New Gamesnet release aka 'The End is Nigh'

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:27 pm

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse...

I had my first sighting of the new Gamesnet release yesterday and, boy, was it depressing stuff. There were about 8 new games, either brand new or new to the Gamesnet, and they are almost entirely dross. They include:

- a new release of Blockbusters

I always thought that the original Blockbusters was a huge missed opportunity, in that a game that popular, which 99% of the target market will have seen in their youth, could surely support a decent game. The changes here are that while you still have to answer two sets of 5 questions, there are no 'time' questions to get (for extra time or for the Gold Run). There is one optional skill game per round as well, which I didn't look at. This gets you to the Gold Run which is where the original one fell down - every single time I played it you were going for £1 - but here the new one is even worse - I was offered a FREE GAME as the prize, and managed to repeat this twice by winning, yes, another FREE GAME, before eventually giving in. FFS - this is worse than even a 50p 'Jackpot' as it forces you to use the credit on Blockbusters rather than playing something else.

Trivia Roulette

You answer sets of 4/5 questions to gain a choice of between 5 and 25 chips, then every three or four rounds you can choose to play roulette with your accumulated chips in an attempt to move up the prize ladder. The roulette part seemed both realistic and (to a non-player like myself) highly complicated with about 12 different bets to choose from but the basic issue is that you have no control over the winning number (at least they have the honesty to put the phrase "skill stop" in quotes in the rules) and so if you play it sensibly it is going to take forever to get anywhere up the prize structure. Yes, OCCASIONALLY it will randomly decide to pay out 35-1 on a single number, thereby moving your 100 chips to 3,600 and well into the prize stucture but I can guarantee now that most of the time you will spend 10-15 minutes winning absolutely nothing.

Golden Boot 2

Any fans of the original (unlikely I know!) can stop getting excited now, as this is basically the recent True/False style Chart Quiz (or whatever it is called) with new branding. The questions aren't only about football so you won't be able to use any specialist knowledge and again 99% of the time you will be wasting your time, as you won't be offered remotely enough points to consistently get near the prizes.

Take It or Leave It

Yes, I can confirm the reappearance of quite possibly the worst game I've ever seen!

Take Your Pick

A True/False rip-off of Deal or No Deal where the one nice feature of Deal or No Deal, i.e. you get a genuine chance of a decent prize if you qualify, has been replaced by yet another game where you will spend 10-15 minutes to 'win' 70p.

Other new games - these are the new Ind:E ones that have been discussed elsewhere on here (although I don't think I spotted the cricket game).

And what has been removed to make way for this cornucopia of riches? Only three or four of the last few decent games remaining - Caveman Capers, Ant and Dec, Big Match World Cup - plus the abominable Crazy Golf 2 (I must be Nostradamus as I said that one wouldn't last more than a few months!).

Sorry for the long post but I really do feel that the pastime and sometimes profitable pursuit I have enjoyed all these years is now in its death throes. I have been wrong once or twice when judging new games (I missed the Big Match boat by not persevering with it) but I would be genuinely astonished if any of this whole raft of new games has any longterm interest to either players or punters. If the Gamesnet can suddenly go so poor overnight, there will soon be nothing left worth crossing a pub for. It has been fun while it has lasted, guys, but the lights are going out soon...

Cardinal Sin · Post by **Cardinal Sin** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:51 pm

Sad times, if true.

Of the games mentioned...

I've won a few quid off the roulette quiz. But what I didn't realise is that you only get one shot of the wheel. However, if the points are starting low-down, it could be worth a shot. Or you might just be better off not bothering.

Take your Pick is truly awful. If we're having any Razzie awards, this gets my vote. It is worth 50p just to witness what a con it is. I had a shot on Deal or No Deal on the Ladbrokes website, and it is very similar...

Absolutely loads of values less than 50p (5p through to 50p I think). Added into this is the fact that it doesn't seem to randomly remove boxes, rather just take out a majority of of the high-value prizes early on. If you answer 6-12 true / false questions correctly, you then get an offer, as NS said, of roughly the amount you paid to play the game in the first place. Battling gamely on, you twang the offer, see the last remaining big win disappear swiftly and get lumbered with 25p. Not only do you have to start fishing about for loose change, you then realise - halfway through the middle of the next game - that the game is actually paying out over-percentage, and was probably due to clam-up. A few shady yes-no questions later and it was all over.

And to think this comes from the same folk that gave us Word-Up.

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:19 pm

One suspects you're all being a bit melodramatic here. These games are just a bunch of fillers that Gamesnet have punted out to see if any of them take, which would seem unlikely given the reviews. Here today, gone tomorrow.............

I could name hundreds like this that have come and gone.

cool · Post by **cool** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:59 pm

Agreed they are some of the worse games ever released. my dream of owning a penthouse in Monaco is soon to be replaced by owning a crackhouse in Peckham.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:30 am

That all sounds very depressing - particularly the games that have been removed. I'll keep an eye out, but hopefully QM is right that these will be swiftly withdrawn.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:34 am

Cardinal Richelieu wrote:I've won a few quid off the roulette quiz. But what I didn't realise is that you only get one shot of the wheel. However, if the points are starting low-down, it could be worth a shot. Or you might just be better off not bothering.

