ItBox 52

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:28 pm

A couple of early thoughts (I only had about half an hour so necessarily brief):

1. X-Factor looks quite diverting but I'm a bit unsure how much of a payer it will be. I had six or seven goes and took a slightly lucky £5 eventually after letting several smaller prizes slip. The endgame is quite harsh I thought - it starts churning out pretty hard questions early on, and even with the fairly useless bonus you get if you get the right questions right in the main game, you'd have to be brave to keep guessing much about £2 or £3, I thought. That said, a £5 within the first few goes is promising, and for someone who has the time and skill to learn a lot of the questions, it could be a payer. In any case, hopefully the cashflow from regular punters will mean this one's worth playing for the opening six months or so.

2. New Monopoly has indeed joined the ItBox. UP will be relieved to hear it runs perfectly, speed-wise. I was the first man on the scoreboard where I played: as I'd beaten Hornby to it I thought I might be able to steal some prizes. Sadly that was not to be: three or four games all gave very high endgame targets and I didn't trouble those targets on any occasion. I wonder whether, like a few other games I could name, the ItBox version is mysteriously tighter than the version elsewhere.

Any more considered thoughts welcomed, especially which games from 51 have been sacrificed as I always find this difficult to work out!

dm · Post by dm » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:31 pm

heh greekster you beat me to it.

Had a few quid on this tonight:

X FACTOR finally made an appearance - what a load of shite. Purely Q&A trivia, you need to answer something like 12 out of 14 correct to even get onto the cash board (more Q&A trivia). If it doesn;t want you to get there it will force spoilers on you until you mess up.

ITBOX SOCCER: Answers have been updated for 06/07 squads and 07/08 clubs and (on the box I was playing on at least) boards had been reset. A new challenge. The thing that pissed me off was that you can now only put THREE letters onto the scoreboards (DMAC R.I.P.) I think I will be DMC from now on

SHOOT FOR THE STARS had gone, replaced by that greyhound thing that we all had sneak previews of. At least CRYPTIC CLUES had its rightful place back on the screen (rather than Manager;s Choice) and Hex was still there.

There may have been a new version of MONOPOLY, I'm not sure, haven't played it for months.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:34 pm

Great minds think alike DMAC. How irritating to change the name length on IS. Have they changed the prize structure at all I wonder?

dm · Post by dm » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:56 pm

grecian wrote:Great minds think alike DMAC. How irritating to change the name length on IS. Have they changed the prize structure at all I wonder?

I'm taking it as a compliment (though it's probably due to a much more mundane reason like lack of memory or something). I played six games, took two quid on my first go for about 33,000 then nothing til a quid on my sixth. Some quite pitiful scores were recorded in between so I suspect prize structure the same as before.

quizard · Post by **quizard** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:41 pm

Most of the favourites seem to have survived. Alien Attack though seems to have fallen by the wayside which is a shame really.

But a pile of sh*te like Take Your Pick survives.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:28 am

quizard wrote:Alien Attack though seems to have fallen by the wayside which is a shame really.

Another victim of cowardly programming - because it ALWAYS clams up with spoilers as soon as you get to £1 or £2 no one ever gets a decent prize ergo no one plays it very much. I had high hopes for this one and with a bit more bravery on the part of the games company it could have been a winner but bravery seems to be an (excuse the pun!) alien concept nowadays.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:30 am

Nil Satis wrote: Another victim of cowardly programming - because it ALWAYS clams up with spoilers as soon as you get to £1 or £2 no one ever gets a decent prize ergo no one plays it very much. I had high hopes for this one and with a bit more bravery on the part of the games company it could have been a winner but bravery seems to be an (excuse the pun!) alien concept nowadays.

At risk of being accused of braggadocio, last week I claimed a PB 7,000 points and £5 on Alien Attack! Being truthful, did anyone manage to JP this? I never saw a score higher than 7,000 at any of the venues at which I played, although I did see a 6,800 a few days before I got my PB. Agree a missed opportunity of a game though, so not too disappointed to see it go.

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:39 am

I managed it once and once only. Got the Double Prizes thing and 3 nukes in the same game, otherwise I would have failed miserably.

Top score was 10,000. By the time I got to the last round the ships were worth 1500 each.

It was miles too hard though - I never saw anybody play this while I was out and about.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:49 am

I think my PB is somewhere in the high 5,000s which earned me a whole three quid. Part of my frustration with this one comes from remembering how much I enjoyed the old game it is so similar to (QuizVaders?) - not just winning the JP but the sheer intellectual challenge of doing so. In terms of the game itself that one is definitely in my all time Top 10.

P.S. For those of you thinking "Wasn't he supposed to be retiring?", I am indeed playing the games less and less now - once or twice a week rather than once or twice a day - and I DO have to hit that golden 500 posts/seven stars landmark after all. Moreover this Forum remains one of the best and most entertaining around, particularly due to the lack of 'internet trolls' that infest similar places. I could definitely do with a bit less of the geeky computer coding conversations though...

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:37 pm

fame but not fortune for one of us again.

was impressed that monopoly runs without any glitches. was also impressed with the new IS questions.

cowell asked me for 14/15 which was a bit stiff. i can't help but think the licence is a waste of money. the game doesn't seem to bear any relevance to the tv show.

overall i think it is decent release but i won't be chasing after nitwitboxes. still prefer paragon at the mo.

ggdr · Post by **ggdr** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:41 pm

When playing the Greyhound game a couple of days ago, was given a question where one answer was "Unknown Pseudonym and the Word Up (can't quite remember the rest - Collective?)". One to look out for.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 3:03 pm

Mafia maybe? I believe that's what they call themselves on their website.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 3:04 pm

QuizMaster wrote:I managed it once and once only. Got the Double Prizes thing and 3 nukes in the same game, otherwise I would have failed miserably.

Top score was 10,000. By the time I got to the last round the ships were worth 1500 each.

It was miles too hard though - I never saw anybody play this while I was out and about.

I was in a pub recently where the ships started the game at 300-400 points each. Sadly I was pressed for time and couldn't really capitalise.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:38 pm

One thing that links X-Factor with that appalling new greyhounds game is the tendency for right or wrong answers not to be shown immediately. On the first part of TXF you answer between 10 and 15 questions and then get shown which you got right and which wrong, but not with anything to enable you to remember the question. On every round of the greyhounds rubbish it's the same with seven questions. It's no doubt an intentional, and if I might say fairly clever, ploy by manufacturers to make it harder for keen players to learn from their mistakes. Not sure how to combat this at the moment: I'm not sure there's sufficient time on TXF to keep a note of doubtful questions and their numbers while playing, and my memory won't cope with more than two or three doubtfuls. A real pain.

I remain doubtful about TXF's worth. Sure, it's pretty easy to get into the endgame (reckon I make it 65-70% of the time on an early estimate) but the game is so quick to use spoilers once you're in the endgame, and the bonus is really quite rubbish, only meaning you get another spoiler you have to answer. Reckon today I put in maybe eight or nine quid and got six or seven back, which is pretty rubbish. It's also - dare I say it - gets a bit boring. That said, it is quite addictive.

Northern Monkey · Post by **Northern Monkey** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:52 pm

Just had a first go on the x factor and got in 2nd go requiriong 12/13. Got to £3 and then bottled it given what I had heard re spoilers (and the fact that this was the same unit that Grecian has played)

On a more worrying note, my two most recent visits to the Monopoly end game have yielded 50p each.