The Nintendo Wii is the perfect system for a party game; the perfect system to round up three of your friends and fire up some multiplayer action. So naturally, I have high hopes for every four player party game that comes along. TV Show King Party from Gameloft seemed like it had potential, but it turns out that was just wishful thinking on my part.

It's obvious from the start that TV Show King is an unbranded game show game; there's no big name (such as Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy) driving this title. So it is understandable that the game would feel somewhat generic. But the lack of originality is still pretty striking. The game basically has two different elements. A quiz element, where contestants answer questions based around a number of different categories, and a wheel-spinning element, where contestants can decide whether or not to gamble their quiz-earnings. These two elements repeat for either three, six, or nine rounds, depending on what you choose at the start of the game. Pretty basic right? And there's not much else going on to keep things diverse or interesting. And actually, after playing three or four games, questions had already begun to repeat.

The game's attempt at diversifying the "action" comes in the form of gimmicky Wii remote related actions you sometimes have to perform during the quiz portion. For example, in one quiz round, the answers are veiled, and you'll have to scratch them off (think lottery tickets) in order to see the four answers. In another round, the answers are covered in black, and you can only view them by hovering over them with your Wii remote. I had to wonder why these pointless inclusions were added to the game. They don't contribute anything to the game itself except annoyance that you can't see your answer options right away. And in this game it's important to answer as quickly as possible. While everyone can answer a question correctly, the winnings are apportioned incrementally with the first correct answer receiving the most money.

After a handful of quiz questions, you'll move to the wheel to either gamble your winnings or play it conservative and sit it out. This is probably the best part of the game, but that's not saying much. The only real excitement appears when the wheel comes dangerously close to annihilating your winnings--or giving them to another player for that matter. It can quickly change the outlook of the game, but after each player spins, it's back to another quiz round. And so you have the general flow of the game: quiz, wheel, quiz, wheel, etc. But wait! The two highest scoring players get to duel it out at the end of the chosen number of rounds to see who the real winner is! And how is this decided? More quiz questions of course. And to ensure that this game makes no sense, the winner of this duel round is awarded a ridiculously unbalanced amount of prize money. To provide an example, after a six round game, a friend and I had amassed about $45,000, and $42,000 respectively. But the prize money from the final duel was nearly $140,000, meaning that the earnings from the previous six rounds were almost negligible. I could have answered every question wrong in the first six rounds, but still ended up with $140,000 if I won the duel round. Something is wrong with that. Actually, all things are wrong with that.

While the game design is certainly lacking, I do commend it for incorporating Miis. Some other recent game show games have ignored this simple feature, (The Price is Right, for one) but it's a nice, fun touch. Having to use predetermined, generic characters in an already generic game would have turned me off from TV Show King even more. But instead, I got to watch my Mii perform his mojo dance after spinning the wheel. It was slightly entertaining, at least for a moment.

Well what can I say? I played this game with three friends, and we had some laughs, but it's no showstopper (no pun intended, seriously). It probably won't spend much time in my Wii, and I can't imagine anyone is really going to get any extensive playtime out of this title. Especially when the questions start becoming repetitive after the third game. Oh, and this is officially the first console game that froze my Wii and displayed a C++ error on screen. Not cool. If I saw this bug, the developers should have. Shame on them, and shame on you if you don't heed this review's warning.

Graphics: 4.2
Not really any good by any measurement. The visuals are unoriginal, unpolished, fuzzy, low res, and a hundred other negative adjectives that I will spare you from.

Sound: 6.2
Mediocre voiceovers, mediocre music. Nothing really stands out here, but it's not terrible either. It's just generic like the rest of the game.

Concept: 4.5
The concept here was probably something along the lines of "Hey, lets make a game show game. With questions and a wheel." And then they made it. With little conception or thought between those two steps.

Overall: 4.8
I wanted to like this game, but it just wouldn't let me. First it was not diverse enough. Then it started repeating questions prematurely. Then it crashed and displayed a C++ error. Ouch. Good for a few laughs if your friends are as fun as mine, but that's about it.