This has nearly nothing in common with the TV show, that's for sure.
Paying about 20 dollars, probably depending on where you buy it, you get a chance to participate in a video game version of the TV show "Who wants to be a Millionaire?", for the DS, and a chance on one million virtual dollar. So yeah, sure, you don't buy a game such like this because of winning money. But gaining a game like Who Wants to be a Millionaire for the DS, you should be able to expect a nice quiz game with engaging questions and at the least some of the atmosphere that takes part in the actual show. But Who wants to be a Millionaire does nothing that could even make it earn the show's smell of fart. While the majority still remains good questions, horrendous presentation and bad question order and amount make this game unworthy of it's price.
You know, unlike in the actual show, there is no audience, sure not so bad, if I think about it, an audience full of heads, each consisting out of one pixel, isn't that nice to look at. But there's no moderator, no room, no you, just a system showing one question after the other, and a voice talking that seems to be a voice of an old, boring robot (the German version at least, the English one at least has the original moderator talking, though he too is quite lifeless, since he only has a very limited amount of sentences to say). And the music consisting out of singing monks, always presenting the same old melody doesn't raise the bar of delight either. At least the english version and another language version have a moderator shown at times when he talks, though it does not really improve the presentation by any means. It's still pretty sloppy!
You know, right after starting this game I already got a feeling this game hadn't much to offer on value. At first you come across the language menu, where selecting your choice of language is required. After that, you get to choose between single and multiplayer, and then the game starts. No settings, no other options, no extras, nothing! The game does not even save your record on how far you already come in the game. After finally reaching the 1 million dollars and getting what seems like feigned praise of the moderator, the game forgets about the bold score and sends you to the "select the amount of player" menu again. And then the game starts off as usual.
It's not just presentation and offering where the game inappropriate messes up. While I was playing, I got a nutshell hard question for 500 euros, just to get reminded that Shrek is an Ogre and not a Cyborg or reptile during my 1600 euro question. The amount of questions is also quite a little one. The description on amazon said it had roughly 1000 questions, so I thought the amount would have me entertained for a little time at least, but after figuring out that there are different questions for each language, which makes actually sense, of course, I fear that these 1000 questions are dispersed into these 6 different languages. Which means 1000 divided by 6 equals about 166 questions for each language. Yeah, let's not mention that in the description. I'm not sure if this is true, or if they actually meant 1000 questions only for the German part of the game, but so or so, it won't take long until you meet the first repeated questions, and after another few days of daily play session, a session being most likely about 15 to 30 minutes, you'll barely find one more question that you haven't encountered yet.
There's a multiplayer option though, where you and your friend can compete against each other by successively answering questions, progressing separately. And all on only one DS system. It's only for 2 players though, and it's way too simple to make it anything worthwhile.
You guys should know, the only reason I bought this game was for me and my friends to play at school and test our knowledge, (mine is pretty low, by the way), and more so, to simply kill some time with it at school, and there's no other reason to buy it. The majority consisting out of rather decent questions doesn't make up for a terrible presentation, bad question order and the little amount of questions available. It's definitely not worth your time and money. No way!
THE GOOD
+ majority of questions are fine
THE BAD
- terrible presentation
- some questions are clearly not fitting to their price sum
- too little amount on questions
- Simplistic multiplayer
Review Score: 3.5/10