L’Essentiel Fort Boyard ep 1

It’s not incredible (we basically wanted to show you Looping), but this four minute highlight video actually shows off some of this year’s new stuff (that’s been used) pretty well, if you can’t be bothered to seek out the full two-hour version:

Things mainly of note:

• Of the new cells and adventures shown, Looping was my favourite – a 360 degree evolution (I hesitate to call it a revolution) of Cloche. It’s a bit like that game from Dog Eat Dog where you have to swing the swing to do a full turn except here you’re forty foot in the air, you’re not strapped in to some box device and you use CO2 jets to get momentum. It looked great fun, and when his legs come off the bar, dodgy as all hell.
• The Infernal Cell is OK, it uses the elderly go back and forth through this obstacle mechanic, but it’s fair to say this is probably the most Wipeout-esque obstacle they’ve used in a room to date. The Propeller looked really hard. The way The Revenge Of Cyril Gossbo ends just reiterates the idea that when I’m producing Fort Boyard UK, Dave Benson-Philips is getting the auxillary character role.
• This year’s big new idea – the nine assets of Pere Fouras – where each episode is played under special conditions worked pretty well this first episode. It was The Night of Prohibitions, so some games were played under different rules – you mustn’t play this game alone (game played handcuffed to another player), you stuffed this game up last time you were here, you mustn’t stuff it up again (win or go to prison), you mustn’t touch a laser, you mustn’t scream, you mustn’t play this game with any light (for the snake pit) – enough added spice to remix what’s already there. Next week is “Time Ghosts” where loads of old characters and games might turn up, I can’t wait to see if and how creative the rest of the series might get.
• I’m not a big fan of the new running-around-the-fort music, but in a nice touch they’ve bought back Pere Fouras asking a riddle from the watchtower with the full-on 90s running music leading to it and 90s tower music.
• Heavens be praised The Cage is now an optional extra – at Judgement you can choose either sister, Blanche in her Hall of Judgement or Rouge in The Cage to set you a task. On the one hand, the odds on losing to a Boo in a fight are extremely high. On the other, Blanche’s new game of “drop this cube into a massive box of water so it lands in a much smaller box” is bastard hard. The real joy is that it knocks 20 minutes off the runtime so it’s a slick two hours (and five) now.
• Sheriff Willy is funny.
• The CGI tigers are certainly CGI tigers.