Customer Reviews

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader: Game Time

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My wife bought this game a few days ago. The two of us have played it several times and, while we think it is a fun game, it does have a number of problems.

The game has four play options available: Home Room, Battle of Wits, Schoolroom Showdown and Three and Out. We have played the first two but haven't tried the last two yet. Home Room is virtually the same as the TV show, so that's the focus of this review.

Although the TV show has only one contestant at a time, in the Video Game up to four players can compete in Home Room. There is no interaction between players; they just answer questions in turns. Each player has his own board of subjects to choose from.

Other ways this game differs from the TV show are that all the questions (except the million dollar question) are either multiple choice or true or false and there is a subject called "Wild Card". Wild card means the subject could be anything. For the million dollar question, a virtual keyboard pops up so that you can type in an answer. Apparently spelling doesn't have to be perfect because I was told my answer was correct even when I put an extra "e" in a word. Also, when you choose a classmate, the game tells you what their two best subjects are.

Other than what I've pointed out above, the game plays just about the same as the TV show. Jeff Foxworthy makes the same sort of comments as he does on the real show. I can only guess that the other reviewers who complained that he is condescending haven't seen the TV show. I found his comments witty and completely within the spirit of the game.

Now, on to the negative points:

We bought this game on New Year's Eve. It is now January 6 and not only have we seen several questions twice, we've actually seen a couple of them for a third time. The box says there are over 5,000 questions, so I'm not sure why they are being recycled already.

The graphics are mediocre. The characters move in awkward manners. Jeff Foxworthy's lips start moving about a second before any sound starts even his speech. The contestants comments are downright corny. Also, there are frequent video glitches where the bottom 40% or so of the screen just turns to static for a moment.

While Jeff Foxworthy's comments are humorous, there are only a few then they just repeat over and over.

As I said, the game tells you each kid's best two subjects, but you cannot see the board when you select them. So, you can't choose a classmate based on what subjects you have left, unless you've got them memorized. Even that doesn't work when you choose your first classmate because the game doesn't always show you the board at all, until after you've chosen him.

The classmates get questions wrong quite often. On the TV show, the kids seem bright and you are usually safe relying on them. The kids in the game must be the rejects. At first I thought that the reason the classmates were often giving wrong answers was because we were not always using them for their best subjects. So, my wife and I started to make sure we only relied on them for their best subjects. Nevertheless, they still failed us at least half the time.

Probably the most important thing about the game is, is it fun or not? And, as I've said, yes, I think it is. While there are more negative points about this game than I would like, especially the fact that these kids are dunces, in my opinion the fun outweighs that. This is a game worth owning, especially if you can get it at a good price.

We played this game 2 and 4 player on the different battle modes so my comments will mostly be about that.

In general, my biggest gripe with this game is how difficult it is to read the questions. The font is strange and even on a large tv (46") it is difficult to read the questions and answer choices. This wouldn't be a problem execpt that a lot of the games have to do with how fast you can answer, and it's hard to be fast when you're having trouble reading the screen... I can't imagine playing this game on a smaller tv.

Otherwise the gameplay was OK. Even on our first use some of the questions would repeat from game to game which we found kind of cheap. They probably should have added more questions or come up with a better way to make sure the same ones won't come up so close together.

Overall we did have fun playing it and it met my expectations for this type of game.

I am a fan of the show and really looked forward to this game. It was bought as a gift for my best friend. There are obvious differences to the tv game, that is to be expected. The recycling of questions is really annoying. As are the cut-out characters in the show. The Wii is an entertaining platform, but the graphics on this game are terrible. I wasn't expecting great graphics, but at times it is down-right terrible.

But that being said, it's still fun and entertaining. Don't expect a mind-blowing experience and you just may enjoy this game.

My fiance and I were excited to play this game as we enjoyed competing and trivia. We inserted the disk and were immediately confused. The menu and character selection screens are really hard to read and pick from. The first game we played as the same girl because it was so touchy that we just started the game. I knew that the actual game show only features one player at a time but the game version allows you to play up four in completely separate games. The questions are very picky on their answers (be careful with the true and false section). We quickly became annoyed with the game, squinting at the screen to try and read some of the answers (we're both 25 playing on a 22' tv). On top of it all the Jeff Foxworthy character was condescending and repetitive. After playing three games in a row we turned the thing off when the million dollar question asked "What is the 5 letter root word meaning many?". We immediately agreed that it would be poly but that is only four letters long. We even googled it and it said the same thing. I told him to type in poly- and it was correct! Since when is a hyphen a letter? This was the biggest waste of money and we will be getting rid of it quickly. This might be good for someone who likes to play game show style games alone or maybe kids, but not for us.

Our 3rd grade son loves this TV show so we thought this would be a fun game for the whole family. Unfortunately the game did not live up to our expectations. The graphics are extremely poor, and quite often the voices cut out leaving you to guess what is being said. We had to turn on the captions so we could follow along. This was a Christmas gift & by day 2 we were already getting repeat questions, so I'm very surprised that the game advertises so many questions. The host is annoying & only has about 15 comments he says over & over...
It was not all bad, we did laugh & have fun playing the game. If you love the show & are intent on purchasing the game, my guess is you will be able to find copies at your local used game store as I would not pay to purchase this one new.

I bought this game for my father as he very much enjoys quiz shows and has really enjoys watching "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" and listening to any variations of that game he may find of the radio. Plus, seeing as he has recenlty been converted to a Wii person, I thought getting this game was a no brainer.

Cons: The animation/graphics are just not very good. The dialouge is never in sync
with the characters mouth movements. The animation in general is very choppy
and just not very pleasant to watch. Every so often a portion of the screen
will flash white or just turn into pixilated squares, it's just for a few
seconds but is still annoying.

You don't get very many options in creating your character...very few. I had
difficulty making any of the characters look anything like my family
memebers (not a big deal, but just something I thought I would mention)

The questions do tend to repeat, even if just after a few games. We got our
first repeat question just 5 or 6 games in.

On the Million Dollar question you have to enter the answer exactly as they
have it in the system or you get it wrong. My mother asnwered a question
about what river Huck Finn traveled down and she answered "Mississippi River"
and she got it wrong because they were just looking for "Mississippi."

Sometimes you guess correctly and you get it wrong anyway. There was a
question that my dad was pretty sure of but decided to peek and take a look
at his kids answer, which had the same answer he had though of and locked
in that answer. They said he and the kid were wrong and when they showed
the correct answer it was the same answer he and the kid gave.

However, even with all that is wrong with it, if you like trivia questions, well, it does have that, but I've seen several other games do it better than this one.

NOTE: My dad absolutely hates the kids on this game. He hates their remarks while you take time to give your answer. He actually yells at the tv, which is funny for a while, and then it gets scary. He says it's disrespectful the way they talk to you on the game.

This is really fun if you are playing in teams or with other people more for adults than children but if you trivia games this ones for you .

YOU WILL BE SURPRIZE HOW STUPID YOU REALLY ARE. THIS GAME MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE YOU WERE NEVER BORN. LOVE THIS GAME.

My family likes watching the show and the hosts banter, but in the game he just says the same thing over and over again. The things he says are snarky and mean, and not especially clever. He talks to the contestant (you) the way I tell my children to never to people. We like answering the questions, but wish we could cut out the dialog.

We got this for Christmas. My daughter has the DS version so I thought we would try the Wii. We like it. The questions are challenging. Would recommend if you like the show.