INTRODUCTION

This is my third and final "party" 3DO title, which is more suited for younger players. Also it isn't a game show like Twisted and Zhadnost it's a TV station. But SI still is generally the same type of gameplay just a different story to it. A regular tv station has become overrun by kids. The kids have their own tv shows and whoever gets the highest rating wins an envy award. I don't the whole plot was a little too cute for me, but still was a bit entertaining. The ratings are determined how well you do at different mini games, which range from answering different math problems, to completing a puzzle.


GRAPHICS-7/10

Basically FMV and backgrounds are half the game and the other half is the puzzles. Puzzles have similar graphics to Twisted. The FMV is about the same quality as Zhadnost and Twisted. It looks almost identical. The FMV is much better than the FMV in Crime Patrol and other similar ALG titles. No real complaints about the graphics.


SOUNDS-7/10

Background music is pretty good nothing spectacular or that of Return Fire, but still is good enough. The voice acting is almost all by kids but a few people on the tv shows are adults. A lot of the kids are ok at acting but some really overdramitize or just are really bland. Again no complaints it's just average for the genre.


CONROL-7/10

Nothing major, just using the control pad and A&C buttons. Most of the game control is fairly easy and gets the job done. Again it's just regular old run-a-the-mill stuff. Directional pad moves over stuff and A selects it. Press C when your done. Poof, nothing to amazing.


GAMEPLAY-6.5/10

This is really hard to rate. One thing I like is that you get to sign in like in WotW and it saves it for you so the next time you play you don't have to type anything in. It also saves which difficulty you choose. Unless you're really young I'd choose the hardest difficulty level. Let's start by explaining what to do. First you get to watch a little thing with 5 kids who all have their own TV shows. You get to select one of these kids and up to five people can play all together. The great thing I found in this game was that you could play by yourself! While not quite as entertaining this helps when you aren't very good at a certain puzzle, now you can practice at it. You are selecting a tv show that is supposed to best suit you.

There's a mystery, sorta unsolved mysteries show, called Mysteries Schymysteries(no idea how that's spelled ;). Here the kid talks about all these stupid mysteries, like why your socks are missing and stuff.

There's a soap opera, called Sundae's of Our Lives. Basically a kid soap opera. I thought this was kinda stupid when I watched parts of the show. Wasn't very interesting(Oh and socks missing is! not really)

Sopha is a talk show. The hosts name is Sopha. She has different guests on. I thought this was pretty dumb too. But there were a few entertaining moments.

What's That Smell is a game show type game. Here the contestant has to guess what a certain smell is correctly without passing out. This was pretty funny!

I'm Grounded is supposed to be a comedy. This was by far the worst show on there. Just so stupid. I didn't even think about laughing. It's about a kid who's, you guessed it, grounded. Very very stupid.

That's all the shows most of which aren't that great. The bad thing is there are few clips and they are repeated a lot. I mean a lot! Just playing through once and I had 3 repeats in a two player game! Lots of repeats from the newcaster girl too after awhile.

You are the producer of whatever show you pick. Then the main character has a talk with you telling you, the producer, what he or she needs help with. Usually it's something pretty bogus, but still is something different then just playing the mini game. Something they may need help with is the music on the show is getting old and they need some new music. Then you have to go do this mini game where you have to match the instrument's sounds with a picture of the actual instrument. This mini game prooved to be one of the hardest.

After each mini game points are awarded as to how good you did. 6 points are awarded if it is done perfectly, 0 if nothing is done right. If you got half right you get 3 points, and so forth.

Most of the mini games are sorta fun. Most are educational and would be great for kids 10 to 14 or so. Some are pretty hard some are fairly easy. There is no medium problem that is not hard not easy it seems.

All in all what kills the gameplay somewhat is seeing the same FMV clips over and over after awhile.


OVERALL-7/10
A solid 3DO party title that kids and adults both will enjoy. It's very easy to figure out too, and in every game there's someone who tells you how to do it(great for old people who never have played video games). If you want to have a game for some younger ones you have I'd definitely get it because they are sure to enjoy Station Invasion. But older people might enjoy it too.