The Price is Right

“Come on down!”

If you're of a certain age, that's the indelible memory you'll have of The Price is Right: slightly over-enthusiastic guests, a booming voice-over, a bit of a tacky set and slightly camp jokes. If you're not long out of the womb, then sadly all The Price is Right will mean to you is Joe Pasquale.

Strangely, for a game that aims to tap into what is almost television quiz royalty, not once does Glu's The Price is Right actually utter those famous words outside of its menu options.

Instead, what you get is a fairly perfunctory take on the various mini-games that made it into the line-up over the last forty odd years. This is a game where a stackload of charm has been sapped out of the contest, replaced with a series of very plain prize-guessing contests.

Which, for many, might well be enough. In the game's main mode, progress relies on you coming out on top against three competitors in a simple 'guess the price' game. With what can only be described as an 'artist's impression' of some kind of device, usually electrical (think hi-spec DVD player, or camcorder) flashed in front of your eyes, you have to use the game's detailed description of its features to determine just how much said product would retail for.

Get the closest to the real figure without bidding too high and you'll go through to play in a random selection of some of The Price is Right's other mini-games. Fall at this first hurdle, and it's all over.

When you consider that Glu's The Price is Right is completely brand free, leaping this first hurdle is far easier said than done. As we all know, the price of a product can vary wildly from one unit to the next depending on just whose badge is slapped on it, even if the feature list is identical. Trying to come up with some kind of generic price that applies across an entire market is a fairly futile exercise, in truth.

Until, of course, you strike it lucky and make it through to the main game. This where most of the fun lies and, just as in the case of the quiz show itself, The Price is Right has some inventive ways of essentially asking the same question over and over.

Of the eight varieties on offer, of most note is 'Cliff Hangers', which perfectly replicates the almost seaside-pier nature of the entertainment The Price is Right used to serve up.

Here you have to guess three different prices, but if you're more than £25 off the total figure, you lose. Rather than simply giving you a final tally, however, Glu's The Price is Right taps into one of the real quiz's most iconic moments: translating your estimate to a climber making his way up to the edge of the cliff. If you exceed your limit, off the end he drops.

But actual moments that capitalise on the appeal of the original show are few and far between here. The Price is Right does an adequate job of providing a price-guessing platform or two, but the lack of brands and the stripping of any personality means there's nothing here that can't be accomplished by taking a marker pen to an Argos catalogue and blacking out the prices.

Handy for quiet moments when you're on the go, then, but this is one release that may have been a touch overvalued.