Tom Bakers Ultimate Sci Fi Quiz
Is it me or has everyone else noticed that interactive DVD quizzes seem to be spawning faster than salmon after a trip upstream? I’ve seen adverts on TV for them, adverts all over the internet. I’ve seen a car one with James May from Top Gear, a couple of movie ones from Empire and Barry Norman, there are pub quiz ones, sports ones, there’s even a Carry On one! I have to say that before I got....
Is it me or has everyone else noticed that interactive DVD quizzes seem to be spawning faster than salmon after a trip upstream? I’ve seen adverts on TV for them, adverts all over the internet. I’ve seen a car one with James May from Top Gear, a couple of movie ones from Empire and Barry Norman, there are pub quiz ones, sports ones, there’s even a Carry On one! I have to say that before I got the opportunity to review this title, the one that interested me most was Tom Baker’s Ultimate Sci-Fi Quiz. It had the magic words in, Sci-Fi, right up my alley! Before I launch into the review proper I do have to state that I have absolutely no basis for comparison for an interactive DVD quiz, as this was my first. These types of DVD may have been around for a while (I’m not sure how long they’ve been around to be honest), but they’ve only really taken off recently (and certainly everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon) and so I suspect that a lot of people out there won’t have tried one of these before and so I hope I’m representative of the masses.
Startup
On inserting the disc there’s a short CGI intro with a blatant plug for the Sci-Fi channel (they’ve got an endorsement on the cover and may have had something to do with the production). Thankfully for future attempts this can be fast forwarded to the options screen. The options are:
One Player – self explanatory
Two Player – self explanatory
Ship specifications – takes you through the specifications of the 2 CGI spaceships you play as in the game
Credits – list of credits that roll up the screen Star Wars style
One Player
The story: Tom Baker appears onscreen and informs us that he’s calling from Earth Station 5. Apparently we are captain of the SS Hawking, a military research vessel, and whilst investigating the super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, we’ve been sucked in through an uncharted transpace wormhole and have been flung 20,000 light years to the far side of the galaxy. The information we’ve been gathering on black holes is of vital importance in the war against the Martian separatists. It is therefore imperative that we return to Earth to aid in the war effort. Rather conveniently for a quiz it turns out we can do this by answering questions. For each question answered correctly we traverse 1,000 light years, get them wrong and we’re going nowhere. The intro is fun to watch the first time, but thankfully you can fast forward it for subsequent goes.
There are six rounds and five questions per round, so you can only afford to get ten questions wrong if you’re going to stand a chance of returning to Earth and foiling those separatists (let ‘em have Mars I say, certainly didn’t look too nice in Total Recall!). For each round you have to pick a category from a list of 15. Our onboard computer, Amy, assists in the mission by asking a few questions, reporting progress and coming up with smart Alec comments every now and again (particularly when you get a question wrong!). Occasionally Amy comes out with an amusing comment as well, there was a question about Sharon Stone in Total Recall to which Amy piped up that was one film in which she kept her legs together! There are no difficulty settings on this. Don’t know if there are difficulty settings on other interactive quizzes, but on this one questions are not stratified by difficulty, you answer questions across the whole selection.
Categories
- Literature – pretty much what it says, questions on Sci-Fi literature which can span quite a few years though, not an easy section.
- Aliens & Monsters – Can you recognise your different alien species, you’re gonna have to if you stand a chance of getting these right.
- Planets & Worlds – If you can recognise your aliens, what about their planets? Some tricky questions here.
- Amazing Craft – Do you know the difference between an Eagle and the Liberator? Lots of different spaceships in this category
- Robots – Covers questions on film and TV robots and ships computers
- Crazy Science – Questions based on the technology and science used in Sci-Fi over the years
- Earth in Peril – Questions based on Sci-Fi films or series in which the Earth is usually under attack
- The Early Years – You’d better know your early radio and black & white Sci-Fi for this section.
