Jeopardy! 2
Reviewed by Dale Kulas
The Game
The sequel to the original Jeopardy! on the Playstation,
where Alex Trebek, and Johnny Gilbert are back, with more
answers and questions then ever. Check out the intro of my
review for the first Jeopardy! on PSX to get the whole
rundown on how the answers and questions work in the game.
Will this game be as better than the original? Let's get
onto the review and find out.
Graphics
You got a new board interface, which is just slightly
different from the first game, but the highlighted category
is bigger than the rest of the categories. The part of the
game where you enter your question is designed differently
too, where there are nine rows, each containing four letter
and/or numerical characters. This way makes it way easier
and faster to type out your questions. The FMV's of Alex
Trebek guiding you threw the game, are much bigger, and look
way better than the one's in the first game. Video Daily
Doubles are back as well, with little FMV clips of an answer
to help you get it right.
Remember how in last year's game where you 'draw' in your
name on the contestant podium? Well, you still do that here,
but now you can save your 'name' to the memory card and
load it up for later use, so you won't waste precious
minutes re-entering your name! The biggest addition in the
graphics department is the extra FMV interviews with Alex
Trebek, Johnny Gilbert, plus additional makers of the game
and television show. You can unlock more interviews by
obtaining higher winnings. Still absent is the contestants
in front of the podium, and the missing television studio
audience. No even though these aren't those big of a deal,
it would add a lot to the presentation.
Sound
The classic Jeopardy tune is still here, and nothing beats
that. Alex Trebek throws in even more ways of saying your
correct, incorrect, and ways to introduce you into
Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! And even
though they may get repetitive after a while, they never get
boring to me, because they add to the game's presentation
and game play so much. Also Johnny Gilbert took his time to
record 4200 answers to the game, all which are new too, now
that's a lot of time and dedication to this game in my
opinion. They also have another guy announce all the game's
categories too. And to spice up the game some too, the
computer opponents actually talk in a few variations in
which they choose an answer by saying, 'I'll take World War
2 for $500, Alex,' or 'How about, Rock & Pop for $200. '
The sound is just amazing in this game, and maybe the game's
strongest point.
Game play
We all now how Jeopardy works now. To get a in-depth look at
how it works for the few of you who don't know, check out my
review for the first edition of this game, but if you're too
lazy to do that I'll sum it up in a nutshell: There are 3
rounds of play, the first 2 both consist of 30 questions
with various point values, win money for correct questions,
lose money for incorrect questions. Player who have positive
winnings by the end of round 2, go to Final Jeopardy! (round
3), where they risk any amount of their winnings on one
answer. Person with the most winnings at the end of Final
Jeopardy! wins.
Control's pretty easy and simple like the first edition,
where you use the cursor to input the letters of the
question. You can tinker with the game's options to set how
long you want to enter your question, and on how loose or
strict you want the spellings of the questions to be
acceptable. Also a nice 'auto finish' option is here,
where you start typing in an question, the game will give
examples of what the rest of your question might be, like
say you start typing 'n-o-t-e-b' the game will display
'notebook' and you can press R1 to have the game fill in
the rest of the blank. New features to this edition of
Jeopardy! is the career statistics, where you can save up to
eight user profiles which keeps high score tabs of your
highest winnings in all the game's modes.
For game modes, you have 'normal game' where up to three
human, or computer controlled persons face off against each
other in a regular game of Jeopardy! Then there's 's olo
game' where it's only you playing Jeopardy! by yourself
seeing if you can break your high score. A newer game mode
is the 'Tournament of Champions' where you're only
eligible to play if you won at least five games or gathered
$75,000 in winnings, the categories and answers are a lot
tougher here. And finally there's a sample contestant exam,
where you take an exam about the same difficulty real people
take to apply to be on the actual game show. And also the
game's developers were kind enough to include a sheet of
questions for us who wanna know what some of these toughies
are. You can also load a saved game if you're in the middle
of it and never got a chance to finish, browse through some
of the game's interviews, and look at your career statistics.
Replay Value
Now there's definitely a lot of categories to keep you
hooked on this game, and with over 4200 answers, you'll be
playing forever, the only gripe with the game's play is that
the game's answers are pretty darn hard, even on the easiest
difficulty setting. But there's lots of extras to beef p the
replay like unlocking hidden interviews, plus the saved
career statistics and high scores, and the contestant exam
is interesting too. So there's a lot to keep you hooked on this game.
In Brief
+: Over 4200 answers, Great television presentation, lots of
extras like interviews and career stats
-: No visuals of contestants at podiums, no audience visible
in the game, Answers are pretty hard on any difficulty
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 9. 0
Sound: 9. 6
Game play: 9. 3
Replay Value: 9. 5
Overall: 9.3 out of 10
Comments
Jeopardy! 2nd edition plays about the same and runs along at
the same pace of the previous version. With all of it's neat
extras like the FMV interviews, and career statistics, and
even a sample exam, this game only ends up being just a tad
better than the original, only scoring . 2 better than it
(9. 3 to 9. 1). So if you got the first edition, there's
really no need to get the 2nd edition, unless you want all
those extras and are a die-hard Jeopardy! fan. But if you
don't own a version of Jeopardy! yet, then definitely get
this game, because it's well worth a purchase.
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