Wednesday 27 November 2013

Another Day, Another Quiz App - 4Pics1Movie Rant

The last 18 months has seen an invasion of sorts and the mighty rising of quiz apps. It all started with the humble Logo Quiz, then came all sorts of variations of that, followed by an onslaught of Word Quiz games, where you not only had to guess words but there was even a song variety and celebrity head variety, so naturally at some point one had to appear where you guess the movie, and as reliably as the 263 bus, it has appeared!

4 Pics 1 Movie (you can download it from the app store here) by developers Game Circus LLP does pretty much what it says on the tin. It gives you 4 pictures, and you must guess the movie title. Simples. Sounds nice, I like movies, could be a good game to play while whiling away some time waiting for that darned 263 bus or when i'm bored and in a quiz app mood.... No.

Stop. Right. There. This game is not what it seems. Not the easy-on-the-brain, good for a bit of time wasting, something to do when you can't sleep type of quiz app. I am going to outline here some reasons why this game, as fun as it should be, especially for a movie geek, is downright annoying! I am even using numbered bullet points and two exclamation marks in two sentences in a row!

1.  What is the deal with having to wait 13 HOURS or more for the next level to open up! That is extreme and ridiculous and makes me want to throw my phone at the wall.
Yep, just when you're getting into the swing of things and ready for the challenge of a new level, BAM! you must wait a random number of hours whilst it's 'unlocking', seriously, see the picture →.
You can of course unlock the next level with coins, which you must buy, but with 40 levels so far and more to come you could end up spending your life savings on this silly game.  (nb. before you start moaning that you can get coins for free, yes you can, but not many, and only once, and certainly not enough to open up all the levels).

2.  For movie buffs, which is the kind of person you'd assume would download this game,  this is going to be the most frustrating thing... The images don't actually represent the movie you are trying to guess in anyway.  It all starts to get a bit to logical, simplified and literal.
Lets take an example: the well known classic film, Space Jam. One would think, maybe an image of a basketball, Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny would do the trick and be very relevant to the movie, well you would be wrong. Very wrong, instead you will get two images of stars/milky-way galaxy/space and 2 images of jam/marmalade jars. VERY LITERAL, and also hugely annoying and insulting to our movie intelligence. Its like a smartphone version of rubbish charades.
Very literally Space+Jam = SpaceJam 'sigh'
3.  This one is minor, but nevertheless irritating, for those who are into films even more so. I have to do a bit of background explaining here for those who haven't played yet;
' after having correctly guessed an answer, a success screen will appear which includes a quote from the movie you just guessed'.
The fact that when guessing the movie title 'Rocky' the quote wasn't then 'Adriaaaaaaan' and instead a part of the film I had never heard of made me do a meh face and roll my eyes. This happens a lot, be prepared, if you like movies to have all the quotes you love not appear.

So why oh why has this game been sitting in the top 10 chart on the Apple app store for this week? Well, someone must like it. Why don't you take a long and judge it for yourselves, see what all the fuss is about. and when you get stuck and frustrated and have a phone to face moment cos the question is just to literal for your developed brain, stop, you can always find the 4 Pics 1 Movie answers here, yep, all the levels you need, once you finally get on to the levels that is!

Ok rant over.

 Being reminded of the movie SpaceJam has caused much distraction while writing this post, but it was SUCH A GOOD MOVIE! In capitals letters to reinforce just how awesome it was. For those of you who remember when the movie came out and can still remember the words to the theme song here is a special treat for you, the original Warner Bros SpaceJam website, 'Jam Central'. It's virtually like stepping in a time machine and going back to 1996, enjoy! :)