In between wandering through the Capital Wasteland and living my normal life, I had a chance to check out a couple of demos.  I’ll spare you the Mirror’s Edge love and get on with some of the more surprising demos that I’ve played this week. They’re not the demo’s you’re probably thinking of.

One PSN exclusive and one XBLA exclusive, after the jump.

After Scene It? hit the retail store shelves last winter, there was a bit of conversation regarding the controllers that came with the game.  Was Microsoft going to start making games to use the new peripheral?  Sadly, the next 365 days came and went without even a peep about any new content that would use the fancy game show style controllers.

Last week Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader popped up on Xbox Live.  It uses either the regular controller or the Scene It? controllers.  You also have the option to only use one controller when playing multiplayer, which is a great design choice, because I’m a little controller starved at the moment after my other two controllers were destroyed way back in the flood of ‘08.

If you’ve ever seen the TV show of the same name, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting yourself into when you boot the game up.  For those that don’t know what this game is all about, here’s the basics: Each player must answer a bunch of questions of varying difficulty, in the areas of study, if you were still in grade school such as “Math,” “Social Studies,” “World History,” “Physical Education” and so on.  Here’s the catch, you’ll have a real live 5th grader backing you up. So, if you’re unsure of a particular question, you can copy your 5th grader’s answer or take a peek and see how they answered it.  Also if you get a question wrong, if you’re 5th grader gets it right, you’re saved, but they can only save you once like that.

Here’s where it gets interesting, each 5th grader has two specialties and you only keep any particular 5th grader for two questions.  So it’s in your best interest to answer questions according to the specialties of your 5th grader so you can maximize their ability to help you.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, here’s the good part, it’s fun.  Sure the theme song is a bit annoying and you can either tolerate or loathe Jeff Foxworthy, the computer animated host, but the core game is a ton of fun.  In the multiplayer mode, each player takes turns answering questions.  If one player gets booted from the game for getting a question wrong, they have to sit there and watch until the round is over.

If you’re looking for a new multiplayer trivia game or love the TV show, you really can’t go wrong here for $15.00. It’s a fresh alternative to Scene It? and it uses the game show style controllers very well. Beware though, some of those bastard kids WILL get questions wrong.  Especially Cameron, the blond kid, don’t trust him.  That little rat bastard cost me many a win. He can’t be trusted. Beware.

Check out my impressions of Valkyria Chronicles, the PSN demo exclusive, on page 2.

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