Just before Christmas we received Family Game Night 4 the Game Show for Wii (FGN4) for review. We don’t own any of the other Family Game Night series of games because when I tried to buy them my kids felt they were too old for them, so I was glad to finally have a chance to play one.
The 4th game in the series is based to the Family Game Night television show on The Hub. We watch the show regularly because we are fans of the host Todd Newton. In the TV show 2 families of 4 compete in over-sized versions of classic Hasbro games. Each time a team wins they choose a Monopoly Crazy Cash card and at the end of the game they put the cards in the Monopoly Crazy Cash Machine to see how much money they have won and the team with the most money wins the game.
Game Overview
The video game play is similar to the game show, with Todd Newton narrating, but it has a few flaws, First this is a “family game night game” and the whole family can’t play! This is a one or two player game! To me, that is a major problem. It should be at least a 4 player game with 2 people on each team. Also at the end of the game if the second team’s money total surpasses the total of the team that counted first, they stop counting! Each time we played I ended up with more cards than my son but in each game once my cash total was greater than his, they stopped counting! I had 3 Crazy Cash Cards left and I don’t know how much I earned. This makes it difficult to turn it into a 4 player game where we play 1 parent against 1 child and keep a tally of the total cash to see who wins after we play the 2 games necessary for our family of 4 to play since not all the money is added in.
Before playing each game go into the options menu and learn how to use the Wii controller for that particular game.
Connect Four Basketball is a fun competitive game of Connect Four played by throwing basketballs into the columns instead of chips.
Yahtzee Bowling is a fun twist on Yahtzee where instead of dice you are playing with six-sided bowling pins and a large ball.
Bop-It Boptagon is a family favorite on the TV show but the game controller interface doesn’t work very well. At the beginning of each round they show you the actions for each command but “twist it” never works for us and the action hints go away after the first few turns so players must remember what each command means.
Scrabble Flash is a fun game to play and once you understand how to use the controller it is quite enjoyable.
Sorry Sliders is a lot like playing Curling where you are sliding Sorry pawns down into a scoring ring where your oonent can knock your pawn out of the scoring rings. The game play is pretty easy but the narrator is often talking over himself in this game and it gets confusing.
Our Thoughts
Family Game Night 4 the Game Show for Wii isn’t a bad game but it isn’t as good as it could be. The game retails for $29.99 which is a low end price for a Wii game but I don’t think it is worth more than $19.99. It is rated E and the whole family could play but since it is only a 2 player game, that is difficult. We have several EA Play games that we love but unfortunately, this one missed the mark.
Have you played Family Game Night 4 the Game Show for Wii? Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts.
Disclosure: we received a copy of this game for the purpose of this review. All opinions are 100% mine.
I love this game, this maintain the bonding of the family.