After having such a horrible time with Jeopardy, you can read my full review of that game here, I have to say I really didn’t want to play this game. The only reason why I did play it though was because it came on the double disc set that I had purchased over the holidays on sale. I felt like if I didn’t play this game then I might be missing out on something even though a buddy of mine said how horrible this game was. Was my buddy PI right? Let’s find out.
Just like my reviews for the past two weeks, this game has no story to it. It’s a version of Wheel of Fortune. I say version very loosely because it’s nothing like the Wheel of Fortune that everyone knows and loves. This is the cheap way of making Wheel of Fortune because the stars of the show, Pat Sajak and Vanna White are replaced by these cheap looking AI who repeatedly say the same thing over and over again to the point of where you’ll be playing with the game muted. Anyway, it has the same mechanics of Wheel of Fortune, but once again Ubisoft went the cheap route when it came to this game and basically gave it no substance.
Just like Jeopardy, I’ve been playing Wheel of Fortune games since the NES. Needless to say I’ve been through countless versions of this game and this one particular version is clearly the worst. Thanks again Ubisoft for taking a game series that I once loved and turning it into something that became something that I would probably never buy again. I have to say I think it’s really horrible that Ubisoft has taken these games and turned them into something that are just obvious money grabs. Anyway, while this is still Wheel of Fortune, there’s nothing special about it. Nothing stands out and nothing makes it better than the games that came before it. At this point I would take the NES version of the game over this one. By the end of my 2 days of playing, this game became a complete chore as most of the trophies are luck based and it killed my enjoyment of the game.
The playability for this game is simple. Choose what you want to do and then do it. Spin the wheel, guess a letter, try to guess a vowel, try to solve the puzzle, and rinse and repeat until the game is over. Easy right? Wrong. Spinning the wheel becomes a chore as all you have to do is hold down X in order to gauge the strength in which you want to spin the wheel. Too bad that this mechanic doesn’t work all the time and you’ll be smashing your X button to get it to work before your five second timer runs out and you get a crappy spin. Always thinking that it’s me and not the game first, I figured I was using an old controller and that maybe the X button isn’t what it used to be. So I switched to my brand new controller only to have the same problem meaning that the problem is in the game itself and not my controller.
The graphics for this game are decent since they do resemble the whole Wheel of Fortune set. You can even choose different sets to represent the different areas that Wheel of Fortune has been and even the character creator is a decent one. It’s no RPG character creator, but it gets the job done. Now for the hosts of the show, the not Pat Sajak and Vanna White but a replacement of some weird looking characters that completely take out the immersion of the game because every time you look at them you’re like “who the hell is this?”
Play this game and be extremely lucky in order to get the 13 trophies that accompany it. I say that you have to be extremely lucky because a lot of the trophies require you to land on certain spots on the wheel. This will happen not that often as most of the time you’ll actually hit bankrupt. There’s also the fact that one of the trophies requires you to solve a puzzle with less than 20% of the puzzle solved. So it’s either you play a lot and know what the puzzle is, find a trophy guide that has some but not all of the puzzles listed, or just guess by pure luck because you’re a whiz at Wheel of Fortune. Anyway, I have to say that this was not my favorite trophy list because luck based trophies just suck.
There is an online portion to this game but I completely ignored it because none of the trophies required it. Also because I know what a hard time it was to get someone to play Jeopardy with so I just said screw it and made it like there was no online version of the game. At this point I don’t think I was missing out all that much on it.
Overall I give this game a 2 out of 5.
What’s Great:
+ This game tries to emulate Wheel of Fortune as best as possible and is an improvement from Jeopardy.
+ The graphics for this game are somewhat decent and at least it resembles some of the actual TV show.
What’s Not So Great:
– Even though this game is an improvement from Jeopardy, it’s still a money grab game and there’s never anything good about that.
– The fake hosts say the same things over and over again like they’re on a constant repeat and it gets annoying really fast.
– One of the most important aspects of this game, which is spinning the wheel doesn’t even work properly!
While this was an improvement from Jeopardy, I have to say that my buddy PI was right and this game was just horrible. This whole collection was horrible especially because of the $39.99 price tag that goes along with it. I know there are a lot of Wheel of Fortune fans out there that will want to play this game, but please do yourself a favor and just skip this one altogether. To be honest the NES version of this game was better than this version. If you are looking for a decent version of Wheel of Fortune for a newer console I would recommend getting it for the PS3.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 