Archive for May 2009
1 vs. 100 Review
On Friday Microsoft held it’s 1 vs. 100 beta, which is based on the now cancelled television game show, for Canadian live gold users. So, I used one of my 1 month gold cards that I had been saving through out college to take part in this 2 hour xbox live event.
The pre-beta was rather confusing, there was no information on how to install the game and what needed to take place before. I had set a reminder but was never informed about what else I had to do. I actually had to go onto the website to discover that once I set my reminder the game installs automatically. If I wasn’t excited about the beta I would never have tried figure it all out, and probably would never had played it. It turned out not to be such a big deal because it did not stop nearly 10,000 people from playing the first beta.
For those who are not familiar with the game, allow me to quickly enlighten you (those who are can go to the next paragraph). The game consists of 101 people, 1 person is the One and the other 100 are the Mob (mass of bodies). The One plays against the Mob by answering each question correctly, each of the mob gradually go out as they get questions wrong. The more people in the mob who go out the more money the One can win, if the One loses, the money is split between the remaining Mob. At some points the One is given the opportunity to leave with part of the money or to continue playing. The One (or a single Mob) can win the most money if they are the last ones left standing. Microsoft added a ‘crowd’ element so people could still play along and gain points, increasing the chances of becoming The One.
Once in the lobby the voice of Chris Cashman came up giving everyone the heads up on the rules and how to play the game. At the same time each player was paired up with 3 others. This was a great move because it gave me a meter with which to judge my playing and made it a little more competitive while playing in the crowd (where I played for all of the sessions but one). So in a sense there are 2 levels of competition – one with in the 3 people we are paired with and one with in the 10,000 that are playing with us. Scoring is more than just getting the answer right too, speed is a big factor to getting a high score too. Just to show how much speed matters, the top 3 were shown when the session came to an end, and even though in most sessions I was able to get all the questions right, the top 3 were still thousands of points ahead of me!
The game is fun! I played with my wife next to me passing the controller back and forth and she is eager to play again this coming Tuesday. It’s fast paced, moves smoothly and the questions are well varied but perhaps too easy.
On the bad side, there are ads. Which I understand because when the beta is over there are some prizes up for stakes! But the ads are very intrusive and obvious … basically it’s a television commercial break … some of them are videos, some of them are just words or a logo. It’s a shame microsoft could not come up with something a little more innovative than what has been done for the last 50 years of tv.
Another flaw is that if you’re good you may be giving away answers! One of the three I was against answered every question immediately without waiting for all the answers to be shown and I heard a chime when ever my opponents selected an answer. Within 30 minutes I had a pretty good idea which answers were selected before I selected my own answer. In more than one case I got questions I did not know right because of this little flaw. For example, they start from left to right, so when the first potential answer is revealed and the chime immediately goes off I have a good indication of where some are voting, which is handy when I don’t know the answer.
On the forums others indicated problems with disconnecting and such. I didn’t experience any of those issues although I did not hear Cashman for most of the 2 hours and when I did he would get cut off by ads or the game continuing regularly and in mid sentence. His mic should have been set above the ads and even the game, it would have been more professional and given him more time to talk (there was often a couple second delay between him getting cut off and the ad/game starting). One that note, a computer woman is the real host of the game, Cashman is more color commentary, this is alright but I found the computer repetitive and Cashman could easily have done both.
But in the end these are minor quibbles, and the game, even in it’s beta, is very fun and addictive. There are some fixes that need to happen but this game alone easily makes the $5 a month for Live Gold very worth it. If you live in Canada and didn’t try the beta on Friday, don’t miss out this Tuesday! It will be well worth your time!
