Video game review number one hundred and thirty seven in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "The Price is Right"
In the words of the great Happy Gilmore: "The Price is Wrong...Bitch".
While I could have filed this in the series of "games my grandma might have played", but I'm pretty sure that even Grandma would have thought this one sucked. First of all, there's no Bob Barker. How the hell can you have a Price is Right game without Bob Barker? It's like a Wheel of Fortune game without Vanna White or a Millionaire game sans Regis! It simply can't be done. Oh, and don't think that I'm complaining because they used Drew Carey. I realize he's the new star of the show, and if he'd been the host of this game....I suppose I could have overlooked not having Bob Barker around, but no. Neither host felt like coming in to record voice-overs for this silly game.
Although the game has no host (making it pretty darn boring to play), it does have the announcer...and a whole bunch of the popular games from the show. Like the TV show, you start in "Contestant's Row" and bid on prizes to try and get on stage. Also like the TV show, I have no idea how much a lot of this crap should cost, so I sat in contestant's row quite a bit. Eventually, you make it onto stage, and you play a game that you've probably seen on TV.
The first one I played was "Safe Cracker" (you try to win a car by guessing the price of something less valuable, and then inputting that price into a combination lock). Without Bob Barker and the audience to help you along, this game is actually kind of hard. I got pretty tired of guessing the wrong thing...but luckily for me, there are VERY few prizes to be won, and within only an hour or so or playing, I started to see repeats. Suddenly, I knew what something should cost...which (believe it or not), actually made the game even less fun to play.
Nevertheless, I wanted to eventually win my way to the "Showcase showdown", so I kept playing until I got there. Along the way, I finally got to play Plinko. Unfortunately, it was not as fun as I imagine it would be on the TV show. I earned 2000 or so with my three chips, and that was enough to get me into the Showcase.
Once there, I bid on my showcase, but I was over. So was my opponent, so neither one of us won. The game asked me if I'd like to play again. My answer? No.
Overall Score? 3/10. This is a really weak game, with very limited replay value. I was already seeing items up for bid repeating after just an hour, so I imagine there's not much to this one. The game has no host, it's boring...and honestly...the only feature that made good use of the Wii's motion controller was spinning the wheel. I managed to get a dollar doing that, so that was cool. This game could have been so much better than it was though. I really liked the show when Bob Barker was hosting (whenever I would stay home from work, if I was sick in bed...I'd watch it). This game is just....boring and lame by comparison. Considering I'm comparing it to a show that's basically a 60 minute commercial, that's saying a lot.
Achievements? Although this is a Wii game, it thinks that it has them. Sort of. They don't write to your profile, so obviously, they're not real achievements, but there is a "trophy screen". Any time you beat one of the pricing games, the announcer says "You've unlocked an achievement". I wonder if maybe this game was meant to go to the 360 at one point. Either way, you don't really get an achievement, you just unlock that game for free play from the main menu. Whatever...I'm not interested in playing virtual Plinko again.
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