This is sadly all us Deal or No Deal fans will get in terms of a game. The same game was also released on the GBA, to give a measure of how hard this was to make. It does have Howie Mandel's voice, and it sort of feels like you are experiencing the game show, but it truly lacks anything in the graphics department. I've seen better on the SNES.
This game could've had better graphics and more responsive controls, and a little more polishing, and boom, great game show game, but DSI didn't go the extra mile. So now, the game should be played blind, because the graphics wouldn't really change anyway. Although the sound and gameplay are good, the graphics are just too disappointing. Although we see some cool images, the actual animations as well as the faces, oh my the faces. You need to see them to believe it. The game just needed a tiny amount of polishing, maybe a few days worth, and it would have been a great port, but sadly, now it just isn't. The graphics are too horrendous.
Deal or No Deal has a couple options for either one or two players. Starting in one-player, there is the classic TV mode, which was you playing out the TV show exactly. A very simple and fun concept, but sadly it has no save feature. The game is fun, but the graphics, as I have explained, are a drawback. Howie Mandel is voiced in this game, which is an obvious plus. For those of you that aren't familiar with Deal or no Deal, the game consists of you picking your case, then picking other cases to eliminate them to figure out what yours is, and once in a while you are offered a set amount of money which you can take or not take, and the goal is to have a million dollars, and not $.01. This is a fairly simple concept, and as such was easily ported into the game. This is a fairly enjoyable experience, as aside from the graphics and lack of save, it was ported quite well. I really have no complaints about the game itself.
Besides this, there are also two simple mini-games that, although fun for a small time, feel like they also were quickly added in. There is a simple memory game, which is pretty self explanatory. Besides this, there is a high/low game where you decide whether the next case you pick will be higher or lower than the last. The premise is pretty simple, but the game is pretty entertaining. Both of them are good for a couple minutes, so even though they were an obvious afterthought, it's still nice to have them.
There is also multi-card play, where people can play as a contestant vs. another player as the banker. You can also play different games and whoever gets the highest amount of money in their game wins. Although the two people playing a game each is a great idea, contestant vs. banker is poorly executed. It is a great idea, but it just doesn't work well in-game. It could have been great, but sadly the entire idea is based on chance, which kind of makes the whole thing pointless. I mean, if people actually wanted to play a game completely based on chance, they could roll a dice, which I'm sure came far before Deal or no Deal for the DS. Though it's nice that DSI added a multi-cart option to the game, the flawed execution keeps it from providing anything meaningful to the experience.
The game has good voice-overs from Howie Mandel. There are very few sound effects, although this is fine, due to the fact that Howie dictates pretty much everything you do. One complaint I have is that he doesn't say a lot of different things, and hearing the same thing a lot becomes annoying. The sound could have used a few more different effects and sayings, but overall, it is just acceptable. Not great, not bad, just acceptable.
Like I have said before, the game has a very unpolished feel with some of the worst graphics you can find on DS. These are quite horrible, and they can't really even be accurately be described, but I will try anyway. For starters, Howie Mandel doesn't have eyes, and the girls practically don't have faces! Howie's sprite is quite a failure, with an awkward tall feel, and it is very unpolished. Pixels are strewn everywhere in his image. It is really just unbearable. And the girls, they have faces so pixelated that they appear to have no faces at all. They are completely lifeless. All of the sprites in this game feel so awkwardly wrong that they honestly feel like they were made by people in a high school computer class. This is a bad thing.
This game was fun, and had even more potential, but fell short of what it could have been. Although I loved the gameplay, which was simple and to the point, the repetitive sound, horrific graphics and overall lack of polish take much away from this title. Like a contestant who accepts a deal only to find that they could have won more, I'm left wondering what might have been.
BTRs
