Deal DVD is out

[jrjgames]

Kmart has the Deal DVD game for $20.  It's interesting, picking the cases during the game is tedious.  But they did a great job making it look like you're on the show.  The DVD has interesting layers that can show the remaining monies on the board as well as the previous offers on the screen with video playing.  Still amazes me how they can do that stuff.  I played it three times and won $750,000.  There was no big "whoop" so I'm assuming it doesn't do anything special for a big win.  I'm certainly not a fan of the show so  $20 was a nice price, anything more and I probably would have let it sit there.  If you are a die-hard fan, you'll probably like it.

Johnny

[clemon79]

So lemme ask you, does it come packed in a Big Box Of Air(tm) like those other DVD games seem to? And inside said, Box, is the game packaged in a standard DVD keep case, so you can just throw the BBOA out once you get it home?

(I have absolutely zero interest in buying one, I'm merely curious.)

[curtking]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'125622\' date=\'Jul 29 2006, 01:27 PM\']
So lemme ask you, does it come packed in a Big Box Of Air(tm) like those other DVD games seem to? And inside said, Box, is the game packaged in a standard DVD keep case, so you can just throw the BBOA out once you get it home?
[/quote]
I know you addressed the question to John, but I'll answer: yes and yes.

That having been said, I love the game.  I can't decide how to organize a review, so here are some random thoughts:

There are plenty of Howie clips.  You will run into the same ones twice, of course, but it's not too obvious.

The complete show intro is included, customized to the DVD.  Howie also explains the rules himself -- there's no screen-with-text that you have to read.

The "little things" are included.  When Howie's talking to the banker, the list of "Previous Offers" appears in the top right corner -- with the same flourish as they do on the show.  The money tree also appears at the end of each round -- the graphics and animations are quite cool.

The game does keep track of how well you do in a particular round: if you pick four off the left side and one off the right, Howie will comment that you've had a good round.  I agree with John -- I'm amazed how they do this stuff.

One disappointment: there's only one model opening cases -- Tameka (not that Tameka's disappointing, mind you.)  All 26 models appear in the intro, but Tameka's the only one that opens cases.  And you don't see her face -- you only see from the neck down.  ("All I see is numbers and breasts" sprung to mind...)

There's a 2-player mode.  One player completes a round, then the game switches back to the other player.  This back-and-forth mode continues until one player deals -- then the other player plays out their game.  The player who made the most money wins, though the game doesn't keep track of the money.  This mode is surprisingly good.  (I defeated my better half $100K to $93K in our game.)

The offers from the bank are pretty wide-ranging.  It doesn't appear that there are a pre-defined set of amounts, but maybe I haven't played enough games.  The offers are also quite accurate to the show.

One more thing I didn't really like: to select a case, you have to use the up and down arrow buttons to roll through the list of cases; i.e., one case appears on screen at a time, to get to the next case you use the up or down arrow.  This can get a little tedious when your case is 13 and you want to pick case 26.

All said, I believe this was worth $20.  I like it a little better than the TPIR DVD, simply because you can see the host -- he's not a disembodied voice.

YMMV.

[WhammyPower]

[quote name=\'curtking\' post=\'125634\' date=\'Jul 29 2006, 04:57 PM\'] One more thing I didn't really like: to select a case, you have to use the up and down arrow buttons to roll through the list of cases; i.e., one case appears on screen at a time, to get to the next case you use the up or down arrow.  This can get a little tedious when your case is 13 and you want to pick case 26.[/quote]
I suppose it was too hard to have all 26 cases on screen, laid out like the show.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'WhammyPower\' post=\'125635\' date=\'Jul 29 2006, 03:03 PM\']
I suppose it was too hard to have all 26 cases on screen, laid out like the show.
[/quote]
The problem would be twofold:

1) What do you do about eliminated cases?

2) Even if you don't worry about that and just make eliminated cases dimmed and not selectable, how do you get around the fact that the still shot you would have to lose would look like absolute hell?

Strikes me that they did it as well as they could. They could have done it better, maybe, if they included some functionality to just plug in the number of the case you want using the numeric pad on the remote to jump straight there.

[ShoeHorn]

Granted, it's nitpicky stuff but it seems that when Howie answers the phone, you hear the actual ringer for that $600 phone. I would hope that it isn't as it's an awful trill as opposed to the show version. Also, the banker is more well lit for the dvd.

Going through all the dvd's selection possibilities, there's at least 30 as far as offers, I think.

But yeah, this was about as good as could be expected for a dvd. If there was still a huge market for a PC version, they'd be able to accomdate a ton more.

If you're playing this on a old dvd player, the case selection can be just too damned slow.

But most that can read quickly will allow quick switching.

All in all, a decent effore from the Imagination people.

[narzo]

My copy just arrived in the mail today and I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed.  I would say bigjon's free PC game is far superior.  Don’t' get me wrong, the video is great but for me that’s where it ends.

The background music is very limited, lots of nothing while you spend an eternity scrolling up to what case you want to select.  

You only get a look at the board after a round is complete so you can't track your progress as the cases are selected one by one.

Plus the dreadful still screen while the DVD jumps to whatever part of the game it needs to move to from time to time.  When I reached the point in the game where it was about to ask if I wanted to switch cases it hung so long I was afraid the game wasn't working.

Then there's my major complaint of DVD games, no tracking of high scores, ability to save games, or keyboard shortcuts.  I really wish the game manufacturers would go back to PC games but the DVD game seems to be the trend.

Will I play it again?  Probably, but only when I have a group around that might be interested so playing in the living room is convenient.  Otherwise I'm sticking to bigjon's PC game (which I'm hoping he upgrades to flash 9 soon).

-EDIT- let me add this, I just tried it again, but on different equipment.  The first time it was on a new upconversion DVD player on my HDTV set.  This time I took it into my den and played it on my old DVD player (circa 1998) and old tv set.  It fared better on the old equipment and looked better as well.  While some of my content complaints still stand, the response time was FAR better on the old equipment, go figure.

[ShoeHorn]

I take back what I said on the awful sound for the banker's telephone ring. You can just hear the actual phone ringing for a split second then the post-production trilly phone that even overpowers Howie's voice at times. I gather that his microphone wouldn't pick up the sound of the phone, so Imagination just added their own for the segments. It even seems that Howie also verbally says what amount was in your case for the reveal, but they show the case only with only another sound effect.