Deal or No Deal (Wii, Nintendo DS)

DEAL OR NO DEAL is an interactive version of the hit TV game show. Guided by virtual comedian Howie Mandel, players use their Wii remotes to select one briefcase randomly from a group of 26, each of which contains a cash value between one penny and one-million dollars. They then proceed to slowly reveal the contents of the cases they didn't pick, stopping occasionally to receive a cash offer from a faceless banker who calculates the odds that the briefcase the player picked contains the million dollars.

The game's makers have added a few optional variations that increase the player's chances of winning and allow several players to compete simultaneously. They've also thrown in a few simple mini-games that have almost nothing to do with the show, such as blackjack game and a challenge that involves pointing the remote at the screen and shooting flying briefcases.

Though a spot-on digital facsimile of what we see on television, Deal or No Deal is an extraordinarily vacuous video game, probably because there is no real money involved. Play follows the same pattern as the TV show. There's no strategy involved other than calculating simple odds, and with no real money is at risk, you have nothing to lose by eliminating cases until you get to the final two, then choosing which one you want to keep. This makes the action about as compelling as a coin toss. Consequently, even a single, five-minute game feels like a tremendous waste of time.

The developers seem to have understood that the premise they'd been given for their game was flimsy at best, hence the reason why they added a few variables, such as a mode that features additional million-dollar cases thrown into the mix, as well as three extremely simple and completely unrelated mini-games, which, unfortunately, hardly even qualify as distractions. Asking $30 for a game like this, seems off when it has the longevity of a free promotional game for your phone, at best.