Here we go again with yet another game that has been rushed to the stores to coincide with the game show premiering on television. I can honestly say that I found this to be one badly put-together game. If they had just taken a bit more time and effort I am sure that it would have enjoyed the same success as the show.  

To get a feel for Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? I played about 10 games in a row, took a few days off and then played 10 games again. Now that is about 20 games give or take a few, 10 questions per game. One would think that with the game boasting 28 tough grade school subjects with over 3,000 challenging questions it would pretty tough to get the same question twice. Nope, I can tell you that I must have answered the same question, in different games of course, at least a dozen times. Just like the television show, this game is hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. Now I think he is one funny guy. Sadly in the game he only seemed to have voiced only a few wisecrack lines so you hear them over and over and over. They quickly become pathetic instead of funny.

When you begin a game you get the kids singing the theme from the television show and then Jeff introduces the class of five 5th graders, which all wave to you as their name is called. When you end a game and begin another you get re-introduced to the same class. One can understand hearing the theme song and being introduced to the kids when you initially start the game, but if you keep playing game after game it truly gets annoying being introduced to those same five again and again.

Now, you must choose one of the 5th graders to help you "cheat" for two of the questions at a time and there are only 3 cheats. First one is to "peek" at the fifth graders answer to see if yours is the same or you can change yours. Next is to "copy" the fifth graders answer, you take their answer like it or not. Finally there is the "save," which is used when you answer wrong and the game takes the fifth graders answer, if they get it right you keep playing. There are two questions from each grade, 1st to 5th, which cover 28 subjects. When you select a grade and subject the question appears on the chalkboard. Now here comes a really annoying part, if the cursor arrow is not to the very left of the screen once you pick your question, when the game goes to show the question on the chalkboard you start to pan to the right and view the classroom. You're trying to read the darn question on the chalkboard and it’s like you are daydreaming in class and start to drift away from the teacher.

Anyway, you advance as you answer correctly, duh. Ok, here we go with another annoying part, when you get to the million-dollar question no more select an answer. That would be too easy, now you must type in your answer and make SURE to get it exactly right, because if you do not answer the way the game is designed to recognize, BUZZZZZZ you are not smarter than a fifth grader. For example, on a question for World History my answer was Britain. Nope, the game wanted United Kingdom. Grrrr.

In the words of Jeff Foxworthy, (nasally twang here) IF you buy this game and think it is the greatest game ever, you might be a redneck!

Gameplay: 4.0
This could have been a fun game had they spent more time developing and working out the annoying problems. Nothing flows well and too much time is taken up on repetitive actions.

Graphics: 5.0
Anything that required any sort of detail is badly done. For example, the kids faces, they look like blurs.

Sound: 5.0
Not much to it, some music and voices. The dialog is extremely repetitive.

Difficulty: Hard
The questions can be quite difficult. I certainly do not remember 5th grade being that hard, or 1st or 2nd or 3rd or 4th for that matter!!

Concept: 8.0
No game is like this, but the game show atmosphere is typical.

Overall: 6.2
Unfortunately this game just did not live up to my expectations at all. I was very excited to receive it to review and quickly disappointed by the many annoying aspects.