A kindly reader of this site sent me a nice Christmas gift — the PC version of the Deal or No Deal game show. At least, I think it was a kind gesture. It may have been one of the half-dozen folks who routinely send me e-mails explaining how I'm wrong not to think George W. Bush is a great president. I wouldn't put it past one of them to think they could keep me busy with the game so I wouldn't post any more articles that make them grind their molars.
If that was the goal, they figured wrong. The computer version of Deal or No Deal wouldn't keep anyone busy for more than about fifteen minutes. You play it a couple of times, ogle the odd graphics and put it away forever. Gamewise, it's a faithful reproduction of the TV show but all the fancy music and dramatic pauses still cause a very simple game to take a lot longer than it should. There are many online versions (including this one on the NBC website) that let you play the same game a lot faster.
The only reason to spring for the twenty bucks and get the PC version is for the graphics…and I might have gone for it if they had the real models in there and you felt Up Close and Personal with them as you played. But all the people — Howie Mandel, the models, even the audience — are CGI animations and the models are all generic, unsexy types. Howie's pretty generic and unsexy, too…and it's a little creepy to watch the computer-animated representation of him gesturing with odd, mechanical gestures and speaking with almost no lip-sync.
Makes you wonder why they went to the trouble to build a computer-animated Howie Mandel. Why didn't they just videotape the real guy? I'm guessing they did the whole thing in CGI because it would have been too expensive to pay all 26 models to actually appear in the game, Too bad…because it might have made you feel like you were actually playing for real. As it was, I almost wanted to take a bad banker's offer just so I could get out and stop looking at the weird computerized people.