Blockbusters

There exists between the hours of 9am and 6pm a strange state of limbo known as daytime TV. Seen only by mothers of young children, students and the unemployed, it's a dark, scary place inhabited by brightly-hued foam puppets, B-list movies from the 1940s and '50s and obscure game shows.

Yet, like a lighthouse amongst the rocky outcrops of televisual dross, occasional beams of light penetrate the murk.

Blockbusters was one such bright spot, a quiz that made TV history by being the first show that wasn't a news programme to be broadcast every day. And although the original has been off the air since 1993, it's been recreated to fit in your pocket by Player X.

In Blockbusters, the answers to the questions you tackle begin with a letter depicted on the hexagons that make up the Blockbusters board. Starting from the left of the board, you nominate a letter and answer a question via a multiple choice.

Answer correctly and the space turns orange, enabling you to choose a question from one of the next two letters to the right. The aim of the game is to answer enough questions to create a line crossing the entire board. Get a question wrong and that space turns black, forcing you to change your route.

All this takes place against the clock. In two of the game modes on offer, Quick Play and Single Player, you've got just three minutes to cross the board, with the time on offer reducing by 30 seconds each level in the later Gold Rush game.

All of which would provide an entertaining challenge, except that the questions are all very easy. We're no masterminds here at Pocket Gamer, but even we managed to complete the Single Player mode on our first attempt out, having warmed up just once using the Quick Play mode.

This means there are few reasons to return to the game once you've finished it. There's slight novelty value in winning the bonus mascots on offer (harking back to the contestant's cuddly bear mascots from the original show) but there are only three to win, which won't take long.

The multiplayer mode, where you face off against another contestant, is Blockbusters' best shot at a prize. Playing on a single handset, both players are given a chance to answer a question and the first person to hit the buzzer gets the opportunity to answer. Get the question right and you win a space on the board, get it wrong and the other player wins it. First player to build a complete line (one goes left to right, the other top to bottom) wins.

This is far more entertaining, though it too is hurt by the simplicity of the questions – you don't need to consider the question being asked, just buzz first, and only then read and think about it before selecting the right answer from three choices. Rather than creating a sense of entertaining competition, Blockbusters quickly descends into frustration for both players.

If the questions were harder, you'd be forced to consider whether you could correctly answer it before buzzing in the multiplayer mode, and there would also be a much greater challenge in the single player mode. Given that a quiz game's raison d'etre is to stretch the old grey matter, this is a major failing.

Considering that there are so many other quiz games on offer on mobile, any potential high-scorer has to bring more than a novelty TV license to truly compete. Who Wants to be a Millionaire is successful because it offers a stiff challenge, likewise with the Trivial Pursuit series of games.

And that's why we can't really recommend Blockbusters. While the presentation is polished and we welcome the resuscitation of the cult TV show, the fact that the questions are so easy means we have to consign it to daytime purgatory.