Friends: The One With All The Trivia Review (PS2)

The theme song that had been on radio play for so long had finally been erradicated from my memories. The thoughts of Phoebe trying to dimwittingly teach Chrissy Hynde how to play "Smelly Cat" had been taped over by a Family Guy episode. And that final episode retrospective? Lent it to my sister and never saw it again. And don't even mention Joey. The show's an abomination so bad that it's being replaced by higher quality shows next year.

Yep, needless to say, Friends has no real place in my room. Once in a while I'll flip over an episode on TBS just to endure a "classic moment" here in there, but that's about it. I don't own the box sets and don't go roaming around coffee houses looking for the next Rachel, and I don't own the DVD sets. That's not to say I completely despise the show, it's just that its time has come and gone, what with it ending a long time back.

But now we have the first video game for Friends addicts. Joy. Friends: The One With All the Trivia is a low-budget trivia machine packed with 3,000+ questions regarding some memorable Friends moments, so fans can easily pick it up and tell you just what Joey did when the refrigerator went out (hint: he ate all the food- oh, DAMN, I gave that one away, sorry). The game's format is simple, allowing you to choose from different trivia-style games and then sitting down with one to four people to play.

At least Warner Bros. Interactive tried to do something with the game's atmosphere. The menus are very Friends-ish, and there are a variety of video clips here that will remind you of the show that has since gone to syndication heaven. And the actors that play the roles of the nasally-challenged Janice and the muted coffee clerk Gunther are on hand to read questions and provide little comments. It's a nice touch, and they give the game more personality than it deserves.

But there's problems aloof, and I don't even think a unicorn statue can swoop in and save the day...nor a rerun of Baywatch for that matter. First off, although the game has an operable menu system, it's clearly patched together in a budget sense. The video clips aren't really that high quality either, almost as if they were formatted in Windows Media Player. Cheap, cheap, cheap. I know Warner Bros. was looking for a quick buck, but this is express checkout.

Also, the variety of the questions isn't mixed up enough. Sure, there's 3,000+ to choose from, but around the third play through (after an exhausting attempt to try and figure out what happened to Ross' sandwich (yes, "MY SANDWICH!"), I noticed a repeat. Now, I can understand about ten or twenty plays through a repeat coming into play, but three? This could've used a little better programming in order to have more variety pop up. Hell, I'm still playing You Don't Know Jack from the old days and running into new questions. Now that is longevity.

The final nail in the coffin for this game's release is its timing. The show ended quite a while back, and this would've probably been an ideal release for the week that it left NBC, and not so much later as a quickie Christmas present. Yes, I know, I know, some games get delayed past the prime release of their product, such as Goldeneye for the N64. But the fact we've waited so long and get so little, a basic product that has its flaws more wide open than Naked Fat Guy's window, it's like getting guacamole in your Christmas stocking, really.

Friends: The One With All the Trivia is reasonably priced at $20, so if you still have a Friends addict somewhere in your community who's wailing over the lack of any more DVD set releases, this may just be their fix. However, for the general public, there are better trivia games, with more jubilant presentation and a far better array of questions. Oh, and no Janice. "OH...MY...GOD!" Damn, now I have to obliterate that from my memories. Where's the beer?

Our Final ScoreBad

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