Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, 2nd Edition

"This game is on its last lifeline"

When Who Wants to be a Millionaire? came out at the turn of the century, it changed the concept of the game show forever. Slick sets, difficult trivia questions, cocky host, epic music, and best of all, big paychecks became the norm. But with anything that's rabidly popular, you can expect a decent to sub-par video game to come out and cash in on the franchise. And while it does a pretty good job of submersing you in the game show, it's just another lousy trivia game. As the second game in the series, it does little to improve on the original but hey, it's still Millionaire, right?

The goal of the game show is for the contestant to hop into the “Hot Seat” and answer fifteen multiple-choice questions with four answers each. Questions can range from a wide variety of topics, such as science, geography, literature, politics, and pop culture. Get a question right, you move on to the next question and up the monetary ladder to a cool million bucks. The catch is that questions becomes significantly more difficult as the game progresses. For instance, your first question may be “What is the typical color is grass?” while the final question would be “Who drew up the blueprints for the first modern-day helicopter?” Get a question wrong and the game ends and you lose most of the money you've gained thus far. To help, three “lifelines” can be used each game to give you help with questions that have you stumped. The format for Millionaire is simple and creates a lot of tension, but this is attributed to the show and not really the game itself.

One of the better aspects of the game would be the visuals. Menus are directly ripped from the game show and have some cool visual effects. The music is also intact and a lot of the triumphal fanfare and tense “heartbeat” music is here too. Regis appears in one cliche intro video and lends himself as the game's announcer. He has a few funny phrases, but he does get on your nerves and even pokes fun at you if you miss the first question. The show's set, which is shown in between questions, consists of the a three-dimensional Hot Seat and a few pulsating lights. It's merely a showpiece but is the bare minimum required for such a trivia game anyway. Besides a few cool menus, the game looks rather bare and after the first few minutes, you've seen the whole game already.

The format for the questions isn't very good. To prevent you from looking up answers in real-life, you only have thirty seconds per question, though you can pause the game, defeating the purpose of adding that feature in the first place. You can also use your lifelines, but their in-game transition is average at best. 50-50 takes away two wrong answers. Ask the Audience replays the result of a poll of fifty suckers…I mean, volunteers. Phone a Friend is vastly different from the show as in Regis will call one of his friends, such as Bob the Butcher, the old lady neighbor, Hal the bum, the mindreader guy, the nice bookstore guy, etc. and literally have personal conversations with them in front of you for a good minute or two. Then the “friend” analyzes the question for the whole thirty seconds and comes up with a decisive answer (none of this “oh I don't know” babble you hear on the TV). The funny thing is that if you use the Phone a Friend followed by the 50-50 on the same question, the friend's answer will ALWAYS be one of the remaining choices, and usually, their analyses are just crap and you can never trust them or ask them how “certain” they are with their answer. At least the voice clips are pretty good and demonstrate a lot of effort.

The gameplay has a few other flaws with the answers. You only use the keyboard to choose your answer (and everything else in the game for that matter). If you pick an answer on the keyboard, that's it, you must commit to the answer. As you may expect, typos can screw you out of the game big-time and the game seldom asks you “Is that your final answer?” Also, when you pick the wrong answer, you can hear the CD frantically load Regis' loser voice clips, as opposed to the silence whe you pick the right answer, so it kind of ruins the surprise of getting an answer right or wrong.

The 2nd Edition of the game is not much different than the original. The most noteworthy feature would be some cleaner videos and voice clips from Regis Philbin and a new database of questions. There's about 600 questions total, and that's actually a decent amount. However, about a third of those questions are really easy, and then after a day or two of playing, you get repeat questions over and over again. There's supposed to be some downloadable question packs on the internet, but that project was abandoned a week after the game's release. The number of questions are okay and are definitely an improvement over the first game, but still, considering how quickly you burn though the questions, this game needs more.

Oh, and there's the Fastest Finger Round. This is the only multiplayer aspect in the game. A question with four answers must be arranged in the correct order, such as “Put these cities in order from west to east.” All players who are participating must gather around the keyboard and press a letter to coorespond to their answer. The game cycles through all possible answers and you must mash your button the fastest when the correct answer appears. This really short mode feels tacked on and you'd much rather just take turns with friends than play this game.

Players who earn big money get their name in the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, you'll just play the game over and over again until you memorize all the questions and get the million dollars. If you have friends who play through this game once, then it can be good because you don't absorb all the answers too soon. But this game loses its replay value rather quickly. There is a Millionaire flash game online which is about as good as the retail version. This game is cheap and can serve as a good alternative to Solitaire or Minesweeper, but if you aren't crazy for trivia, then don't buy the game. If you love the Millionaire show, this game can provide some decent entertainment.

Presentation: 7/10 – The Millionaire feel is arguably the best part of the game. Regis jumping at you shouting “Who wants to be a millionaire!!” is worth a look.
Gameplay: 5/10 – Answer a bunch of question to earn fictional money. The time limit, the keyboard, and the Phone-a-Friends are dumb though.
Graphics: 6/10 – The same Millionaire interface rehashed to the point of mediocrity.
Sound: 7/10 – Cool soundtrack and some Regis voice overs that become degrading over long periods of play.
Replay Value: 6/10 – A lot of questions but they tend to get repetitive too soon.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/07, Updated 10/15/07

Game Release: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, 2nd Edition (US, 06/01/00)