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03-29-24 01:07 AM

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FalcoDude
02-04-12 06:29 PM
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Someone70
02-04-12 06:35 PM
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7.8
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The Review

 
Game's Ratings
Overall
Graphics
Sound
Addictiveness
Depth
Story
Difficulty
Average User Score
7.8
2
8
5
2
1
3
FalcoDude's Score
5.5
2
8
5
2
1
3

02-04-12 06:29 PM
FalcoDude is Offline
| ID: 539791 | 877 Words

FalcoDude
Level: 42


POSTS: 16/380
POST EXP: 9490
LVL EXP: 493548
CP: 434.4
VIZ: 35161

Likes: 0  Dislikes: 0

Most hard-core gamers probably gnash their teeth at the thought of
Regis Philbin and his simple-minded trivia game outselling every other
supposedly respectable game on the market. The TV game show that has
every executive from other networks feverishly reshuffling his
prime-time grid is also burning up the computer entertainment charts.
With more than a million copies sold and no end in sight, Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire is the people's choice, whether fraggers like it or
not.

Much like the TV show, and perhaps like Regis Philbin himself,
Millionaire the computer game appreciates its own mediocrity, but it
executes its blandness extremely well. First of all, the price is low
enough ($19.95) to make it an ideal impulse buy. Second, it's got Regis
himself, who's key to the game show's success. After all, Millionaire is
about achieving unearned success by showing mastery of trivial
knowledge that otherwise gets people nowhere in life. Who better to
usher these average Americans into the Hot Seat and give them a shot at
accidental wealth than a common-man celebrity like Regis?

While the game doesn't reproduce the social drama that makes the TV
show so popular, it makes do with the bare-bones gameplay and adds some
of the design qualities of the developer's signature product, the much
better You Don't Know Jack. Each aspect of the show is re-created in the
computer game in some fashion. In single-player mode, you go right into
the Hot Seat, where you must ascend a ladder of 15 multiple-choice
trivia questions to win. Reaching the one thousand and thirty-two
thousand dollar milestones guarantees you will win at least that much if
you lose later, though it hardly matters. All you'll get is an onscreen
check with Regis' signature.

When you feel stumped, you have three "lifelines" to use throughout
the climb. The 50/50 option removes two of the three wrong answers to a
question. You can ask to poll the audience, which gives you the actual
results taken from a sample group for each question. The most impressive
re-creation is the phone-a-friend lifeline, in which Regis calls one of
his friends, who then struggles to offer a suggestion that may or may
not be right.

Jellyvision and Disney evidently invested the necessary resources to
give the game as much of the TV feel as possible. While Regis doesn't
actually read off all of the questions, he does offer the color
commentary about where you are on the ladder and banters with the
phone-a-friend character. Even after many hours of play, there still
wasn't any tedious redundancy in his comments, and the question database
seemed sufficiently deep to avoid frequent repeats.

With years of You Don't Know Jack experience under their belts, the
Jellyvision designers know how important a smooth audio-visual
experience is to keeping a simple game interesting. In addition to the
melodramatic music, the questions - which pop in and out, causing the
screen to rearrange itself - are animated well. Regis comments on the
game without any telltale sound splices or lag times for disk access.
However, the questions are noticeably more media and pop-culture-related
than those in the TV version, suggesting that Jellyvision may have been
dipping into the You Don't Know Jack database.

Unfortunately, the Fastest Finger multiplayer qualifying round is the
weakest part of the game. On TV, more than a dozen contestants must
arrange four items (like movies or historical events) into the correct
order, usually chronological. Getting the fastest correct answer sends
you to the Hot Seat. The computer variant struggles to re-create this by
letting any number of people choose a letter as their own on the PC
keyboard. The computer then shuffles the four items into different
orders. The first person to press a key when the right order comes up
wins, and then the standard single-player mode starts.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire could have been a better game in other
ways as well. It's hard to say whether a network-play variant could have
worked better than the Fastest Finger option, which just doesn't make
Millionaire into the party game that You Don't Know Jack is. A
head-to-head or multiplayer contest in which players simply respond to
the same multiple-choice questions simultaneously until one player
remains would have probably worked better. And since the central drama
of Millionaire has to do with the money at stake, it would have been
interesting to link the home and on-air versions somehow. For instance,
home players who consistently reach the top of the money ladder could
automatically apply to be TV contestants.

But for $19.95, one probably shouldn't complain that Jellyvision
didn't explore any extensions to the basic gameplay. As it stands, Who
Wants to be a Millionaire is both a faithful and entertaining simulation
of the TV show. You Don't Know Jack is far and away the better trivia
game, as it's both more entertaining and more appropriate for party
play. But it's definitely the game for those who want to see how well
they would do in the infamous Hot Seat. It may also be the best way to
permanently shut up that irritating, know-it-all family member who barks
out the answers to all of the questions whenever the show is on TV.


