Games That Time Forgot - The Weakest Link

The Weakest Link TV show is still going strong all over the world. The appeal of watching a sour-faced ginger woman sneer at an endless succession of morons never ceases.

You can buy Weakest Link-branded board games, mobile games, quiz books - even ‘best of’ DVDs. But nothing has ever topped the Weakest Link game for the PlayStation - this week’s Game That Time Forgot.

Released in 2000 at the height of Weakest Link mania, the game was seen by most people as a cheap cash-in. And, let’s be honest, that’s basically what it is.

Play it on your own and you slowly begin to realise that you are the single most pathetic human being on the face of the planet - you’re basically trying to show off your general knowledge skills to nobody but a scowling pixellated Anne Robinson.

Once you start to shake off your loner tendencies and invite some
friends round, though, then the game turns into something approaching
genius. At the core of it, it’s just a question and answer game - a pub
quiz on a CD. The questions vary in difficulty, from "What animal is Flipper?" to intensely difficult geographical and literary brainmelters. But still, it’s just a simple Q&A game.

Until you start voting off the rubbish contestants at the end of
each round, that is. This process has two clear phases - the initial
part is shrouded in intense, fanatical, joypad-up-your-jumper secrecy. After this comes phase two, where brother falls out with brother and friend falls out with friend in an explosion of furious "How dare you!"s. The PlayStation version of The Weakest Link has caused hundreds of deep, long-lasting divides between close friends that still exist to this day.

But the best part of the game, the aspect that puts The Weakest Link
into the realm of greatness, is all the surrounding nonsense that goes
with it. Dawdle too much on the menu screens and Anne Robinson will
bellow abuse at you. And when you’re picking a character to answer
questions for you, she’ll jeer "I wouldn’t have picked him!" at you. And it hurts.

The game reminds hecklerspray of David Hasslehoff or William Shatner
- you’re never quite sure exactly how seriously it takes itself. And
the characters are stone-cold proof of this. You get to choose to play
characters, and then - if there aren’t seven of you to play the game -
computer controlled characters to play against, each with their own
idiosyncratic personalities.

There’s Boring Angela from Norwich, Steve the Police Constable, Gary the graduate, Austin the token stupid Brummie, Posh Lucinda, Eddie the jolly fat man, Arthur the lovely old man, Rose the lovely old lady, Cockney Barry, Geeky Tim
and loads more to choose from. And they’re such broad characters that
you can’t help but wonder if the game’s makers are taking the piss or
not.

They all vary in intelligence and responses to Anne. Sapphire, for instance, can’t stop thinking about sex. She tells Anne "I’m a girl who likes things to be done properly". The filthy girl. Obviously, as Tim is an I.T guy, he can only refer to things in terms of computers. He’ll talk about "system failures" in his brain. Barry yells "result!"
when he gets a question right, and if your heart doesn’t break when -
after you vote Rose out - she forlornly questions whether she’s lived
the life she hoped for as a child, then you’re a cold, cold bastard.

Touches like this keep you coming back again and again. The Weakest Link on the PlayStation - we’ll never see the warmly human likes of ye again.

You want to play this, don’t you? Get The Weakest Link game at eBay.co.uk for about £1

[story by Stuart Heritage]