Video game number three hundred and thirty: Deal or No Deal

Video game review number three hundred and thirty in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Deal or No Deal"

Somehow I accidentally put both the DS and Wii versions of this in my Game Queue on Gamefly, and then I forgot to cancel one or the other of them in time to prevent them both from being shipped to me. I didn’t think it would make sense to play and review both, so I chose the DS version (since I was about to take a plane trip anyway), and I sealed the Wii version back up without touching it. There goes one wasted game in my “4 out at a time” Gamefly rental plan.

This game is simple, just like the TV show. Pick one brief case to be yours, then open 25 others…hoping that the one you picked is the one with 1 million dollars in it. The others have anything from a penny to 750,000 in it. The “low” (sub 1000 dollar) amounts are arranged on the left side of the screen and the high (1000 dollars or more) are on the right. The more cases you are lucky enough to pick from the left, the better your chances at the million dollar case are.

The game has a “banker”, and he makes you offers based on your chances of having the million dollars in your case. The offer gets higher as your chances get better (and worse when you have fewer cases left unopened on the right side of the screen).

That’s basically the game as far as the tv show is concerned. The only things the Gameboy version adds are “mini-games”, which are little games you play every few rounds. These are opportunities to win more money, most of them involve tapping your pen on the screen. Unlike many of the other game show games I played this year, Deal or No Deal has the actual host of the show (Howie Mandell), only he doesn’t actually talk. It’s his likeness, but he doesn’t actually SAY anything, which is almost as lame as having a generic random host.

The only thing that makes the game sort of worth playing more than once is the prize screen. The more money you win, the more prizes you can buy. You can buy homes, cars, boats, planes…etc. The prices of the prizes are pretty much real life prizes…so you’ll have to play this game a LOT to get yourself a sweet mansion, a nice car and of course…a plane.

Overall Score? 4/10. I'm not sure how many rounds you would be able stand. I made it through about 5 rounds. I never won the million, although once I took an offer of 170k, and it turned out I had the million in my case. That time sucked. The rest of the time, I actually took offers that were better than what I had in my case….so that was nice. Still, by the time I'd finished 5 straight games, I was sick of the computer's corny jokes, and the game itself was just dumb. There's a reason the contestants on the show only open 25 cases in one sitting. If they opened over 125 (like I did), they'd probably walk out of the studio.