Deal Or No Deal: The Banker Is Back (Wii)

...and I are both big Deal Or No Deal fans, and we are avid watchers of the quiz show. We tried the Deal Or No Deal DVD game last christmas, and, like most people I have spoken to about it, found it to be far too slow. When my wife realised they had brought out a version for the Nintendo Wii she put it on her christmas list! When I discovered it on her list I decided it would be a very good buy as I fancied it myself also!

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...click on the Deal Or No Deal icon, you are met with a red box from the show and the familiar theme tune, you can then create a new profile for yourself which I will cover later. Once you have created a profile it will appear on this page and you will be able to click on your name to go into the game. The next menu you are met with gives you five choices; new game, tutorial, options, account and credits. Most of these are self explanetory, the tutorial ... more

My wife and I are both big Deal Or No Deal fans, and we are avid watchers of the quiz show. We tried the Deal Or No Deal DVD game last christmas, and, like most people I have spoken to about it, found it to be far too slow. When my wife realised they had brought out a version for the Nintendo Wii she put it on her christmas list! When I discovered it on her list I decided it would be a very good buy as I fancied it myself also!

Loading The Game

When you insert the disc and click on the Deal Or No Deal icon, you are met with a red box from the show and the familiar theme tune, you can then create a new profile for yourself which I will cover later. Once you have created a profile it will appear on this page and you will be able to click on your name to go into the game. The next menu you are met with gives you five choices; new game, tutorial, options, account and credits. Most of these are self explanetory, the tutorial gets you playing fast without having to bother with the instructions, options are simply, music on or off and sound on or off! Account gives either statistics or the bankers magic vault and shows how many of his secrets you have unlocked. New game is the button everyone wants to press, so you press it and are presented with three further options.

Different Games Available

If all you could do on this game were play the game like on the television, it would not keep you interested for very long I shouldn't think. Luckily there are three different types of game to keep you entertained. These are; Solo, multiplayer and break the banker's code. Solo is simply like playing the game on television, you are the player who's profile you have picked and you are led through the game by Noel Edmonds. First you must choose a box from the 22 available. To do this you simply scroll through the boxes until you reach the one you want and select it, it now appears in front of Noel. Now the game can begin, you open the boxes one at a time in rounds like you would on the show. First a round of five boxes and then rounds of 3 until you get to final 2. At the end of each round the banker rings up to make you an offer just as he would on the television program. If you decide to 'deal' you still complete the game just as you would on television. To win this game, you are playing against the banker, you must take the maximum amount of money out of the game, by either taking the highest offer from the banker throughout the game or the amount in your box if that is higher. There fore you will lose if you accept an amount of money less than the bankers highest offer, or you open your box and that is lower.

In solo mode you may also play the role of the banker, the console is now the player and you must watch it make its box selections, during this game you will make the offer at the end of each round. Obviously the aim of this game is to do exactly the opposite of the game described above. You now want the player to lose and must tempt them to accept an offer from you that you believe is lower than what they have in their box. Then there is the banker's bonus game, in this game you are the player again, however you are now able to influence the banker's respect for you. Every time the banker calls with an offer, you are asked to challenge him in order to gain his respect. If you win the challenge you offer is higher, but be careful, if you lose to the banker he loses respect for you and your offer will be lower.

The banker's code game, is a mini game very similar to the old mastermind game. You choose four different numbers each from one to seven all different, the banker then gives you a coloured disc for each number you have picked. Red for a wrong number, yellow for a correct number in the wrong place and green for a correct number in the correct place. You have to use these marks to find the banker's code in a few rounds as possible, this is quite and addictive game, especially if, like me, you remember playing this game as a child. This bankers code game is also one of the challenges you might face when playing the banker's bonus game.

Next there is the multiplayer option. In this mode two people can play Deal Or No Deal together, but you must have two Wii remotes. To play this you must select the multiplayer option, connect the second remote and then select either 'classic' or 'evil banker'. In this multiplayer mode, one of the players is the banker and the other plays the role of the player. If you select the classic game you simply play the game the same as on television and one of you plays the player, the other plays the banker as described above. If you decide on the ecil banker option, the banker is then shown the contents of the players box, this could give you quite a bit of help when making your offers, however it makes the game a little like a game of poker as the player can try to read the bankers face when asking them things, this is the best version of the game in our opinion.

Creating Your Own Profile

Before you can actually play the game you need to create a profile for each person who will be playing. To do this you must click on one of the 'new profile' boxes on the introduction page, there are only four of these and once they are full you will have to delete one to add another player. Once you have clicked on one ofthe available boxes, you must enter your name, this is done by scrolling the alphabet across the bottom of the screen and clicking on the individual letters as you need them. This is fairly difficult I find as I am not very good at holding the Wii remote very still when trying to select something. However once you have entered your name you press the blue tick icon and that is it, you are ready to play!

Playability Of The Game

As this was a christmas present, it was opened and played for the first time with our family on christmas day. We are all quite big fans of the show and so there was a bit or arguing as to who got to play first however we soon sorted this out and got down to playing it. The game is incredibly easy to play and like I mentioned earlier we found the multiplayer game with the evil banker option the best version of the game. To be honest I think this is the only real version to play. The single player game soon becomes quite dull and boring, and the only other real option is the play the banker's code mini game, which, as I said earlier, is quite addictive. After playing the game for an hour or so on christmas day, my wife and I have tried it out again at home a couple of times but I think you need a few people round to make it a bit more of a laugh really. The game is fairly fast paced though and moves between screens pretty quickly which was our main complaint with the DVD game. Scrolling is good also and the graphics are pretty good for the Wii. I think they initially had to get over the problem of transfering the moving controllers to the screen and now they have done that they are looking at graphics as they are beginning to improve now.Having said all that it it not a very complicated game so I suppose the graphics should be good. Sound is very good also although the music soon becomes very annoying but you can turn this off in options. We play it now with sound on and music off, then we play our own music in the background.

Conclusion

All in all I would say of this game that it is quite a good game that you can enjoy with friends once in a while. I don't think it is the sort of game you will have on every night, we certainly haven't, but if you are a fan of the show it is quite a good one to have in your collection and you will probably get your moneys worth out of it over a year or so I would think. As a one player game it very quickly becomes boring and to be honest you will probably play the one player game about five or six times before you tire of it. The mastermind style game is very good though if you are on your own, and I have found myself putting it on and losing an hour to it!

Price And Availability

This game is available at all good computer games shops such as Game, for around the £25 mark, however, at the time of writing this review, Asda still have it on their online shop for just under £18 with free delivery and you get cashback this way also, this is where I got mine from and they delivered within 3 days and that was before christmas.

Thanks For Reading, Also On Dooyoo

 

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