Wheel of Fortune

Posted 4 years ago By

One of the most popular game shows in North America, Wheel of Fortune, has made its way to the PSN Jeopardy, released a little while back meet with poor expectations, lucky for Sony, Wheel of Fortune is a much simpler game. What could they screw up, right? Here, we take a look at the PSN game Wheel of Fortune to determine if it would succumb to the same problems from Jeopardy or rise to the occasion.

Gameplay 

If you’ve ever watched night-time television, chances are you’ve seen Wheel of Fortune at least once. The game plays exactly like the game show with the exception of both Pat and Vanna. I can understand that Sony may not have been able to obtain the licensing for both hosts, but I would have been happy with replacements. As a result, the game feel empty and missing it’s vital components. 

The game plays exactly like the game show with the exception of both Pat and Vanna

Gameplay mechanics work well. When spinning the wheel, there’s a power meter that helps determine how hard you will spin. To choose a letter, scroll through an alphabet made available and when solving the puzzle, simply input the missing letters in the same fashion. There are several modes that players can use, in Single Player mode, Single Round play and Road Trip play is available for those wanting either a short game or a longer version. Multiplayer has a few options available; you can join a game online with two other strangers in both Single Round play and Road Trip Play. Players can also host their own game to invite two of their friends to join. Both modes include the same games from Single Player Game.

Unfortunately, the Multiplayer is where I have a real beef with the game. Quite simply…it’s broken. This gives me a feeling that the game was released before it could be finished. When trying to setup a private match, we ran into a whole host of difficulties. When trying to setup a private game, players have to select ‘Host Game’ and then send the friend an invite. To accept, players must go into the game, select ‘Join Game’ and then scroll over to ‘Invitations’. It then grabs the invitation from the mail system and drops you into the game. At least that’s the idea. After an hour of struggling with this, we finally got a connection. I could easily say we made around 30 attempts at this. In the meantime, we made many efforts to try getting us both dropped into a public game together by choosing ‘Join Game’. This failed to work since it seems to open new rooms randomly and after many attempts we came to the conclusion that we would NEVER end up in the same room together. Nevertheless, once connected, we were deathly afraid to disconnect. We didn’t want to spend another hour getting back into a game. 

The game will NOT launch with only two people.

Now that we had our two players connected (host with one player), we ran into yet another problem. The game will NOT launch with only two people. I understand that this is a three player game, but what I fail to understand is if the single player game can play with two NPC’s who can easily hold their own, why can’t the online game drop an NPC into that third slot so the game can continue. Once we realized this, we phoned another and we were able to get our third player. However, not everyone will buy this game. If you want to play Wheel of Fortune with your friends, you’ll need two others who have purchased the game, or join games with strangers. You cannot just opt to play with one friend. Even if you have two friends to play with, if a party member suddenly has an emergency and can’t join the game, you’re basically screwed. 

Now that we got the game started, we quickly found massive lag. Not only that, but the game froze on the first puzzle. After one incorrect answer to the first Toss Up puzzle by one player, the game booted myself and another party member out. The weird thing is the one member who was still connected was able to continue playing. This will undoubtedly become an easy exploit to up the number of won games. All players need to do is have two friends join and then both leave. Easy win. 

We honestly gave up on the Multiplayer. It was so bad, we all had to resist the want to cry

At this point, we honestly gave up on the Multiplayer. It was so bad, and so broken it was making our head’s hurt and we all had to resist the want to cry over such a horrible experience. I simply don’t understand how Sony can miss this during beta testing. Even in the few games I played with strangers before our Multiplayer fiasco, the lag was horrible. In a game that relies on timed responses, lag that bad makes participating extremely frustrating and annoying. 

Despite this, I did enjoy the Single Player experience. I would have liked to see a difficulty level for the NPC’s, however. I found that the game’s AI would randomly go from stupid to genius with each puzzle and that makes finding a challenge difficult. Players who want a gradual introduction to the game will have to contend with a lot of losses while players looking for more of a challenge will have nowhere to really turn. Fortunately there is trophy support. Woo… (it doesn’t deserve a hoo). 

Graphics & Sound 

The game’s graphics are rendered nicely and the different cities represented in the Road Trip play are entertaining and enjoyable. However, there’s a really nice feature in the game. By going into the Character Library, players can create their own character. From eyes, to hair color, hair type, clothing and faces, there’s a decent but still limited selection of options to create your own player however the limited options does not make your player unique in any way. In fact, they will be some of the ugliest people you’ll ever see. To me, the best feature here is being able to give your character a new name because less face it, after trying to pick between two Jeff’s and two Laurens, both wearing the same sets of clothes, I was happy to have my own name attached to an avatar. Unfortunately, animations are heavily repeated and look stiff. Players look like a ‘deer in headlights’ while creating and don’t interact with their environment all that well by sticking their hands through the prize wheel. Overall, the game looks unpolished. 

A decent but still limited selection does not make your player unique in any way

Due to the lack of hosts, there are no voice over’s, not even a generic voice is present “There are four T’s”. The audience sounds are all the same, whether spinning the wheel, guessing a correct letter, or winning the round, it’s all the same repetitive annoying clapping that was greatly overused throughout the game. I honestly found the constant present of audience clapping away like seals in the background annoyed to the point that I finally shut off the sound. Beyond that there’s nothing really to mention here, the music in the game, right down to the familiar theme song, puzzle’s introduction and the beep that’s made when a letter is revealed is all on par with the actual game show.

Value 

Unfortunately, unless you simply enjoy the puzzle aspect within the Single Player portion, the game has very little replay value. Despite having somewhere around 9000 puzzles in the game (according to , with a broken multiplayer, the game is more frustrating than pleasure when trying to play online to increase your wins. 

Conclusion 

Sadly, it seems that Sony hasn’t learned their lesson with Jeopardy. Wheel of Fortune is plaqued by many of the same problems and I get the feeling the game was rushed. The game could have had great potential if it wasn’t so hard to invite friends into a game and the Multiplayer actually worked. At a price tag of 15 dollars, it’s quite steep for a game that feels like it was thrown together at the last minute. In this age of next generation consoles and social gaming, it’s inexcusable to have a multiplayer system that’s broken. If you enjoy puzzles, you’ll get a more complete experience with a puzzle book, or just shouting out answers to the television set.

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