QI: A Quite Interesting Game

The Good
There are some TV shows which find the perfect host and Stephen Fry hosting QI is one such happy marriage. He has one of those voices that people just like to listen to and here he does an excellent job hosting the DVD game.
Some DVD games based on TV shows that I have played use a named presenter who's never seen on screen and voices just a couple of phrases, in others the questions just displayed on the screen for the players to read, not so this game. Here the game makes full use of the presenter who's on screen all the time, all the questions and the chat that links then together are spoken, additionally instead of just saying 'Correct' or 'Incorrect' there are many different ways in which the good/bad news is imparted. That was a welcome change.

For me there are two things that made this game very enjoyable, at least in the beginning (see below) and they are the questions and the chatty bits as Stephen links them together, here's an example. There's a question "What was the name of Nelson's cat?", when that's been answered Stephen chats about how Nelson came to have a cat, that it was present at Trafalgar, and that it died in the Siege of Trieste. The next question is then "Why did Sigmund Freud go to Trieste?". It's very well done and it reminded me of Jame's Burke's Connections.

The incidental music is OK and quirky, the game mechanics work well, the colours aren't garish - overall this is a well put together game

The Bad
It started out as being deceptively entertaining game and I played it expecting to unlock the secret letters at the end of the section, playing the game 'seriously' quickly made it very, very hard.
On the first day I dabbled and I played a couple of sections before settling on one and going for it. Around twenty five questions in I was told that somewhere along the way I'd made a mistake and had to start again. During the quiz it's OK to make a mistake, Stephen tells you you're wrong and you pick another answer and keep doing so until you get it right but that mistake means you will have to repeat the section. In this game a mistake isn't just getting a question wrong, some questions have multiple correct answers and selecting an answer that's correct but not the most interesting also counts as a mistake.
After a three or four of these failures I started taking the game seriously, playing with a pen and paper and recording all the right answers yet at the end I was still told that I'd made a mistake - go back and try again.
So I tried again and again, looking for that one question where I could change things but experimenting with different answers means you're definitely going to get a question wrong and that in turn means a trip back to the beginning. After several attempts I was no closer to finding where I'd slipped up, and I was playing the game with one hand while playing solitaire on my ipad with the other just trying different ideas, the game had changed from being entertaining to a test of my perseverance.

The next day I played all the way through another strand, each pass takes around thirty minutes, and even with all the answers written down and apparently getting all the questions right I was still sent back to the very beginning with no clue as to where I'd gone astray.

The ultimate objective is to complete all seven sections perfectly, receive the letters, solve the anagram and use it to record your achievement on the game's web site. In 2016 that web link is non-operational but it would still be nice to beat the game and crack the code but after several hours of gameplay I've given up on that.

The Bottom Line
Entertaining, well done, very well presented and good fun.

If played as a fun game where you answer the questions, make mistakes, have a bit of a laugh and don't worry about cracking the end of game anagram then there's two, possibly three hours of entertainment here. If played seriously in the hope of unlocking those mythic, magic letters then you could be playing for days.

Beating this game would be a real achievement - I wonder if anyone did?