Dooyoo Want To Ask The Audience Before Buying This Game ? (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Date:	07/01/01 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun, entertaining, close to the TV programme

Disadvantages: harder questions for younger children

We received a £15 Woolworths voucher for one of our Christmas presents and wanted to buy a game that was suitable for all our family. We looked round and discovered that most of the good games cost a whopping £25, so I earned enough on www.beenz.com to get another £10 voucher and there we were ...

It is quite difficult to find a game for all of us, as we cover a wide range of ages from 4 to 31, but we settled on the Junior edition of the new 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' board game.

The board game suggests it is suitable for children aged between 8 and 12. This means our 4 year old misses out, but she doesn't seem to mind too much. There is no way it would hold her attention anyway.

So tonight, four of us had a game. First of all, the rules are very complicated - far more so than they need to be - and it took a couple of readings before we got the hang of it. When we actually started playing it, it seemed quite simple though.

It is very similar to the TV show really, we certainly didn't feel disappointed. You answer questions in the same way as on the show, using little boards to indicate your answer.

You begin with the £100 question and go up in amount and difficulty, as on the TV programme.

We played four games, with each of us taking it in turns to be Chris Tarrant, then the one who won the most in the total of their three games was the overall winner.

Not surprisingly, the two adults amongst us came first and second. The Junior edition obviously favours the adults, but this is only to be expected. It seems better to buy this version than the over 12s edition, which the kids would find even harder.

The four games we played totalled around an hour and a half and left us wanting more, but it was past 10pm and too late for the kids to be up anyway.

The children (aged 7 and 10) found it hard to get much past the £1000 stage, but I reached £125,000 twice and my partne
r beat me with £500,000...Grr !

The questions were not always easy though, even at the lower scale, as they are obviously biased towards children, and perhaps you wouldn't know Donald Duck's girlfriend's name or the occupation of Mrs. Wobble in the Happy Families books.

If you do have difficulty answering the questions, you can use your lifelines, just as on the show - except remembering the people around you are your audience, so you'd better hope they will be honest ! You can ring your friends and family up for 'Phone A Friend' but we kept it simple and just asked one of the others the answer.

We had a lot of fun and some laughs - for example, my seven year old daughter thought the Queen's dogs were Rottweilers !

We will definitely play it again - hopefully tomorrow night, during Dr. Who on UK Gold 2.

I had heard lots of criticisms about this game, but we all enjoyed it and it is nicely presented, with the box well organised, so it seems like you are getting good value for your £25. I would recommend it as a good family game or one for your (older) kids to play by themselves.

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