Family Feud
Score: 50% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Hasbro Interactive Developer: Artech Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: Ugh. The 'virtual set' in Family Feud basically isn't anything. You have your people, and the table that they stand at. Occasionally you'll see the place where you try to buzz in the fastest. The graphics in Family Feud are downright ugly. The developers spent more time on the various customizations of the characters than anything truly graphics-related, and even the various family members look idiotic. The synchronized actions are downright disturbing. To make matters worse, the constant clips of Louie Anderson repeat almost immediately, slow down the game, and add absolutely nothing to the experience. You can only watch him point to a nonexistent board behind him so many times before you want to throw your hands up in disgust. It's way more obtrusive than the occasional Vanna appearances in Wheel of Fortune, and worse than Trebek in Jeopardy!. I'm not entirely sure where the humour that the game's case implies is, but it's certainly nowhere that I've seen in the game. The sound is weak, the occasional quip from Anderson is more annoying than enthralling, and you'll find yourself muting the TV before you know it. It's been a long time since I've played a professionally released game with this weak of a presentation, and it's downright disturbing. (Okay, so Hologram Time Traveller was worse, but that doesn't count.)
Gameplay: Sadly, Family Feud doesn't get any better in the gameplay department either. Once again, it seems that the developers spent more time making custom options for creating families than making a real game, and the entire experience comes off as slow, boring, and entirely pointless. I'd be surprised if most people play an entire session of this game all the way through. And it's not that making a fun version of Family Feud is impossible. I had one on my Apple file://c, and we used to play the hell out of that game. But the bad load times, ugly graphics, and evil parser of this Family Feud will have the family feuding for some other game. For those of you not familiar with the franchise, Family Feud pits two families against each other to figure out what people said on various surveys. The families first square off, one person from each, in a sort of 'time trial'. The first person to come up with one on the board gets to pick if their family can get all of the entries, or if they should pass it to the other family. Whichever group gets the 'honour' then has to get as many of the entries in the survey as possible before they use all of their strikes. If they run out of strikes, the other family has a chance to steal. If that family can get one of the missing entries, they get all the points for the round. The problem is that the execution is poorly-paced, and doesn't lend itself to a non-keyboard interface at all. The timer runs too fast in its default configuration, and you'll probably have to have a 'designated typer' that enters the answers for all of the players. And there are constant load times as you play. This is made worse by the fact that there's often a lot of down-time in the game, especially when playing against the computer. You get to sit and watch the computer do its thing, while you twiddle your thumbs. Other than creating your family, Feud has little to no options. You can adjust the time allowed for various things, and that's about it.
Difficulty: This game is excruciatingly difficult to play, not because the AI is all that hot (it's not), but because Family Feud is patently un-fun. Playing against the computer is not entertaining at all; the only way to make the game really interesting is to actually have teams of people that play as each 'family'. Only then will you get some real enjoyment out of the title, and the difficulty will come more from your opponents than a weak interface and trying to stay awake. Of course, if you have a large enough group to enjoy Family Feud, you should break out Apples to Apples or Rage instead and -really- have a good time.
Game Mechanics: The basic controls are simple enough, but the data-entry parts of Family Feud just don't lend themselves to a controller. The auto-complete function is handy at times, but often gives something completely off-the-wall. The parser isn't as picky as Jeopardy!, but it's dangerously close. The core mechanics of the game are true to the gameshow, but that doesn't mean that they're particularly entertaining. And the extended load times do little to mitigate that. The menus are sparse almost to the point of nonexistence, but they get the job done. PS2: Turning on the Fast disc speed option can help the load problems some, but it's not as much of an improvement as I'd like. And the Smooth graphics options are akin to adding anti-aliasing to an Atari 2600 -- you could, but why bother? Don't expect much of anything in terms of improvements when you slap this game into your PS2. (Or your original PlayStation, for that matter.) I've played game show video games for years now, and Family Feud strikes me as one of the worst adaptations ever. Boring gameplay, concentration on something that is completely superficial, and downright useless video-clips make this version of the Feud as bland as they come. If, for some completely bizarre reason, you've got a desperate hankering for some Family Feud action, I suppose that this game would make you happy. But the rest of us are better off with the old Apple version, or pretty much any other game.
-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon
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