Review: 1 vs 100; Deal or No Deal

When both these games crossed my desk, my first thought was “hhmm, bit risky putting popular television game shows into DS format”.

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My main reservation is that for a good game show to work on television, you need a good host to build the tension – whether it is cutting to an ad break or slowly building up expectation. This is not possible with a console game, simply because the person playing God, is you. So do the games work? Yes and no.

1 vs 100 works where Deal or No Deal doesn’t. At its most basic, you, the contestant, go up against 100 other people when asked a series of questions. Every time you get a question right you get money by knocking out those members of the mob who get the same question wrong. Where this differs from Deal or No Deal is that you have to actually sit back and think about an answer, even though the clock is ticking.

The only complaint I have about this game is that two days after starting it, some of the questions began to reappear. It would be interesting to know how many questions are loaded into the game, or whether you can download a new set to keep things interesting.

If you manage to knock off all comers, then you get $1 million! Pity it’s not the real thing, but overall the game is a lot of fun for those quiz show fans who like to test their mettle.

Deal Or No Deal, as a television spectacle, works great. The contestant chooses a suitcase that will have an amount of money in it – it can be as little as $0.50 cents or as much as $200,000 – they won’t find out until the end of the game. Their suitcase is put aside, while they then try to eliminate the other 25 cases from the game. Every time you pick a case, an amount is revealed. Depending on the amount, at the end of each round, the banker will offer you an amount of money. If you take the money, that is the deal, if you wish to continue to try and eliminate more suitcase, there is no deal.

With the television programme, host Andrew O’Keefe is a great foil who winds up the tense atmosphere expertly. Alas, this fails to work in a DS situation because if you are an impatient sod like me, then you know you can’t hang around. The net result being, you go through suitcases like Madonna goes through boyfriends. So this negates any tension, and the game is very quick.

The functionality of both games is basic, with little skill needed to understand how they work.