Of all the genres, the quiz game is surely the easiest to design, with rules ready-prototyped by countless TV shows. Relentless, with Buzz!, certainly makes it look simple, but that’s until you play Gameloft’s WiiWare title TV Show King, which appears to have ignored much of the wisdom Relentless has done so well to learn from and develop.

Its main innovation is a by-product of the fact that it must rely on the Wii Remote, which displays the pointers of all human players clearly on the screen as they make their selection from the four possible answers to each question. As a result, you can see what your three competitors have chosen and change your answer accordingly within the time limit, though the player who gets the correct answer first wins the most points. It’s an elegant workaround that can generate enjoyably heated arguments about copycat tactics. But it’s pretty much the only reliable source of competitive banter.

Gameloft’s attempt to add chance to proceedings by having the option to spin a wheel of fortune at the end of each round does less to balance out player skill levels than to arbitrarily dole out penalties and awards, though the chance to steal points from other players can afford occasional vicious pleasures.

While it includes a good deal of questions with some reasonably well-pitched difficulty levels, TV Show King’s key problem is the fact that each round is identical: answering five questions for points. There’s nothing like Buzz!’s Pass The Bomb or Offloader rounds to add variety and pace, and the host’s rather abrupt voiceover does little to distract from the repetitive rhythm of the questions. Along with the slick but nondescript design of the sets and host, with surrogate charm lent by the use of your own Miis for avatars, TV Show King is just too flimsy and capricious to distract a group of players for long.

Verdict: 5/10