Mini Review – Truth or Lies
Party Game
Yeah, there’s totally WMDs over there.
Rich
- Catching bullets in her teeth. TRUE!
The problem isn’t in the presentation, which is pretty functional without being exciting. The in-game avatars add a cheap ‘XBLIG’ feel to things but what do you want? The Assassin’s Creed engine? It’s a quiz game. So I can’t criticise them there. Sure they could have done more but it would have gotten in the way of the gameplay or the extra effort would have resulted in cutscenes and general tedium.
My main axe to grind is with the gameplay. Truth or Lies is based around an exciting premise. You are asked questions by the game, usually moral choices or ‘what you would you hate the least’ option questions. Like ‘what would you rather? Sit in a bus full of poo or listen to Simply Red?’ Okay maybe not that, but that kind of thing. Occasionally amusing, usually pointless. Then the game using it’s patented lie-detector-o-tron algorithms will tell you if that’s the truth or a lie.
The idea is that you’ll be asked all sorts of awkward, divorce-inducing questions and then your missus will find out that you regularly eat scat for breakfast or something. Here’s the problem though and it’s as predictable and disappointing as new Saw film.
IT DOESN’T WORK.
Far from being able to detect subtle nuances in timbre that indicate lies or not, this game cannot differentiate between a death metal grunt and a whistle. Or shouting ‘TRUE!!!!’ and punching the mic if it’s a lie. The game’s other priest in your playpen is that you have to use a USB mic (like the Rock Band/Guitar Hero sort) and pass it around rather than have people use their own controllers and headsets. There’s no online play either.
With that in mind this game has just one real function. The easiest 1000GS since Avatar. Achieveable in three hours with only getting a streak of ‘lies’ registered correctly being any sort of barrier to getting your max and flinging the game and your nearest game shop drone and trading it in for something with actual gameplay in it.
1/10