Customer Reviews

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is great! It has almost 2000 questions (20 times more than the PC game), and you can take turns being the host! The game is enough fun for the whole family. Highly recommended. Hopefully, they will sell question additions later in the year.

A friend brought this over to our house one get-together evening, we had so much fun, he ended up leaving it for us. Not only did we learn from the questions, it gave my husband a chance to do his oh so funny (so he thinks) Regis impression. Of course in this version, even Regis plays!

Since then we have regularly added our own little playful additions, such as a red plastic phone for those all important call-a-friend moments, we play teams and count on our own for asking the "audience", and some of us get a kick out of humming, (one friend uses a kazoo), to supply the music!

This is a great game for non-serious adult fun. The CD-Rom version is terrific too--but we like the old-fashioned interaction that friends can have with a board game.

I always find it interesting looking through the past reviews. I think my favorite was the person who said that they didn't like it because the ways of doing the Ask the Audience and Phone A Friend lifelines was too difficult to figure out, and that the game lacked drama because the money wasn't real.

Jeez.

The two aforementioned Lifelines are done in a very creative way; everyone or just one person (depending on the Lifeline of choice) secretly votes on what answer they think is correct. The host then checks the real answer and throws in the corresponding vote card, so at least one response is correct. It's an excellent way to simulate an audience of a couple hundred that is *almost* always right, and the nagging fear that the person on the other end of the phone line isn't too sure about their answer. Of course, you're also competing against the people who are supposed to be helping you, so consider how devious the group is before deciding if that's going to be your final answer. As for the game lacking drama due to the lack of real money... you must be kidding. It sounds like this person was expecting enough real cash stuffed in the game box to actually play at home, yet still have the game cost about 30 dollars.

OK back to your regularly scheduled review... This is one of the most impressively done games I have seen in a long time, almost rivaling the quality of imported German games. There are plenty of questions in the box; you won't start repeating anything but the sub-1,000 questions for a long time. The new method of play, with up to 4 people facing off while the host does the questioning, is ingenious. It's a lot of fun to reach a tricky 32,000 dollar question, see everyone agree on their Final Answer except you, then watch everyone else go away from that round with only 1,000 dollars as you alone go for 64,000. Of course, you can also play like they do on TV with one contestant subject to the quizzing at a time, but keep in mind you'll burn through the question cards faster that way. There is also plenty of play money in every denomination, especially useful for creating tense moments such as when only one person is left and having a fit watching the host wave a 125,000 dollar bill under his nose.

I would have given the durability a higher score, but since there are 15 different levels of questions, it can be quite easy for a young child to go rummaging through the box, leaving you to play a game of 500-Card Pickup. Otherwise the game stands up quite well, with separate areas in the box liner for all of the questions, money denominations, card consoles, and Lifeline tokens- I have no idea why other game companies are incapable of this, opting to just chuck everything into the box and hope that entropy will turn the chaos into order by the time the shrinkwrap is torn off..

As for educational value, trivia games in general have a certain "Oh, I never knew that" value to them. You do learn stuff, but it's not exactly vitally important information. Also, you'll probably forget which color (of red, yellow, green, or blue) isn't on the Lithuanian flag by the next time you play anyway.

One more thing- this game is impressively enhanced by shelling out more dollars for the British import CD of WWTBAM which includes EVERY piece of music from the show. Just pop the disc in your player, set it to Track 11 (of 76!), and you're off on a truly wild evening of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire excitement for everyone in the house.

This version of Millionaire-At-Home works both better and worse than its CD-ROM counterpart. It's definitely better than even the CD Second Edition in terms of the number, variety, and level-appropriateness of questions. The questions much more closely approximate those on the television series than either of the two CD-ROMs. And the Phone-a-Friend lifeline is much closer to the show in that you actually CAN phone a friend, unlike on the CD-ROM.

Where the board game fails is in the implementation of the other lifelines and in its dumbfounding lack of music.

The 50/50 doesn't particularly work. On the show, it's effective because Regis himself has no control over anything, and because the player's ramblings appear to determine which responses are pulled. Here, the person playing host potentially has too much leeway in deciding which choices will be nixed. To be fair, the CD-ROM isn't much better at capturing the actual feel of this lifeline, either--its throwaways are predetermined by code--but its approximation is at least fairer.

Similarly, the Poll-the-Audience option fails miserably. Instead of being a more-or-less sure bet, this lifeline depends entirely on the benevolence of the people you're playing against. There's no "audience" in this game, because everyone's a player. It's in their interest to mislead the person currently in the hot seat. Consequently, you'll likely get the wrong answer if you choose this lifeline-which goes against everything we learn from watching the show.