It's possible there's a similar game out there or that you have seen an earlier version of this one but the game I played on Sunday definitely offered repeated turns of the wheel, after roughly every 3 or 4 rounds of questions. The pattern was therefore - win 100 chips by going for 4 rounds of the 25 chip subject, bet on sensible things such as red or odds and come out with say 125, win another 75 chips from the next 3 rounds to have 200 for the next bet, come out from that with say 250, lose on the next spin to be back at 150, ... the problem being that the prizes are up in the several thousands so unless you choose to go for a single number and the machine decides to smile on you and pay a 35-1 win, you could easily play the thing for a good 20-30 minutes before getting anywhere and of course spoilers will kick in before that happens. I realise that you may find a prize structure with the prizes down in the hundreds or low thousands but everything that comes out nowadays makes me think that that will be like hen's teeth.

QuizMaster wrote:One suspects you're all being a bit melodramatic here. These games are just a bunch of fillers that Gamesnet have punted out to see if any of them take, which would seem unlikely given the reviews. Here today, gone tomorrow.............

I could name hundreds like this that have come and gone.

Yes, but you would have to be very obtuse not to see the trend in the way games are going. How many new games were released in 2006? - 70 or 80 say. How many were worth playing? - 3 if you are being generous (Deal or No Deal, Caveman Capers and Big Match World Cup, as that was only a variation of an existing game). Do you really think that Gamesnet or anyone else are sitting on a surplus of decent games just waiting to release them on an eager market? In their mania to constantly introduce new product and get rid of anything decent, they have all lost sight completely of the need to use any quality control on the new product in terms of longterm playability. The games being released now are the SWP equivalent of those Top of the Pops cover albums you used to get in the 1970s with the free 'glamour' calendar - all gloss and no content.

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 5:07 pm

Games come and go, machines stay forever.

kingzilla · Post by **kingzilla** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:11 pm

I agree there is a lot of dross games on the machine but at least there seems to be a far better turnover of games on these machines than on other ones. There are allso a lot more new devlopment teams around now so your maybe seeing some of there first games, im sure things will improve.

Mattb · Post by **Mattb** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:15 pm

Oh dear - sounds awful :x

I'm now down to playing Caveman Capers (at least it is truly skill with the shots) and a sociable game of countdown in the knowledge i'll probably lose. Definitely only play these if i've won on the fruits, might as well chuck my money down the drain otherwise..

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:15 am

kingzilla wrote:I agree there is a lot of dross games on the machine but at least there seems to be a far better turnover of games on these machines than on other ones. There are allso a lot more new devlopment teams around now so your maybe seeing some of there first games, im sure things will improve.

I hate turnover when it means that a good game gets removed, as 99% of the time now the replacement is considerably poorer. Development teams can be as brilliant as can be but if they are getting instructions from their bosses to make every new game as tight as possible then they will still in the end produce dross - look at Caveman Capers, where a nice simple game with lots of playability for both regular players and occasional punters has been killed by the fact that it has been programmed to stop paying for good after one or two decent prizes have gone.

There are two separate questions with new games - I'll use my previous phrase and call them the gloss and the content. The gloss is the look and feel, the sounds, the enjoyability, the sense of challenge and all these things are nice to have and for many punters are all they are looking for. The content on the other hand is what I look for - can the game pay out decent prizes if you are prepared to put the work in? Are the skill games (if any) fair? Will the game return to paying mode after more cash has gone in? Are there too many spoilers? These should be the much more important factors for the contributors on here and in my opinion they are appearing less and less with virtually every new game that comes out.

cool · Post by **cool** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:21 pm

it is not that the games have been stopped paying for good once somebody has achieved the jackpot its just that the sheer number of games on a machine prevents the game from filling up again. If the only choice was Caveman Capers there wouldnt be a problem.The fact that the machine gets very difficult to jackpot after a small win was the case 20yrs ago. There was a donkey who used to play the cleudo locally when it was a single bodied machine.He could barely win £2 (get into three rooms) , yet this was enough to get the get the game to shut up shop and prevent me from winning.

BigEd · Post by **BigEd** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:24 pm

cool wrote:Agreed they are some of the worse games ever released. my dream of owning a penthouse in Monaco is soon to be replaced by owning a crackhouse in Peckham.

I have played Trivia Roulette for the first and last time. If they made you play this as a form of punishment, our Prisons would be empty.

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:35 am

I came across one of these new Gamesnet menus the other day, and do agree that all this new stuff is poor in the extreme. Although Quiz Night might have some mileage for committed players.

The funniest thing was that I was in an unknown site and the barmaid told me to play Deal or No Deal, because 'everything else they have put on it recently is shite'

I go to some classy joints, me.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 10:22 pm

I don't know, a barmaid with that much insight is clearly wasted behind the bar!

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