Family Fortunes: Gold Edition

Based on the American game show Family Feud, Family Fortunes is a stalwart feature of prime time UK television viewing, albeit a sporadic one.

The iconic show features two teams composed of various relatives of the team captain (usually a middle-aged father of three), who must correctly guess the most popular answers to a series of questions that have been put to the general public.

Arguably the best part of the show is the ridiculous answers some of the contestants give, one standout example being when one contestant was asked to name something you open other than a door. Their answer: your bowels.

Charming.

It's perhaps due to the lack of this human quality that Family Fortunes: Gold Edition loses some of its appeal when translated onto the mobile phone.

Taking charge of the default Glu family, your task is to compete against a series of other families in progressively difficult episodes of the show.

Following the TV show's format, each episode consists of four head-to-head rounds with the winner going on to play for Big Money. Each round starts with the traditional face off, with the fastest person to hit their buzzer ('5' on the keypad) getting the chance to answer first.

It's at this point that Family Fortunes: Gold Edition begins to fall down.

Due to the constraints of the platform, it'd be all-but-impossible to implement a realistic way of answering the questions, especially when there's a time limit involved. Glu has compromised by giving you a list of possible answers to choose from, containing all of the correct responses and a handful of red herrings.

While it seems like a reasonable solution, in practice the false answers are too obvious and easy to avoid. Likewise, you'll only rarely miss one of the top answers, and your opponent should never beat you to the buzzer as you have plenty of time to browse the options after you press yours.

Sadly, as a result of this, you'll rarely lose control of the board at the face-off, and you're equally unlikely to get three incorrect answers, robbing the game of any real challenge.

There were a couple of instances where we failed to get the top answer on fastest finger, or where a final answer eluded us - usually due to it being quite obscure. When this happens the opponent gets the chance to steal the points, but more often than not they'll give an incorrect answer.

Things aren't helped by the artificial difficulty of the Big Money round. You're randomly paired with one of your family members, and given the chance to go first or second. Invariably your team mate will get an abnormally low score, which almost necessitates getting all five top answers when it's your turn.

Griping aside, there are some nice touches, such as the option to customise your family's name and appearance, along with unlockable items of clothing and other features like themed questions for Quick Play mode. Unfortunately, however, there's no option to play over Bluetooth - a feature which would undoubtedly improve the game greatly.

Overall, then, Family Fortunes: Gold Edition isn't a terrible adaptation of the game show, but the limitations and lack of multiplayer mean it will, unfortunately, quickly lose its appeal.