[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'217119\' date=\'Jun 2 2009, 12:50 AM\']Alright, so I just got done playing in the first US beta. I'm kinda brain-dumping here, so bear with me.
It was fun! The questions were mostly pretty straight trivia, although there were one or two written in the swervy way the questions on the actual show were. (I expected the straight trivia, actually.) Buncha pop-culture, buncha RECENT pop-culture.
When you join, you are assigned one of three roles: the One, the Mob, or the Crowd. Likely, early on, you will get Crowd, as the former two are picked based on how people have done in the past. I made it into the Mob for the third game of the night, most likely based on the fact that I had answered all 20 questions or so to that point correctly. (And I flamed out about six questions into my game when a stumper finally came up.)
In all cases, you are assigned a few other people to play with...in my group was a dude from Michigan and a very nice 13-year-old, and a woman who didn't talk a lot.
Grand Prize for the One appears to be 10,000 Microsoft points, retail value $125. Mob members who were alive if the One lost won stuff depending on how long the One lasted; I think the biggest prize the Mob "won" (this was a beta and prizes weren't actually given out) was an Xbox LIVE arcade download, which would be worth around $10. One person did actually go the distance, but then I remind you there was nothing to play for and they might have dove earlier had their been. In another case, it got down to 1 vs. 1, and they BOTH flamed out on the last question. (Which I got right. Hah!)
Aside from the One/100 game, you are awarded game points (just score, NOT MS points) by:
* answering quickly (a maximum of 200 bonus points)
* being correct
* streaks
* Mob members knocked out on your correct answers, with the value going up based on how many have already fallen...starts at 10 points and went as high as 300, I believe.
(I don't remember how much right answers and streaks paid. Suffice to say that the speed bonuses make the numbers weird and you rarely have a score ending in 0.)
The One has three helps: I think I saw Trust The Mob, Trust The Crowd (both of those are exactly what you would expect), and Trust The Brain. (The "Brain" is the single player whose score is highest to that point.)
Stats and leaderboards are available, tracking many many stats (percentage of right answers for the session and the current game, number of mob members knocked out lifetime, lifetime score, game score, etc.), and at intervals they take time out for stat checks and commercials and host Chris Cashman will comment on how people are doing and such.
(That said, Cashman doesn't *really* host, he has more of the Dennis-Miller-on-Grand-Slam gig of talking in between rounds and games and such, and the actual game is run by "Jen", who is computerized.)
You can make your avatar cheer by drilling the Y button, and you can change cheering forms while cheering with the D-pad. I was jumping around between raising the roof and the Cabbage Patch.
Anyhow, totally fun, and while I don't know if I'd pass up actual human interaction to play it, I would definitely make a point of playing again if I happened to be home on a Saturday night.
Like I said, brain dump. If you want to know anything that I didn't cover, feel free to ask.[/quote]
How the hell you got in? I gave up after 40 minutes. I read on the xbox boards that around 50,000 people were trying to play. Hopefully Mircosoft will fix this when the main game comes out.
