzles are exactly the same in both versions, as are the graphics. There’s no noticeable loading screen lag in the PC version, and it’s much easier to play with a good old mouse. You don’t need a fancy gaming computer either, since the original version only needs 64 MB of RAM and a Pentium 3. It also works on XP and even older operating systems -- even Windows 98. Oh, and did I mention that the PC version is half the price of the Wii version? A quick look at Amazon shows that Safecracker for the Wii costs $30 while the PC version is $15. Vista users are in even greater luck, as a downloadable version is available at Big Fish Games (http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/2080/safecracker/index.html) for as low as $7. The Wii version simply does not measure up.

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