Most hard-core gamers probably gnash their teeth at the thought of
Regis Philbin and his simple-minded trivia game outselling every other
supposedly respectable game on the market. The TV game show that has
every executive from other networks feverishly reshuffling his
prime-time grid is also burning up the computer entertainment charts.
With more than a million copies sold and no end in sight, Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire is the people's choice, whether fraggers like it or
not.

Much like the TV show, and perhaps like Regis Philbin himself,
Millionaire the computer game appreciates its own mediocrity, but it
executes its blandness extremely well. First of all, the price is low
enough ($19.95) to make it an ideal impulse buy. Second, it's got Regis
himself, who's key to the game show's success. After all, Millionaire is
about achieving unearned success by showing mastery of trivial
knowledge that otherwise gets people nowhere in life. Who better to
usher these average Americans into the Hot Seat and give them a shot at
accidental wealth than a common-man celebrity like Regis?

While the game doesn't reproduce the social drama that makes the TV
show so popular, it makes do with the bare-bones gameplay and adds some
of the design qualities of the developer's signature product, the much
better You Don't Know Jack. Each aspect of the show is re-created in the
computer game in some fashion. In single-player mode, you go right into
the Hot Seat, where you must ascend a ladder of 15 multiple-choice
trivia questions to win. Reaching the one thousand and thirty-two
thousand dollar milestones guarantees you will win at least that much if
you lose later, though it hardly matters. All you'll get is an onscreen
check with Regis' signature.

When you feel stumped, you have three "lifelines" to use throughout
the climb. The 50/50 option removes two of the three wrong answers to a
question. You can ask to poll the audience, which gives you the actual
results taken from a sample group for each question. The most impressive
re-creation is the phone-a-friend lifeline, in which Regis calls one of
his friends, who then struggles to offer a suggestion that may or may
not be right.

Jellyvision and Disney evidently invested the necessary resources to
give the game as much of the TV feel as possible. While Regis doesn't
actually read off all of the questions, he does offer the color
commentary about where you are on the ladder and banters with the
phone-a-friend character. Even after many hours of play, there still
wasn't any tedious redundancy in his comments, and the question database
seemed sufficiently deep to avoid frequent repeats.

With years of You Don't Know Jack experience under their belts, the
Jellyvision designers know how important a smooth audio-visual
experience is to keeping a simple game interesting. In addition to the
melodramatic music, the questions - which pop in and out, causing the
screen to rearrange itself - are animated well. Regis comments on the
game without any telltale sound splices or lag times for disk access.
However, the questions are noticeably more media and pop-culture-related
than those in the TV version, suggesting that Jellyvision may have been
dipping into the You Don't Know Jack database.

Unfortunately, the Fastest Finger multiplayer qualifying round is the
weakest part of the game. On TV, more than a dozen contestants must
arrange four items (like movies or historical events) into the correct
order, usually chronological. Getting the fastest correct answer sends
you to the Hot Seat. The computer variant struggles to re-create this by
letting any number of people choose a letter as their own on the PC
keyboard. The computer then shuffles the four items into different
orders. The first person to press a key when the right order comes up
wins, and then the standard single-player mode starts.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire could have been a better game in other
ways as well. It's hard to say whether a network-play variant could have
worked better than the Fastest Finger option, which just doesn't make
Millionaire into the party game that You Don't Know Jack is. A
head-to-head or multiplayer contest in which players simply respond to
the same multiple-choice questions simultaneously until one player
remains would have probably worked better. And since the central drama
of Millionaire has to do with the money at stake, it would have been
interesting to link the home and on-air versions somehow. For instance,
home players who consistently reach the top of the money ladder could
automatically apply to be TV contestants.

But for $19.95, one probably shouldn't complain that Jellyvision
didn't explore any extensions to the basic gameplay. As it stands, Who
Wants to be a Millionaire is both a faithful and entertaining simulation
of the TV show. You Don't Know Jack is far and away the better trivia
game, as it's both more entertaining and more appropriate for party
play. But it's definitely the game for those who want to see how well
they would do in the infamous Hot Seat. It may also be the best way to
permanently shut up that irritating, know-it-all family member who barks
out the answers to all of the questions whenever the show is on TV.

Member

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02-04-12 06:35 PM
Someone70 is Offline
| ID: 539794 | 7 Words

Someone70
Level: 158


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POST EXP: 305427
LVL EXP: 49990291
CP: 5019.4
VIZ: 29191

Likes: 0  Dislikes: 0
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