Review of Little Britain - Interactive DVD Game

Introduction

The `Little Britain` DVD game starts as it means to go on with Tom Baker`s voice inviting you to either `Play with others` or `Play with yourself`. And so it goes on, with no double-entendre left unturned and with 15 of the greatest `Little Britain` characters taking you through a variety of quiz based fun. "Welcome to Round 1. I like a nice round one, don`t you?".

Once you`ve selected whether it`s a solo game or a group affair, you`ll start on the first of seven randomly selected rounds (from a total of fifteen) which, for the most part, are good fun. Think Pub-quiz hosted by `Little Britain` characters.

My first character-based round started with the lady with the little-cough, `Carol Beer`s Travel Quiz`. The questions here are general knowledge travel questions and if you get one wrong you`ll be told `the computer says no`. The use of the left and right controls as part of the multi-choice selector is frustrating here as it`s counter-intuitive, going against their original functionality. Several times I went to use them to try to select my choice only to discover that once pressed, the corresponding answer is taken. Maddening .but ever onwards!


Next up was little Denis Waterman`s `Guess the Feemtoon` round where Denis sings a famous theme tune (badly) and you have to guess which it is. `Eastenders` will be a cinch for anyone though there are plenty of older tunes rendering this round a tough one anyone younger than, say, thirty. Sadly, I did quite well at this round.

`Anne`, the mental patient, then appeared in a one-question non-round special where you either win or lose. The `Fat Fighters` round was predictably amusing, as was `A question of Royalty` with snobbish (vomiting) Margaret Blackmore. Thus far all multi-choice, though the next round provided some welcome relief being `Roy`s shop Pairs Game` which was a version of the ever popular `match the pairs` game.

Other rounds include: `Name that Gay` presented by Daffyd; `Kenny Craig`s Mysterious World`; `Kids Telly Fun Quiz` with Des `Wicky Woo` Kaye (which featured a lot of eighties kids TV shows, again rendering this impossible for today`s teens) ; Vicky Pollard`s `No but yeah but` game; Sebastian`s `Charades` and bonus rounds including Vicki`s `Sumfn` or Nufn`` round.

In theory, there`s some two hours of new material on the disc though I`m guessing I`ll need to play it a few more times to believe that. I was half expecting to `unlock` some whole unseen bonus sketches, though on this brief play had no such luck.

Video

Unlike many other DVD games that I`ve had the misfortune to be disappointed by, this one really does look first class. This had a serious budget and it shows. The technical quality of both video and graphics here is superb.

Audio

Good, clean stereo sound.

Features

Well, bonus rounds…if you can count those. I wondered if there might be some easy to locate `Easter Eggs` but I couldn`t unearth any.

Conclusion

In general, I don`t like so-called `DVD Games`. They`re wannabe console or PC games hindered by a lack of processing power and clumsy authoring tools really designed to access DVD chapters. As a result, they`re generally too slow to get the momentum going to provide a fun interactive game. This DVD is no exception.

With that caveat aside though, I have to say that this is by far the best of a bad bunch (based on the few that I`ve played). It has some serious production value - all nicely shot, brilliantly scripted, well thought through and occasionally laugh-aloud funny.

During the first few plays I hit technical snags where it just froze or crashed, which would really put the dampeners on a family game, though on the third machine I tried it on (a low cost combo-unit) it played just fine. So be warned. This may not be a flawless experience.

When it worked though, despite the general flaws of the medium, this was a lot of fun and if you really feel you can`t live without a DVD game then this could well be the best of a bad bunch.