Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Special Editions (PS3) Review: The Show is Better

“Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” is one of the world’s most successful game shows. Practically every country has its own version of the show in one form or another. To nobody’s surprise, video game adaptations have come about ever since the show’s first year. The newest addition, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Special Editions,” developed by Doublesix and published by Deep silver, tries to take top honors, but falls flat.

As is with the show, one to four players must first see who will play for a million dollars by being the fastest to put four items in the proper order. That player then must answer 15 multiple choice answers, each answer getting harder and worth more money, until the player wins a million dollars, gets a question wrong or walks away. They do have three “lifelines” (helps. One is poll the audio, remove two answers and phone a “friend”) that’ll help.

It’s a basic trivia game with multiple choice answers. The positive note being that the questions aren’t ridiculous or insanely hard. They have the right amount of challenge for their prize money with the one-million dollar question being the toughest one.

There is a DLC where all the questions are about movies. The questions aren’t questions only film buffs will know. There are plenty of questions where the average moviegoer can answer and maybe even answer the million-dollar question.

There is even a leaderboard where you can try to beat gamers from around the world which adds some reason to keep playing.

The major problems occur in both the visual and audio department. The game looks so much like a cheap shovelware title with lo-res graphics that you’d think this was a PS2/XBOX game. The shows music is there in way. It sounds like it but at a much lower quality and sounds a little off.

The worst offender is the generic host. The host has no name, looks like a host in any shovelware party game and his voice is boring. It is quite possibly that he was voiced by a janitor instead of a professional voice actor. That brings up one good question: Doublesix got the rights to the show, but not the host? The prior games had Regis Philbin and Meredith Vieira in them, why not this? You will zone him out pretty quickly.

“Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Special Editions” is yet another addition to “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” games and it doesn’t stand out. Yes, there is DLC, but as with any trivia game players will stop caring after a while and forget about it. Throw in some awkward audio, a generic no name host and last-gen graphics and this one goes into the “fans only” category. The show is more entertaining than this game.