Little Britain - The Game (DVDi)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Not applicable

Advantages:	It's quite fun  -  single and team player options
Disadvantages:	Sometimes hangs  -  limited appeal

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

So you've seen all three series, and the live show, so you'd have though that was it from Little Britain - but that is not the case. Little Britain - The Game is an interactive DVD game which you can play either on your own ("playing with yourself") or with other people ("playing with others") using the remote control of your DVD player. The premise is relatively straightforward - you score points from various rounds to be allowed to proceed to a bonus round, which is a Little Britain General Knowledge quiz. If you win there are exciting mystery prizes... Like Bubbles Devere... Nice...

7 rounds are chosen at random, with rounds such as "Name that Gay" hosted by Daffyd through to a children's television fun quiz hosted by Des Kay (from the first series). Tom Baker is once again doing the voiceover and introduction and all the most popular characters have their own rounds. Playing through the seven rounds prior to the bonus round will take about 20-30 minutes if you are playing on your own.

Unfortunately, if you are used to playing the game, you'll find the score updates and instructions prolong the game unduly. The direction arrows on your DVD controller and the OK button are the keys you need to hit to play - in this sense it is a pretty simple game to play. If you have played any other interactive TV show-based interactive games, then this will not be anything new - effectively it is just a tie-in of a successful format to a different show.

Ultimately all of the rounds boil down to a four way multiple choice question - regardless of whether it is Dennis Waterman singing the feemtoon, Lou and Andy's soap quiz or Sebastian Love's charades round. A lot of the questions are fairly obvious and do not test you although I found Dennis Waterman's feemtoons hard to recognise. There is some amusing footage of the characters, although it will wear thin after a while. Carol Beer's travel quiz has also been more complicated that other rounds. One thing that does annoy me is that sometimes you are told the correct answer if you have guessed wrongly, and in other rounds you are not - this inconsistency annoyed me.

Somewhat annoyingly the game has the propensity to sometimes hang - I have played the game about 5-6 times and it has hung on one occasion, but this is a real letdown, suddenly you are confronted with a white screen and the game is lost and there is nothing you can do other than start again, which severely limits the appeal of the game, especially if you are playing with friends.

The DVD comes in a standard DVD case but with painted steel covers - this is nice enough but doesn't really add anything to the overall experience of the game - the graphics are well done on the box and it looks good from the outside. The game was released on 7 November 2006, only a week before the release of the Little Britain Live DVD. It has been given a 12 certificate, although I thought that it was a lot less offensive than some of the content of the series, but presume that this is necessary due to the smutty innuendo and adult nature of some characters. Whereas the Little Britain DVDs are usually for region 2, this one is region-free (region 0) but most players are multi-region capable nowadays so this shouldn't present any problems.

The RRP is GBP 19.99 - although Amazon is currently selling it at 35% off - I would imagine that after Christmas this item will be on at a reduced rate for a time now. I noted on Amazon that someone else has had a problem with the game freezing - whether there is a faulty batch or there is a problem with all copies of the game, I don't know - some people claim not to have encountered problems.

All in all it's a bit of fun, but will not be a game that you'll return to time and again for a source of entertainment on a night in.