'Family Fortunes' (DS)

Also available on: Wii
Developer: Slam Productions
Publisher: Mindscape
Genre: Quiz

Back in the golden years of primetime Nineties television, Family Fortunes was by far and away my favourite gameshow. I was happy to see it return after a few years away, and even now the format stands out amongst the new wave of quiz shows where only luck is a factor, since contestants have to speculate on what a bunch of strangers could possibly be thinking. Regardless of the successes of the show, it's obvious that the formula wouldn't easily translate to a game, and this portable attempt proves just that.

It has everything you'd expect from the show - you choose a family to play with, guess what you think are the top answers in a variety of surveys, and go on to earn Big Money at the end. The success of this release depends entirely on how you guess those answers, seeing as that is the crux of the show, and it's unfortunately something the game doesn't get right. Instead of leaving the player to come up with answers of their own, you're presented a list of answers to choose from.

The decision takes all the enjoyment away from the show. The lack of freedom makes those off-the-cuff guesses or silly suggestions never possible, since the list contains entirely feasible and often incredibly similar choices. (Mud and dirt were the top two answers in one round, for example.) You spend a few seconds with the most logical sounding one and go for it, and repeat until the round is done, which is both uninvolving and unsatisfying as far as a quiz goes. Furthermore, it confuses matters by not taking away the answers you've pitched, and then randomises the list every time, causing you to often choose the same answer twice in one round. (Then again, this does sometimes happen in the actual show, but that's because the family is simply not paying attention and not presented with effectively the same answer worded in several different ways.)

This could also be a consequence of the drab selection of questions on offer. Prepare to guess survey results about places with lots of exits, come up with names for a dress, and think of what children cover themselves in aside from food. Despite this, it does ratchet up the tension as the game progresses: Big Money requires you to guess five questions in quick succession, where the timer really does actually put you on the spot, while the family order in multiplayer is decided by the top answer in the buzzing round, and not the fastest, which is a clever way of sorting things.

The package really doesn't offer much beyond the base gameshow idea. You can choose from an assortment of families to play as or select your own, using cut-out Mii-like features, which look slightly odd but offer a decent amount of choice. However the customisation is a little stunted, since you can only insert a surname with the maximum of six characters, and only have two families saved at any one time. (Additionally, they keyboard barely works, as it literally inserts random letters instead of your desired choice.) Elsewhere, the presentation is clean but rather dull, while the Vernon Kaye voice samples are short in supply but surprisingly unobtrusive and good in audio quality, even when using the speakers.

You could argue that the developer would always be fighting a losing battle in trying to translate a rather incompatible show into a game, since it's difficult to strike a balance between free-form guessing and locking down a set of firm choices. The base idea, which is all the game provides, would never be deep enough for a retail product, but its poor presentation and lack of customisation makes matters worse. Taking any gameshow and making it into a decent game is a daunting task, and we can entirely understand how and why this game went wrong, but that doesn't really make it any better.


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