Millionaire - my arse! (Who Wants To Be a Millionaire (PS))

Member Name: nicola21

Product:	Who Wants To Be a Millionaire (PS)
Date:	03/04/01 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interactive play.

Disadvantages: It's only virtual!

For the first two days that I owned this "eagerly-awaited" game, I was chuffed to bits. Just the concept of playing millionaire on my own, with an interactive console put me on cloud nine. I spent hours at the screen answering questions. I even got to a million pounds! Fantastic!

But come on! Really! I was getting excited about some money-grabbing spin-off of the show. Disillusioned as I was in buying the game, I now realise that it is really a bit sad. I answered a million pound question about the Rogun Dam in Tazakhstan, stretching my brain power to the limits, all for a 20-second long pre-visualised flash of a cheque addressed to "THE WINNER" with some additional music and virtual confetti falling from the ceiling of the virtual studio. Great! Wasn't I proud!?

Well no actually. I was distressed and disappointed. I don't whether or not in some higher state of conciousness I was expecting to open my Playstation console at the end of the game, and find a million pound cheque there for me inside, although that would improve the game no doubt, but that was it. 15 questions and a virtual million pounds. Not very exciting. There isn't even a function on the disc to save your highest scores, so I couldn't even prove to anyone else that I had spent hours slogging my way to virtual success.

The game only saves scores for the time that the console is switched on in one particular session. But in an attempt to prove to others that I could win lots of virtual money, a few days later I played again, only to find that the console was throwing up the same questions as the time before, amongst some new ones. I remembered the answers too, so there was no glory in that! The more we played, the more the console gave previously seen answers.

I know that the questions are not unlimited, but you would expect some kind of diversity. The more you play, the more questions you see and the more likely that you w
il see them come up again. Great, if you want to show off to those who don't know what's happening, but it defeats the object entirely.

The "phone a friends" are solely ten different voices which provide amusing but usually wrong answers, the "ask the audience" is good, as is "50/50", but there's no point in having lifelines, if you have already seen the answers!

Many people would think that a console version of the game would be good preparation for the actual show, but it isn't. It teaches you to be braver than normal, becasue it isn't real money. Along with its slow loading and tedious voice-overs from the usually entertaining Tarrant, it's really a waste of money in my opinion. It isn't real, and although you know that when you buy it and play it, when you reach a million quid, you really lose heart. Plus, becasue you're at home, there is a wealth of knowledge lying around in the form of encyclopeadias, atlases, dictionaries and newspapers, and becasue you know that "it's just a game", it's very tempting to have a quick look in any of the above aids to find the correct answer!

The questions, as well as being repeated regularly, are quite current, so the game will date pretty quickly. You'll probably find that they'll start bringing out newer, updated versions soon.

"Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" definitely loses its appeal after about three days of playing, and for all those millionaire wannabes out there, the best thing to do would be save yourself from the torment of the unproductive game, and give the real show a ring. Go on, you know the number by now.....

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