Wheel of Fortune

First off, facts are facts: this might be one of the best handheld versions of Wheel of Fortune you’re liable to find. Wheel’s format is conducive to stylus play (complete with QWERTY keyboard, thank god), and Griptonite’s development team nails the presentation: hideously ~cute character customization with a full battery of Pat Sajak dialogue to steer you from lightning round to final spin. The 5,000 puzzles are functionally inexhaustible, and the meta-game unlockable rewards are suitably dumb (Shorts! Sweater Vest! Pinstripes for Pat!). Wheel’s GUI is barebones but workable, while the ample player profiles maintains a bevy of statistics (lifetime correct letter %, bankruptcy spins, jackpots etc.) and allows easy hotseat multiplayer play.

And now the rub: it's unclear whether a WoF video game can keep your attention, offer a challenge, or successfully maintain any level of shared or solo amusement. Having went 10 for 10 on my games here, I’m left wondering how much of the draw of Wheel is due to the more than occasional feckless TV contestant; the sense that one could very much win this game in studio; and the make-room-for-our-sponsor time constraint of the whole affair. Griptonite gives you plenty of time to select letters and solve puzzles—you’ll only ever feel the crunch in the Final Round’s “solve or pass” 5-count. The AI is varying shades of incompetent: on Easy and Medium, your computer opponents will invariably veer towards “W”, “K”, and “X”, and fail to solve without greater than two-thirds of the puzzle revealed. And yeah, kind of a problem that the AI in all extant (perhaps?) video game adaptations of Wheel cannot and will not guess incorrectly. They try and fail to plod through the RSTLNEs on Hard and suffer in silence otherwise; all will likely fail to keep you honest. So while might take 40-50 games to unlock the poorly texture mapped postcards, banners, and outfits, you’ll have seen everything after a dozen. TL;DR fans of the show and/or word puzzle aficionados will absolutely body the AI.

Having said that, THQ backed a painless version of the classic show here. This could very well be fun for the right (older) audience in short bursts or in a few rounds of hotseat. But between the oddball anachronistic solution (“ROVING REPORTER” (people), “COMING IN LIKE GANGBUSTERS” (phrase)), the game will show its age. Here’s a hint if you’re committed to drinking deep that points to another fault of almost every version I’ve played—the wheel spin: while you will never see the full wheel to get a feel for avoiding “LOSE A TURN” and “Bankrupt”, you can and will discover that these spins can be avoided completely based on 1) the location of your starting banner and 2) your choice of what seem like three spin speeds based on your stylus swipe. And yes, it is absolutely a damn problem when your stylus-controlled game gives you no sense of control on an action that should allow some feel (does the Wii version offer haptic feedback?).

(Bonus... issue: winning the third puzzle w/ its default jackpot and vacation banner is, for all intents and purposes, an autowin against the AI)

So while there’s worse games to snag at your local Goodwill, there’s far better ways to burn cash on eBay.