This Saturday it’s Schlag den Raab, and in a WORLDWIDE FIRST, we’ll be attempting to offer up a live English zoo-style audio commentary. Look out for more details on Saturday.
Also the next Bother’s Bar Poker Club game will be on Thursday 29th, that’s two weeks today. It will be a $10+$1 deep and steep rebuy. You will need to be a member of my PokerStars club to play. Good luck.
FOTB Paul B has suggested that 1001 Things You Should Know was at 550,000 ish viewers on Wednesday, about 100k down on Monday. Pity.
FINALLY, if nobody wins Word Up! today then I will be revealing two letters on a daily basis every midnight until it is won.
Quote Brigs Twitter..
“I’m now playing the fun game of “remember my Betfair” details so I can do LIVE SCHLAG DEN RAAB GAMBLING on Saturday”.
That ‘may’ about as futile as watching the DLT hosted edition of Top Of The Pops 1977 repeat on BBC Four tonight.
Betfair Germany closed down on the 9th November, because das government banged up the rate of tax taken on every bet and it became uneconmic to trade.
I’ve just looked and there is currently no ‘German tv specials’ market on the UK site (18.36 Thur 15th) but I suppose if some enterprising punter may set up an exchange for it.
Oh man.
I’m totally the best at timing.
You got anyone confirmed for this commentary thing for SdR, Brig? I’d like to offer my services if translations are needed.
The line-up is currently looking like Me, David B, Daniel P and Lewis Ogbajoj. We don’t know what’s optimum for this sort of thing, so we may yet ask for your services yet.
Thanks to Travis P for the head’s up, Dale Winton’s Great Getaway films Sunday 16th December at THe London Studios. Sounds like three families play daft games, they’ll all be going on holiday, but one is more desireable than the others:
http://lostintv.com/tv_show.cfm?f=1353014433113&content_type_id=387
Hopefully the undesirable ones will be undesirable in interesting ways – Playing for a Safari in Africa while avoiding camping trips in Canada, rather than playing for a two week trip to Disneyland while avoiding… Umm… A weekend break in a hotel overlooking the M25.
…This isn’t even the first Dale Winton fronted show where people are trying to avoid a naff holiday.
Well, my copy of The Cube Wii game arrived about an hour ago and I’ve had a little play with it, so I’ll give you all my first impressions.
It’s a faithful recreation of the show. The game starts with the opening sequence and you have Colin McFarlane doing his Cube Voice thing which is always welcome. As well as doing the main game solo, there’s some multiplayer modes as well: Sprint Mode (each team competes side-by-side to complete 5 games, each with infinite lives), Challenge Mode (Each team plays the single-player game and whoever gets furthest wins) and Head To Head (The Cube picks 7 games and each team get 1 shot at each game, whoever succeeds most wins).
Before each game, you get video clips of The Body performing the games, which is a nice touch. The Wii controls are a bit iffy, though. In one game, my first game was Flightpath (throw a frisbee into a letterbox) and I lost ALL 9 LIVES on it! I tried swinging the Wiimote every which way I could (up, down, sideways) and it ALWAYS fell short, even with me swinging it as hard as I could! You get a lot of the classic games like Pathfinder, Quantity, Shatter, Revolution, etc. and all in all, it’s a pretty good game, so I’d give it a 6/10. If there’s any questions/concerns, field them to me and I’ll see if I can answer them.
Hey Andy, thanks for posting this review, especially as I’ve had great difficulty finding any reviews for this game from either professional gaming publications or players.
Does this game require Motion Plus or does it only use the old motion sensors? Is Motion Plus an option for better accuracy?
I’m assuming by the lack of precision you described in the frisbee throwing game that it has no Motion Plus support, but I just wanted to be sure.
Ah! A question! Thanks, Martin.
The game does NOT support the MotionPlus add-on. The game seems to have a leaning towards the ‘throwing’ games in the actual show, such as Blind Shot (throw the cube over the wall), Dead Stop (thrown the weighted ball onto the podium without it falling off), Shatter (Throw the ball through the diamond-shaped hole), Revolution (Throw the ball into the bucket as you spin around), etc. which is fair considering it’s the Wii (and there is a PS3 version as well with PlayStation Move support). With a lot of the throwing games, it’s a matter of finding that ‘butter zone’ of force and direction in order to complete the games. I haven’t played any more of the game as yet since I wrote that review as I bought it to play over Christmas, and it would be rather unfair of me to play through the game before anyone else as it would give me an unfair advantage 😀
Thanks for the fast and helpful response. 🙂
I’m actually not that familiar with the show myself; I was thinking of buying the game as a Christmas gift for someone who watches it often.
Personally, I’d go for the PS3 version with Move support, but the person I’m buying for only has a Wii.
I MIGHT be getting this on the 3DS when I have £20 spare.
Only Connect is back for a new series in 2013! The tournament structure will be a bit different this time around, so it’ll be a good time to apply.
Details here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/shows/beonashow/only_connect7
Is it going down the Uni Chall double knock out route to make the series a but longer?
Basically, yes, but we’ll be doing it in the heats level. The aim is to give teams slightly more opportunity to qualify for the semis, rather than extending the series. So if you get on, you’re guaranteed at least two games.
I’m trying to work out the arithmetic of this. Are there going to be 16 teams as usual, or fewer? I reckon that if you only have 8 teams but double elimination, then you can get to four semi-finalists (technically, two zero-loss semi-finalists and two one-loss semi-finalists) in ten matches. (FWIW, this matches up with the Uni Challenge experience in their double-elimination quarter-finals years.) As there are traditionally 12 matches to get from 16 starters to four semi-finalists with single elimination, this would either make the series two episodes shorter or permit two more non-tournament shows.
Starting with the trad. 16 teams would take, I reckon, 26 matches to get down to two zero-loss semi-finalists and two one-loss semi-finalists, suggesting an extension of the series by 14 matches. I’d be totally fine with that, and BBC Four would surely be happy to have 14 extra weeks of seven-digit ratings, but I fear it might cause question-editing cranial explosion.
Either way, I rather like double elimination contests, and rather feel that the thought of giving viewers an interesting and unusual tournament structure to grapple with, along with the interesting and unusual question material. seems strangely appropriate.