I first saw this one at the weekend and was stunned by how poor it seemed to be on that first impression - too complicated and ridiculously difficult to win on.
Now I've seen a few more examples in the wild it might not be *quite* as bad as my first impression supposed but it still bears all the hallmarks of another 24 carat dud.
The basic gameplay is a variant of Every Loser Wins, with two levels of questions on each round - the first being a set of numeric questions where you have to pick wrong answers and then the main questions where again you have to pick wrong answers. There are six rounds and you have to get through an increasing number (1 up to 6) of steps per round. The prize ranges I've seen were usually something like 0, 0, 0, £1, £2, £10. You get one Extra Life; there is some sort of Extra Life bonus available but I saw no instances of it in the various games I played.
This all sounds fairly fine and dandy so far but all the examples I have seen this week had clearly been installed in hard or ultra-hard mode - it's too new a game and the other games on each cabinet showed no signs of being significantly burned for anything else to be the case. However the difficulty is this - the second parts of each step almost always require more than one question, often four questions, and on the first example I saw it was always four questions per step. In other words you'd have needed to answer 105 questions to win the JP (5 + 10 + 15 + 20 + 25 + 30). Picking the wrong answer from four options does of course reduce the odds but the game rapidly moves onto only giving you three or two options.
It's impossible to see who this game is aimed at - punters will find it far too fiddly and complicated and have no chance of ever picking up a prize and hence it will only ever stay in hard installation mode. GWHL have now released several real duds in a row on the Q&A front, and tellingly I am seeing almost zero punter play on any of them on my travels. They certainly aren't going to change that situation with games like High Stakes.
New Paragon Game - High Stakes
-
maverick69
- Senior Member
- Posts: 2227
- Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:08 pm
There is *some* money available but as each new game comes along the number of players that can actually win anything worthwhile shrinks. I know of several people who aren't in the absolute top rank but are nevertheless very good players who no longer bother with quiz machines. The point is that if they find them too hard, too tedious and/or too mean in the prizes available to waste time on, what chance does Joe Public stand? Creating games like High Stakes, which is blatantly set up to defend itself against the tiny number of top players but offers no real interest to the passing punter, is only making things worse.
There has only really been one worthwhile Q&A game created in at least a year, and that is Million Pound Drop. It has a theme that punters are familiar with, simple to understand game play and offers a chance for punters to get quite a long way along the prize board by sharing out their stake as they go along. For better players it offers a fair chance at the JP while retaining sufficient tough questions to protect itself against multiple wins. It is by some way the most popular new game in terms of the number of people I see playing it on my travels. By comparison I have only seen tiny numbers playing the last few GWHL games, and for two of them I have never witnessed a single person playing them anywhere. I could tell from the first credit I played on High Stakes that it is going to suffer the same fate. Just call be Mystic Nil... ;-)
There has only really been one worthwhile Q&A game created in at least a year, and that is Million Pound Drop. It has a theme that punters are familiar with, simple to understand game play and offers a chance for punters to get quite a long way along the prize board by sharing out their stake as they go along. For better players it offers a fair chance at the JP while retaining sufficient tough questions to protect itself against multiple wins. It is by some way the most popular new game in terms of the number of people I see playing it on my travels. By comparison I have only seen tiny numbers playing the last few GWHL games, and for two of them I have never witnessed a single person playing them anywhere. I could tell from the first credit I played on High Stakes that it is going to suffer the same fate. Just call be Mystic Nil... ;-)
-
Ruler of The World
- Senior Member
- Posts: 2110
- Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2012 12:51 pm
-
Captain.Tattybojangles
- Senior Member
- Posts: 1159
- Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: Today, Hull. Tomorrow...Still Hull...
-
QuizMaster
- Senior Member
- Posts: 1254
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:40 pm
-
QuizMaster
- Senior Member
- Posts: 1254
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:40 pm
-
QuizMaster
- Senior Member
- Posts: 1254
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:40 pm
I was unfortunately stuck in a town with no Paragons the other day so ended up having to eke out cash from one of these. I don't think it's particualry difficult to play, although it is difficult to understand on first impression, hence punters will steer well clear.
It goes on for ever though. Boring as fuck. I think winning the £10 took over 10 minutes.
It goes on for ever though. Boring as fuck. I think winning the £10 took over 10 minutes.
Stupid punters. Telly all the week, screw the wife Saturday
LOL!QuizMaster wrote:I was unfortunately stuck in a town with no Paragons the other day so ended up having to eke out cash from one of these. I don't think it's particualry difficult to play, although it is difficult to understand on first impression, hence punters will steer well clear.
It goes on for ever though. Boring as fuck. I think winning the £10 took over 10 minutes.
It's like Every Loser Wins meets that other boring game I can't recall the name with four possible answers that disappeared about six month ago