But the biggest drawback of this edition is the lack of music. The show is entirely built around the music. Without music, Millionaire is nothing special. The music is the origin of 90% of the drama. A CD with the theme music should absolutely have been included.

On balance, the Second Edition of the CD-ROM game wins out over this one because you're just not going to have so many Millionaire-themed parties that it will matter that this version has slightly more questions. You might as well get the version that comes closest to approximating the overall experience of the real deal. Hook your computer up to your TV, run the audio through your stereo and enjoy a version that actually has Regis as your host.

This is one of the best, and most faithful, renditions of a TV game show that's been put out in the last 20 years. Pressman has done an excellent job of bringing the overall game play home. They've also done an excellent job of adapting the game for multiple players.

There are more than enough questions (320 questions on each level through $32,000) to make the game playable without repeating for quite a long time.

I felt the question difficulty was anywhere from easy to absurdly easy through $32,000, but found that the question in the final third of the game ($64K and up) are comparable to the TV show's level.

This is clearly a party game, and one that will work with everyone playing together, or one-on-one with the rest of the group cheering the Hot Seat player on.

This game is WELL WORTH the cost, and makes up for the first version of the computer game.

I love the show and watch it all the time. I was really excited when I saw it was coming out as a board game. But I was sadly disapointed by this game. It does not even come close to the feeling of the TV game. It plays very slow. The person who plays the host, or even if you rotate every question is constantly putting cards away and pulling new ones out of the box and putting them in their plastic card holder and passing out money..... This really slowed down the game. And if you play with four people you have to go around and ask everyone if they have there final answer and if they need to use a life line it doesn't really work well. Other then the 50/50 the other two life lines do not work. We were not sure how we should poll the audience because we where playing aginst everyone in the room? And phone a friend works the same way. We tried every way possiable to modify this game to "make it work". We tried teams, one person at a time, change all the life lines to 50/50, but it never really gives you the feel of the show. I think this game was rushed in development. If you must have it, get it. The questions are fine, but if you want something fun I would save your money and play Trivial Pursuit until something better comes along.

I absolutely loved this game. I gave it away as an x-mas gift to my boyfriend and we played it with the family and they loved it. My dad is an extremely intelligent guy, but somewhat of a hermit and when we brought it to the table, he recognized it from T.V. and insisted on playing. Needless to say, he got to level 250,000 and we were all impressed. I did feel that some of the questions like the lower levels, under 32,000 were actually hard, and some of the higher questions, over 32,000 were a little easier. I guess it all depends on what you know. The game show asks questions like "what color is violet?" in the under 32,000 category and the board game asks questions like "what is cabernet?" so that is your difference. Over-all it is a fun game and really brought our somewhat distant family together. Thumbs up!!! I only hope they have additional boxes of trivia to add to the game like Trivia Pursuit, since you play the game so-often you start to be familar with the questions. It would be nice to have addditional boxes of trivia to pertain to the game to add more excitement. Definetly worth the buck!

Like lots of people said, this game is for groups of three or more. Its very well organized and is made perfectly. The questions are REALLY easy up to $1,000 but after that they all seem like $250,000 questions. To succeed you need to watch alot of old movies and go to an art institute(Tons of picture and movie questions). The questions seem alot harder in the game when your not even winning real money.

The Game is awesome!! Whenever I go to a party I take it. However I do have some complaints. The Lifelines are bad-- All 3 of them. 50:50 is not fair, If the contestant says "I'm stuck between A and C" and they decide to use 50:50 the host can just leave A and C. Ask the Audience also isn't fair. Since you ask contestants who are still waiting for their chance to play they may vote the wrong choice on purpose just to throw you off. Phone a Friend allows you to ask a fellow player, who may throw you off, just as in ATA, or you can actually call someone, but what are you going to say? "Yeah Bob I'm playing this board game and I need you help on a question." Here is a suggestion- If you purchase it also purchase the Millionaire Game Music CD from English version of the show. It is very strange playing Millionaire without the music.

This boardgame is constructed really well... and for some reason reminds me of the old board game, "Family Feud". It gives you that feeling of the US television show (sans music) and provides you with that feeling that you're playing "20 questions" on steroids. So even though it catches the feeling of the television show, how fun can it really be?

It's a great party game the first times around, but then it loses it's appeal very quickly. The reason is probably because you need people to have the same amount of interest as the actual players, or else it just seems like a large tedious workout of random information. So if you have a Who Wants To Be a Millionaire party... then it should do fine. But by yourself, it's probably going to prop up that crooked table of yours.

All in all: Good party game; good ice breaker. Lousy 1 player game. You want 1 player? Go get the computer version... at least there's music with that one.