REVIEW
Disney TH!NK Fast
By Shaun Hatton - November 30th, 2008
Trivia games are becoming a popular trend in the video game business, and surprisingly we’ve not seen much for the Wii, which is odd considering its “party system” status. PlayStation has the BUZZ! series, Xbox has Scene-It?, and now (although it does have to share with PlayStation 2) Wii has Disney TH!NK Fast, henceforth dubbed “DTF” as it is too mind-taxing to type out a name with punctuation smack-dab in the middle of it. (As a side note, yes, all trivia games must have either an exclamation or question mark in their titles).
As one can expect from a title bearing the Disney trademark, DTF is a game that’s not only kid-friendly, but fun for the whole family. Unlike other games in the genre, the Wii version (which is the one I played) doesn’t require the use of custom peripherals: the Wii Remote is sufficient, however not used as one might expect.
Off the bat the game asks a few short questions of its players. Enter your name, choose a Disney character to play as, and off you go. The interface for inputting your name isn’t as intuitive as it could be, given the Wii Remote’s capacity to be used as a pointer. Instead, in-game selections are handled by the D-Pad. Answering questions, though, can be done using gestures.
DTF allows players to choose from a few locales based on places in Disney titles such as 101 Dalmatians, The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King. The actual game portion is hosted by Genie from Aladdin, and, although Robin Williams doesn’t fulfill voice duties in the game, whomever they did get to voice him does an excellent impression. In fact, while playing through for the first time I actually thought it was Williams. Throughout the various portions of the game (which is set up like a game show), Genie makes wisecracks that add to the fun. Take too long to answer a question and he’ll poke fun at you for it. Answer quickly and he’ll do the same.
Out of all the video game trivia games I’ve played, Genie is by far the most enjoyable of the “hosts” although his vocabulary does tend to show its limitations even in a single play-through. Then again, this is a game geared mainly toward children, so perhaps I should have left my critical thinking hat at home.
Each game is split up into several sections with the entire game taking roughly 20 minutes to complete. Since this is a Disney title, there is a fair amount of Disney-related questions. And, since I haven’t seen a proper Disney film since The Lion King, I couldn’t answer many of them without guessing. Other question segments include a general knowledge category, a watch-and-answer segment (similar to the Scene-It? set-up), a section where players try to guess which character is being “drawn,” and a cute segment where a Disney character asks questions about the film he/she is from. The last portion of the game is a hectic race-against-the-clock segment, which has players answering as many questions as they can before the timer runs out.
There’s a simple reward system for completing a game, too. Additional content such as playable characters are unlocked at the end of matches. Overall, the presentation is slick and the fun questions are sometimes educational. This is a nice bonus. Disney TH!NK Fast is a title that kids of all ages can enjoy.
Subscribe to this page's RSS feed to be notified when someone chimes in.
3 responses so far:Subscribe to the Toronto Thumbs RSS feed to be notified when new articles are published.
I love disney trivia!
It’s my favorite category on Jeopardy when they have the kids competing. I would actually probably have too much fun with this game :)
Although I don’t consider myself a huge fan of Disney, it was really cool to see how much content was devoted to some older movies like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.
That is actually nice, rather than focusing on just the new movies.
By including Disney classics it makes the game much more family oriented because parents or older players can find some interest in it too.