- The 1950s – Questions on Sci-Fi from the 50s
- The 1960s - Questions on Sci-Fi from the 60s
- The 1970s - Questions on Sci-Fi from the 70s
- The 1980s - Questions on Sci-Fi from the 80s
- The 1990s - Questions on Sci-Fi from the 90s
- The New Millennium - Questions on Sci-Fi from 2000 onwards
- General Sci-Fi – As Tom says at the beginning of the section ‘a bit of a lucky dip’
Amy very politely asks you to choose a category, after which you’re asked five multiple choice questions (four options for each question). You use the up and down selector on your DVD remote to highlight what you think is the correct answer and hit select. At some stage in each category the ship will encounter a wormhole (gets annoying after a while, they could’ve varied the special anomaly, but no, it’s the same wormhole every time) and if you get the question that follows wrong, then you get sucked in and go back 1,000 light years, get it correct and you avoid the wormhole and go on as normal. At the end of each category Amy give you a report on how far you are from Earth.
I have to say that I was impressed by the diversity of the questions. They ranged from early radio and TV Sci-Fi right up to current films and TV series, and it did seem pretty much bang up to date as well. Some of the classic and popular TV shows and films featured include: 2001 A Space Odyssey, War of The Worlds, Forbidden Planet, Thunderbirds, Serenity, The Land That Time Forgot, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Red Dwarf, Dr Who, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Blake's 7, The Time Machine, The Fly, Barberella and Flash Gordon. Some of the questions are asked by Tom and some by Amy and a lot of the questions feature clips from film or TV. Should you get an answer wrong then it doesn’t tell you the correct answer which helps with the longevity of the quiz, as you’ll have to try and remember what answer you gave last time and try something else the next time the question comes up.
On that subject, it states that there are over 500 questions on this DVD. Across 15 categories means that there are only about 33+ questions per category. Each time you select a category you get asked 5 questions, so after you’ve played it through 6 or 7 times, selecting that category in each go, you should have seen all the questions in that category. For me, repeat questions started appearing after 3 goes through and by the fifth time it was more a case of ‘spot the new question’. You can only select a category once in each game though, so no choosing your favourite category time and time again!
Although the questions aren’t split into different difficulties there is a nice variation in the difficulty levels of the questions. Some have equally plausible answers for each option, others have some options that are obviously wrong. There’s also a nice graduation of difficulty across the categories as well. Personally I found my favourite sections to be Aliens & Monsters, Amazing Craft, The 1990s and The New Millenium. I could usually score a good 4 out of 5 in those, I’d then have to take pot luck in the other sections to get the remainder of the answers I needed so I could put it to those damn separatists! Not being a huge fan of old American B movies the toughest sections were The 1950s, The 1960s and The Early Years, these are for your hard core Sci-Fi fans. Across the quiz as a whole there were questions that, if you got them wrong, any self respecting Sci-Fi fan would have to shoot themselves, but equally there were some questions about obscure titles that will test the most ardent Sci-Fi follower.
Two Player
In Two player mode the story is that the super-massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy has shown a massive increase in activity, causing the opening of trans-dimensional wormholes in space. The competitors are the respective captains of the SS Hawking and the SS Ark, both of which have fallen into one of these wormholes and been thrown 20,000 light years to the opposite side of the galaxy (the dangers were apparently listed in our contracts!). Both ships are carrying data that is vital to Earth in their war against the Martian separatists. It’s a straight race, so the first captain to bring their ship home wins and the other captain is left stranded in space forever.
In two player mode, if you come across another wormhole (and each player will, in each category) then if you’re ahead and get it wrong then you swap places with your competitors ship behind you, if you’re behind and get the answer right then you swap places with your competitors ship ahead of you. The downside of this is that your competitor can get every question wrong while you romp off into the distance, get a wormhole question right and if they time it right, answer a question or two right and win! The only good part to this is that should that happen you know there’ll be another wormhole along shortly (damn things are everywhere!) in which you can reverse the situation.
You can’t choose different categories, so you’ll have to sort it out between you which category to choose (most obvious way would be to take it in turns choosing a category). The questions are then alternated between the different teams. The questions are the same questions as in the single player so the disc owner will have a slight advantage over time as they’ll quickly learn the correct answers. For visiting friends though, it’ll be an entertaining game.
Overall
I really enjoyed going through this in both single player and two player modes. Single player was a good test of my overall Sci-Fi knowledge, and two player mode brings out the competitive nature between you and your friends. The questions were varied in content, from Asimov to V for Vendetta and also in difficulty, from which book in the 1700s or 1800s featured the first creatures from another world to whether R2D2 has an ice dispenser! It has its annoying points, you’ll come to hate those sirens announcing another flippin’ wormhole and it could’ve done with a larger question set, but all in all it was an enjoyable introduction to world of interactive DVD quizzes.
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