1 vs 100 Beta review

The Xbox 360 Primetime game 1 vs 100 is now in its fourth week in UK and I thought I would start off my games site with my impressions of the game.

1 vs 100 on the 360 is a free to play game for Gold Xbox Live subscribers and mostly follows the same format of said quiz show shown on BBC 1 during the Lottery shown on Saturdays. On Live games on Friday and Saturday evenings, a member of the public, The One, is put against one hundred Mob members who must answer general knowledge questions. Everyone else, an average of 60,000 players on Live games, can play the game from the Crowd. Prizes in the form of XBLA games and Microsoft Points may be won when The One knocks out a number of The Mob, if The One is knocked out the Mob also stands a chance of winning prizes.  During the week Extended Play events are held which features non prize winning thirty minute quizzes on various themed topics.  These quizzes do not feature the One or the Mob and is everyone for themselves in the Crowd to increase their chances for being selected on the Live nights for playing as the One or the Mob.

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When the game is ready to start you are taken to the show which looks very much like how a TV game show would look. The Mob members are in the stands and the One is in the center of the studio with the presenter, and finally the remaining players are in the crowd around the sides. The camera changes to focus on the One, the Mob and Crowd as you would expect in a game show. I believe the One and the Mob avatars are faithfully recreated from the actual players avatars. The crowd members are randomly generated, most likely to save time and bandwidth, with over 60,000 players this would be near impossible to recreate. The avatars are well animated and can perform basic gestures such as clapping by pressing Y on your joypad and rotated by pressing Left or Right on your joypad. Faster repeated presses of the Y button will trigger a new set of gestures which include some hilarious dance moves.

The game area looks slick and is well presented, the in game presenter is voiced by Olivia Lee providing prerecorded speech for the lead up to questions and so on. This is mostly done well although the speech for how many Mob members are remaining does not always flow well, for example ‘The Mob is now down to… (audio changes pitch) 36’. Other than this minor annoyance the prerecorded audio sounds fine and adds to the atmosphere. During the Live games the live announcer James McCourt provides the presenting in the lobby and during the intervals. For many so far the audio has been sketchy and only heard infrequently, but when it’s heard it works well. I would guess this to be fixed sooner rather than later and is just teething troubles with the beta.

In the Live shows the questions are general knowledge ranging from history to current affairs. For the main part they are very easy and if you do not know the answer straight away the choice of answers will usually give it away as there are often two obvious incorrect answers to gift you the correct answer.

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Despite the apparent easy questions, members of the Mob and occasionally the One manage to answer incorrectly. Last Friday I was playing with a few friends and it started turning into a game on guessing how many of the Mob would answer incorrectly. I am far from being the brain of Britain, but even a young child living in UK should know that the Union Jack is the nickname for our national flag. This question ended up being answered incorrectly by a large number of the Mob and if I remember right the One also asked for help. I think one of the reasons behind this is due to the game being able to played by non UK citizens who always seem to get stuck on UK centric questions as above. I have seen USA players as the One a few times and does need to be addressed by Microsoft as they have their own game in USA.  I think the selection process is also somewhat flawed, if you compare the top players from the Crowd of which many of them answer all questions correctly against the One and the Mob players who are getting wrong answers from the start. I am all for fairness in allowing everyone to get the chance to be the One or the Mob but please choose players that have some intelligence.

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After a batch of questions the game pauses to give the players a break and to present some statistics on the game in play or to show some adverts. These breaks lasts for around two minutes and it gives you a chance for a quick toilet break or make a drink. These I do not mind but in some cases it stops the flow of the game due to the order it is done. I have seen a break just before the One is offered the option to continue playing or take the money. The break is over then the player decides to take the money, this means another break while a new One and Mob are selected for the next round. It can be a few minutes between playing which spoils the flow of the game. It may be unfortunate timing but changing the order of allowing the player to choose before the break would speed things up and be less of an annoyance. The Live nights length of the show which is two hours continuous is a bit of a problem, I would like to see maybe a ten minute gap after an hour to allow for making a cuppa tea and erm… longer toilet breaks 🙂

I have played all the Live and a few of the Extended Play events with various people on my friends list. Many of my friends also had family playing with them, grandmothers were answering questions on miniskirts and girlfriends knowing what beer their home country produce. Playing with friends and family is the way to go as it adds a more competitive edge to the game, answering questions quickly and correctly improves your score which is shown for all the players in your group at the top of the screen.

Although I have not yet made it to being the One or the Mob I still find the Live games great fun and everyone that I have spoke to have agreed. There are no major game breaking issues and apart from the occasional stopping and starting, the game runs smoothly. You can forgive these issues as it is a Beta version and overall the game plays very well but we will be returning with an updated review once the game is fully released. You cant argue with the price, it is free for Gold Xbox Live subscribers and it comes highly recommended by me.