iPhone App: 6 Degrees Of Netflix
= 2 stars
Link one actor to another in less than six movies in this trivia game for movie buffs.
The Good
- The core game concept is smart fun: you’re presented with two actors, and your task is to link them by picking a movie the first actor starred in, then an actor that starred in that flick, etc. until you pick a movie featuring the second actor. So to link Robert Downey Jr. to Justin Long, I came up with Robert Downey Jr. -> Iron Man -> Gwyneth Paltrow -> Bounce -> Ben Affleck -> He’s Just Not That Into You -> Justin Long. Obviously knowledge of movies featuring a boatload of actors is helpful.
- A hook to Netflix; anytime you call up a particular movie there’s an option to add it to your Netflix queue.
The Bad
- Notably sub-par graphics. The interface is a red background with simplistic buttons, and the images (presumably downloaded from IMDB) aren’t framed in any way whatsoever. Could really use another pass to add some polish.
- Should have a history of past games played.
- Odd bugs abound. When I first started up the app, none of the buttons worked without any indication why, and there were several crashes even after the game started working. According to a developer note in the iTunes Store, this was a temporary problem with the Netflix API, but the odd impression was already made.
Conclusion
6 Degrees Of Netflix contains a great game at its core, unfortunately it’s presented in an lackluster way and had enough bugs that it wasn’t as much fun to play as it should have been. Shame, because I almost found a reason for suffering through He’s Just Not That Into You.