With much of their property already harvested for the 3 previous entries in the Family Game Night series, Hasbro have scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with video-game versions of Boggle, Connect 4, Sorry, Yahtzee, and Bop It. The game show format, taken from the real-life Family Game Night that airs on US channel The Hub, keeps everything very short and superficial so the game is only good for a quick distraction instead of something you can invest a hour in.
The featured games, and their alternates, are as follows:
Bop It!
A lot like Twister from Family Game Night 3. All you have to do is hit the right buttons on cue. The AI of the computer opponent is terrible so you can beat it in less than 30 seconds.
Bop It! EXTREME
The exact same only with a couple of extra button functions.
Boggle Flash
The only game in the show that requires any skill. There are five letters on the table, each letter makes a point, first player to reach 25 points wins.
Boggle Flash: FIVE LETTER
No computer opponent. You must make as many five-letter words as you can in a time limit.
Connect 4 Basketball
You throw basketballs into the grid. A tiny bit of skill is required in order win, but it's mostly random where the balls end up.
Connect 4 Basketball: SPEED SHOT
Exact same only you can throw as many shots as you like instead of both players waiting for their turn.
Sorry! Sliders
A sort of lawn-bowling type of game where you slide your pewter token onto a scoring ring. It's a very slow game and the least enjoyable.
Sorry! Sliders: SUMO
The same game with sumo wrestler pieces on the scoring ring that you need to bash out the way.
Yahzee Bowling
A bowling ball knocks over dice pins where you decide which to keep and which to roll again. Absolutely zero skill is required to play this game. It is completely random.
Yahzee Bowling: CRAZY LANE
The exact same except for 3 extra dice pins on the lane. Still no skill needed.
The alternates are not optional for play in the game-show format, only separately. As for the game-show format itself, you receive a Monopoly cash card for every game you win, which is added up at the end. This seems like a fair method of scoring but the totaling scene at the end takes AGES, as well as being completely unfair and making absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Family Game Night 4 feels very rushed and unfinished. From a visual standpoint it looks like 2006 shovelware for the Nintendo Wii. There are graphical errors all over the place and some elements are clearly very low-res GIF files blown up to larger proportions. Not what you expect or want from an HD console.
It's worth getting for the trophies they give away by the bucketful. The most difficult of which is 'Super Star' which requires 50 episodes to be completed. It's a grind, and I recommend you go for this first as you'll probably get most of the others in the process. Don't bother going any in the individual games first, it'll just waste time.
Graphics C- Sound C- Gameplay D Lasting Appeal D
