Battery Requirements: 3 x AA (not included)
"You are the Weakest Link. Goodbye"
Over the past year it's created a national catchphrase and become the BBC's
answer to "..Millionaire",
in terms of being a massively successful quiz show, but for me is one that
has not yet outlived its welcome - unlike it's ITV counterpart - and is
still just as entertaining for the viewer as the contestant, primarily
because a lot more questions can be asked within an episode of this show
than in the Tarrant game.
All the rounds of the game and 1000 questions are here with the voice of Anne Robinson (no
relation) inserting insults into the proceedings when questions are answered
incorrectly. It begins with all eight contestants being tested one after
another and then back to the first one again, with each one having the option
of banking the money built up so far by the others, which makes you look good
to the others - especially if you were to get your own question wrong and thus
have saved yourself from losing a fortune - and although you're meant to work
as a team, some have their own agenda and will plot against the more
intelligent ones so as to get their hands on the loot. The aim is to win a
maximum of £20,000.
As the game progresses, each subseqent new round will have ten seconds taken off
the clock and the first person to answer questions will be the strongest link
from the last round. The weakest link is the person who was voted off at the
end of the previous round by the most number of people, not necessarily the
person who was statistically the weakest by answering questions wrong, even
though that person will occasionally be pointed out by Anne.
In the final head-to-head round, the last two contestants will be asked up
to five questions each. The one with the most correct answers takes the pot.
It could be argued, like "..Millionaire", that there's no money to be
won so there's no point, but there's more to this game because there's many
more questions to be answered, you can vote people off and the prize winnings
aren't targeted as the main point of the show, hence any home version will
still retain that "fun" aspect of the game.
Also, you'll find more questions will get answered in this electronic version
over the TV original because for the virtual players the questions don't need
to be read out. This would only happen when playing against real people.
If I had any complaints, it would be that many of the other contestants'
voices sound the same, Anne Robinson repeats the same acidic comments rather
often and she also sounds like one of those automated answerphones, eg.
"Player... 6... you voted for number... 5", etc.
Couldn't she have recorded complete sentences for all options so it didn't
sound so stilted?
Faults aside, to this reviewer it's still hugely entertaining and a must-buy.
You'll no doubt shout back at the angry red-head when she criticises you
and if playing alone I'd suggest being about three people in case one of you
gets voted off.
However, when I first played it as 'player one' only, the paranoid in me felt
that all the virtual players would vote me off after the first round and then
enjoy running the batteries down while they played out the rest of the game...
but no, the game actually stops once no humans are left in the game. :)
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.
For more information, please visit the
Tiger Toys.co.uk website.
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
