Electronic Pictionary Man Game
by Mattel
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Toys and Games Reviews of Electronic Pictionary Man Game
Customer Review: Mundane Attempt in a Digital World
Summary: 2 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
As a video game fanatic I can say that the days of Milton Bradley are long since over. The commercials depicting people having a gay ol' time huddled around a table playing Battleship and the old pictionary game are a gross representation of today's digital age. The Nintendo Wii and non-Nintendo games like Buzz! are the new family-binding games. Seriously, when was the last time any of us got around the table to play Clue or Monopoly? Those games have gone digital anyway.
That said, Pictionary Man is an attempt by Hasbro to complete with the new digital gargantuans that dominate family night and a creative, but ultimately futile gesture at best.
The layout and rules are simple as was the original Pictionary. You get a clue on the bottom of the "pictionary man" and attempt to draw it on either the guy, a board-looking thingy, and/or a circular object. Apparently, the digitizing of the pictionary man is supposed to make it mess free but that really doesn't add to the experience very much. The problem is you get 30 seconds (non-negotiable) to draw like a mad man scribbling symbols in an assylum. I don't care what others say; that's not much time to draw much of anything.
Perhaps I got unlucky but I felt as though the clues were almost always occupations and given that you have to draw them on a person that makese sense... and yet, it does not. It's very limiting to the players, especially if you're like me and am not a fan of board games.
Honest to goodness, this could have been an amazing thing if they would have expanded the time and the clues to more than occupations like "surfer." Not to mention the new generation and generation Y typically hate board games. I'm a child of the 80s and my friends and I dispise board games when we have perfectly good adaptations on our Nintendo Wii. I would recomend this to people much older than I since they seem to appreciate them more than my generation does.
Customer Review: Great for adult parties; not for kids
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
We played this game on Christmas - my mother and two young adult children. The clues were hard for my mother and she said many times that she wished they had two levels of difficulty. Regardless, within a few minutes of play, we were all laughing until tears were rolling down our faces. I say this is not for children for two reasons. #1 - some of the clues are too difficult for a child. #2 - it is far too tempting to make the plastic "man" anatomically correct for some of the clues. My daughter struggled with "father" and said there were other ways she could have depicted missionary besides drawing a collar on the man and a cross on the block. My son broke down and drew parts on the dummy for Joan of Arc because everyone was guessing names like Richard the Lion Hearted.
Game play is simple. The "man" has a display on the bottom of one foot and it provides you with a category and a clue. Once the clue is displayed, the timer starts and the person starts drawing. They have a rectangular block and a round block as props in addition to the man. We didn't necessarily draw on the man for every clue but used him in role play - like the time I had the clue "axe-throwing". I drew the ax on the rectangle and the man threw it. The rectangular box fell apart and I had to put it back together but my family guessed the clue. Every 7th clue is a challenge round where the guessing team says how many clues they can guess in the time allotted. Because there were only four of us, we didn't make teams and just skipped these rounds. I could see this being a lot of fun with 4 - 8 people. If you have more than 8, you'll probably want to split up into more than two teams. It becomes difficult to see what's being drawn when you have too many people. Overall, I thought this was more fun than regular Pictionary because of the different ways you could use the props.
Customer Review: A neat twist on Pictionary, but didn't care for some game play features
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
We've played this a couple times and my family would rate it between 3 and 4 stars. We liked the twist on traditional Pictionary, but really wish this contained more contemporary clues (we got things like the Talking Heads for People - Celebrity....surely they could have used a more recent music group!) We just got too many clues that anyone under 25 would have no clue about and a game should be designed to be played by the entire family. We also found that too often people avoided drawing on the man unless the clue was an actual person. He's just kind of hard to draw on versus a flat surface. I'm not sure why the game didn't use a person-shaped drawing surface that was a little flatter and easier to use. There didn't seem to be much use for the small, round prop and not once in the game did we use it.
Having all the clues given electonically is cool, but we'll have to see how long it goes before we start getting too many repeats. Also, we really didn't like the "challenge" part of the game. This replaces the All Play option in regular Pictionary but we didn't like it as much. Basically you are given a category and length of time and each team "bids" on how many clues they will get. If you win you get 2 points, if you fail, the other team gets a chance to steal...but the rules to steal are just way too hard, 20 seconds to guess a clue. We quickly figured out that the idea was just bid as high as you needed to keep the other team from even getting a chance to play, since the chances were remote that they'd be able to steal even if you lost. We would have preferred to just skip over the challenge rounds completely.
Overall, this is a nice twist on Pictionary if you are a fan of that game and are looking for something different. But it has some quirks that makes it less enjoyable than it could have been.
Customer Review: A few adjustments can make it usable for the whole family.
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The game comes with a plastic figure and two plastic blocks, one rectangle and one round, to draw on. Also included are two wipe-off markers, a cloth, and a reusable score sheet, which fit neatly into the rectangle block for storage. The foot of the doll is equipped with a screen that provides the clue and a timer. You draw clues on the figure and props while others try to guess your word or phrase. As your time runs down, the timer ticks faster.
In my rush to order the Pictionary Man game, I didn't read that the recommended age was 14+. The kids, ages 8 and 12, had asked for the game, so I just assumed it was suitable for their ages. Not so. The clues included people and things they'd never heard of, and the time allowed to draw was limited to about thirty seconds which was very frustrating to our 8 year old. There was no way they could skip a word that they didn't know, so they'd usually try to go with a "sounds like" type of clue. We ended up allowing extra time to make it a little easier. After reading some of the other reviews, I found one that suggested having a few extra clues that the kids know written out so they can use them if they get a word that they don't understand. What a great idea!
The figure itself is hard to draw on, especially if you want to show the him/her in action, or holding something, so we very quickly tended to pick up the rectangle block and draw on it instead.
When we were finished playing, our two year old took over. She enjoyed drawing on the pieces and wiping them clean. She's actually played with it several times since we received it and has gotten quite good at drawing faces on him!
Although we enjoyed playing the game, my favorite version still remains the original Pictionary.
Customer Review: So Disappointed!
Summary: 1 Stars
I saw this at Wal Mart and grabbed it first thing, it looked like so much fun (especially with my group who love the artsy side of Cranium and Pictionary)... I was so disappointed!
How the game is played:
You have to have batteries AAA (I found this to be annoying as most games take AA, but not annoying enough to not purchase). The ages recommended is 14+ (needs to be) and can accommodate from 4 players-large groups.
The Pictionary man is a white erase doll essentially and comes with a white erase circle and rectangle. If you look on the box you see people drawing a cute surfer character with a sun and a surfboard or a man with an apron on (kiss the cook), barbecue grill, and spatula.
I'll go ahead and tell you that this will not happen in your game. You get (I think) 30 seconds to draw whatever character that comes up on the electronic foot of the Pictionary man. You want to get your team to say the word (like regular Pictionary). If it says surfer... you won't go through the trouble to make a cute little sun and drawstring trunks... You will as quickly as possible scribble a surfboard on the rectangular thing, not draw anything on the Pictionary man and act it out.
This gets very boring very fast and is also very limited.
Another thing that was annoying was the electronic aspect. Usually I like the electronic parts in games because they make it simpler. Not in this game! We were a little confused on the scoring. The electronic screen appeared like an old nano/gig-pet (small, black and grey, very digitalized)... The options were difficult to maneuver through and the challenge rounds were confusing.
Some of the words or people listed will actually be unknown by your 14-18 (or even more) age group.
I think this game has a lot of potential, but within 15 minutes we had put it back in the box and I was looking for the receipt. My suggestion: stick with regular Pictionary.