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Family Fortunes DVD GameThe blurb says:
It's the interactive DVD game for the whole family and it's packed with actual questions from the show plus all your favourite question rounds... but can your team 'steal' the money in a Double Money round? Will they beat the clock and the other team and guess all the top answers in a Big Money Round? Then there's always the Viewer's Question where everyone can score some extra money. Avoid the dreaded 'Uh-Uh' wrong answer sound and your team may just win the game! So sit back, grab the remote and get ready with your 'top answers'." Hang on! Perhaps we're a bit deaf, but on a DVD which markets itself on the "Uh-Uh" sound (across the bottom of the front it says "Featuring the Famous 'Uh-Uh' wrong answer sound!") there appears to be, uh, a distinct lack of 'Uh-Uh' sound anywhere. How does it work? You split up into two teams and each team takes one of the provided wipeable gamecards and (cheap) pen. In each round a question comes up on the screen and one team must try to think up the five most popular answers. Meanwhile, the other team tries to predict an answer in the top five that the other team won't have written down and writes that down. One by one the answers are revealed from the top answer down by ubiquitous TV man Peter Dickson. If they match any of the five answers written, you write the point value next to the answer. This continues until you've either matched all five or you hit an answer not on your list. If the stealing team have one of the remaining answers then they win the money acculmulated - and they can change their answer first if it has come up already. Switch positions so that team B are answering and team A steal. Repeat. Then it's the Viewer's question, a question with three choices of answers. Predict which one was the top answer and win some more points (fifty, although it doesn't say this on the DVD). One question each for Double Money and finally the Big Money round, five questions in thirty seconds. Both teams write down what they think the top answers were and score accordingly if they come up. Tot up the scores, highest scoring team wins. Is it "good"? There's fun to be had here, certainly. But you have to put some effort in because the included rules are a bit unclear in places. For example, if an answer comes up that isn't written down on the card but is written down as the opponent's steal word, does that count as a steal, or do they have to change their steal word to match one of the other remaining answers? Common sense suggests that yes, that's a good steal, but the written instructions are surprisingly ambiguous in that regard. Seeing as you can only score from the top answer down, we can't see any reason why there was no running total graphic on the board. We don't understand why something as basic as not telling you how many points the viewers question is worth on the DVD itself isn't included - if you have to refer to the instructions when playing a DVD game, you've missed the point of being a DVD game. There's a baffling rule that the trailing team going into Big Money can only answer four of the questions whilst the leading team can answer all five (giving the winning team even more of an advantage? I cunningly suggest ignoring that rule). And it's a shame you're limited to only top answers scoring during Big Money also, but to their credit they've got Peter to give a list of acceptable close enough answers to avoid ambiguity. It's a shame there's no punishment for not getting the top answer in the normal game. Under the rules of course, if a team fails to get the top answer then the stealing team have nothing to steal and the round is essentially a wipe out. Which is a bit silly. Some of the questions really don't feel like Family Fortunes questions. "What is the average time it takes for somebody to run a mile?" is a really rubbish survey question. And for some reason, as well as not actually getting the 'Uh-Uh' sound, you don't get the Family Fortunes theme tune either. You get the actual real titles, but you get a tune that sounds reminiscent of the theme, whilst being quite a bit different. Baffling. Still the think music you get is quite jaunty. If you can overlook the silly faults you can have a lot of fun. But I hope they can iron things out for an inevitable version two later down the line. |
"Now your family can play Family Fortunes 'live' on your home TV, all you need is the DVD remote!