Alan Hansen's Sports Challenge (Wii) Review

Just before Christmas there was a flurry of activity on Wii, with Third Parties companies tripping over each other to get their family-friendly quiz style efforts onto the market as quickly as possible in the hope of luring uneducated (in terms of gaming) folk into parting with their hard-earned cash. Electronic Arts had Smarty Pants, Ubisoft had Cranium Kabookii and Oxygen Interactive had the duo of Chegger’s Party Quiz and Alan Hansen’s Sports Challenge. Now, there is a reason why this last one on the list has only been touched at such a late stage, and that is because purely and simply it is a total waste of time.

There are no fancy graphical touches, with just a bland background, awfully animated version of Mr. Hansen himself and the odd static photo during the questions. The voice clips are repetitive, the scripted lines extremely formulaic and not delivered particularly smoothly and the dribs and drabs of music are instantly forgettable. Okay, but there must be some plus points, surely, you may ask. Well, there are thousands of sport-related questions included, yet the idea of paying £19.99 to answer them on your TV screen seems a terribly convoluted method of testing your knowledge and not especially fun for you and your mates considering the same experience can most likely be found either online or on weekly TV shows like A Question of Sport...all completely free of charge. Throw in some woeful Wii Remote flicking gestures to answer questions and the whole experience proves to be both a very expensive and painful one indeed. Best to avoid this one at all costs.