I’ve played a lot of Millionaire, especially on the PC back when I was in college. Most of you are familiar with the game, but for those of you who aren’t, you’re a contestant trying to answer trivia questions to earn money. The more trivia questions you can answer correctly, the more money you earn. Being a fan of trivia games, I thought I’d give this one a try when I saw it on a clearance rack. How bad could it be?
Editor’s Note: I do not have the equipment necessary to take screenshots straight from the television…please do not complain about the quality of the pictures. Consequently, that is what the “Donate” button on the right is for…*wink wink, nudge nudge*
It looks like Millionaire, but that’s about all it does.
When we first put in the game and started playing, we chose the party mode option. What confused us, however, was that in party mode, you couldn’t pick from any profiles that you had created. Every player was prompted to choose an avatar and were unable to link their profile in any fashion, which was a real bummer. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy had no such limitations.
So, we began playing party mode, answering questions…but we noticed that something just wasn’t right. The game glitched and thrust all of the avatars into one seat, though they animated individually. It looked like something out of a “Top Ten Star Wars Cantina Rejected Aliens” list. I can get over glitches like that, but then our progress on the money track jumped all over the place. One of our players somehow jumped up three questions after getting the last question wrong.
The single player experience didn’t give us any trouble (yet). We could pick the profile we wanted to use and we were given your three standard lifelines. The difficulty of the questions however seemed to be out of whack…there were some really challenging questions at the beginning of the track and fairly easy ones towards the middle of the track. You’re also timed when answering your questions…I didn’t feel fifteen seconds to be enough, especially if the Wii Remote wasn’t responding well.
Lifelines are hit or miss, but aren’t anything special.
Overall, I don’t feel that this game is worth the twenty bucks I paid. I’d be hard-pressed to buy it even if it were five dollars, had I known that it was a buggy mess to begin with. There are flash games online that do it much, much better. Save your money.
Final Verdict: 2/10
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