Are You Smarter Than a 10 Year Old? Try the Nintendo DS version (Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old (DS))

Member Name: julwhite

Product:	Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old (DS)
Date:	04/07/09 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining for a short while

Disadvantages: Badly programmed, low production quality, uninspiring sound and graphics

This review is for the Nintendo DS game, Are You Smarter Than a Ten Year Old? The game is based on the Sky One television quiz show, presented by Noel Edmonds.

The aim of the game is to answer questions in order to get yourself to a prize of 100,000 pounds, and then you can gamble this to win 250,000 pounds. You can gain the help of six different children to help you through the game to win the money. That's about the limit of the structure of the game, there's nothing else to do really do in this game.

There are three different ways that you can gain help (for those who have never seen the TV show, it's very similar in principle to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?, but the questions are from children's textbooks), which are the peek, copy and save options. In peek, you can look at one of the answers given by a child and then choose whether to play it, with copy, you don't see the answer and have to give that answer and with save, you are able to continue with an incorrect answer if the child gave a correct answer.

Although the front cover of this game features Noel Edmonds, he doesn't appear at all in the actual game. Although this is no doubt so that the game can be distributed to other countries outside of the game, it does rather decrease what little realism this game had. It's also not really acceptable to do what this game does, and state on the packaging that there are different difficulty levels in the game, and then not to provide that feature.

The game doesn't really use all of the features of the DS, although both screens are used, with the questions appearing on the top screen, and then the various multiple choice answers are given on the bottom screen. As the game is quite limited in terms of just answering questions, the controls are easy to pick up and learn, and would be suitable for children.

The graphics and sounds in the game appear to be the minimum possible to be considered as acceptable. Like the rest of the game, they appear to have been rushed so that the game could be released as quickly as possible. Consequently these add nothing to the atmosphere in the game.

The game doesn't really have much long-term playability, as once you've played a few games, it all becomes a bit boring. It's similar in essence to playing Deal or No Deal on a computer, as you're not winning real money, the whole excitement of those shows doesn't really translate across. It's a shame that some additional sub games or different styles of play couldn't have been added to the game to add some extra depth to the whole experience.

The game retails currently for nine pounds on Amazon, against an original recommended retail price of twenty pounds. If you're happy with a second hand copy, these can at the time of writing be found a few pounds cheaper than a new copy on sites such as eBay and Amazon. The book is rated 3+, so is suitable for children of all ages.

In summary, the game is a disappointment on a number of different levels. There is something not quite right about games producers making games which rely on a licence to sell, and then make the game quite awful. For children who ask for the game as they've seen the television show, it is an inevitable disappointment, and I'm afraid that I see little excuse for such sloppiness. Poor, but since it's available for just a few pounds, if you like quiz games, it's possibly an acceptable option for a few hours of game play.

Summary: Not much long-term game playing potential in this