Video game review number three hundred and twenty five in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Wheel of Fortune"
I got up a little early this morning and picked up the DS for a little early AM gaming. I decided to take it into the living room and play a quiet game that wouldn't wake up the wife. Wheel of Fortune had arrived from Gamefly, and I was totally expecting another awful Nintendo adaptation of a popular tv game show. Surprisingly, this game turned out to be pretty good.
I don't think I've ever actually played a Wheel of Fortune video game, although I may have played some kind of a clone on an Apple IIe long, long ago. This DS game had all of the elements you would expect. Tough puzzles, a wheel that you spin (with the stylus) and lots of cool prizes. Pat Sajak and Vanna White are both here, although they look like little avatars. The real voices are in the game, and that's one big thing the other tv show games I've played recently have been missing.
I played 4 full games on the medium difficulty and won all of them. My wins were mixed between actual puzzle solving skills, good spins, and some fairly stupid opponents. It's a good thing too, because most of these puzzles were pretty hard. Along my road to victory, I won fabulous trips and lots of cash. All of them were stored in my little trophy room.
One cool thing I liked about this game was the ability to customize your avatar with your cash winnings. I'm not going to say that I think $20,000 is a fair price for a pair of jeans, but I won more than 30k in most of my 4 games, and that was enough to buy jeans and a new shirt. In the world of Wheel of Fortune, a trip to Cancun cost less than some new Levis. Silly, but it's a reason to keep playing.
Overall Score? 6.5/10. Of all the game show games I've played so far this year, this one is my favorite. It has the most replayability and was the most fun. I would actually be happy to own a copy (it's pretty low on my list of games to buy from this challenge, but it's somewhere on that list). I can see playing this game from time to time while bored, at least until the word list runs out. I wonder how long it is?
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