The Weakest Link: Movies & TV

Cruise ships are basically populated by retired professionals, who enjoy leisure but long for the mental stimulation and competition of the workplace. To fill the hole, they participate in endless quizzes, and it's not uncommon for half-formed teams to wander about before a quiz begins saying "Sport?" or "History?" as though fishing for knowledge.

So if you're ever marooned on one of these ocean-going resorts you might find yourself freelancing for drinks or company, useless on your own but indispensable as part of a fully-rounded question-answering cohort, rubbish at general knowledge but excellent at specific knowledge. As long as that specific knowledge concerns film and television, this game is for you.

Following last year's The Weakest Link 2008, Movies & TV is pretty much identical aside from the fact that all of the questions have something to do with, you know, movies and television.

That gives us another 300 words or so to play with, so let's remind ourselves how the infamous television quiz works.

To begin with, several people line up behind podiums and dutifully pretend to be cowed by the waspish Anne Robinson. Then the questions begin, with contestants answering one at a time. Each correct answer earns a sum of money as well as the opportunity to 'bank' what the group has so far collectively amassed.

The rub is, for every consecutive correct answer the prize grows, so that at the bottom of the tree a good answer is worth just 20 (dollars or pounds, it's up to you), whereas at the top it's worth up to 200, with 800 to lose if you get the last question wrong. That's a hell of a fall.

You can't just keep banking 20s, because the sum of them will be pathetic. But attempting to accumulate the round maximum of 1000 is a risky business, more so because you have to rely on others to get their questions right and bank with the right mix of caution and courage.

If you get the mix wrong, or just stuff up, all of the other contestants will hate you, they'll vote you off, and you'll have to do something called the 'walk of shame', which sounds awful but is actually a grandiose way of saying 'walk to the edge of the set.'

Except they won't always vote you off, because some people decide to risk Ms Robinson's disapproval by playing tactically, deadheading the tallest ears of corn so that they won't have to face them in the final round. The person who's statistically the weakest link isn't always ousted. That's what makes it so 'interesting'.

Of course, not all of this is represented in I-play's mobile game, but a surprising amount is. You have to answer all of the questions yourself, so your decision about when to bank doesn't factor in the competence of your rivals. Naturally, because you answer everything yourself you don't get to vote, but you can be voted off.

At the end of every round a chart flashes up showing how well everybody did at banking and answering. Then the votes come in, and the computer votes in a pleasingly scrappy way, rather than simply booting out the weakest player. It's unlikely that this game's AI matches that of Deep Blue, but it passes for human opposition at a glance, and introduces a welcome element of chance.

The presentation is decent, with crisply digitised contestants, plausibly unfunny remarks from an invisible Anne Robinson, and in looks and tone it does a good job of mimicking its television counterpart.

The questions are also fine, ranging in difficulty from the utterly obvious to the utterly obscure. The biggest question of all, however, is this: is it really desirable to have a quiz game about just one subject? For all that it will appeal to film and TV buffs, it'll alienate everybody who isn't.

Still, if you are such a buff and you're happy to forfeit the option of answering questions on any other subject without buying another game, this is a solid and well-presented package.