And it definitely does what it needs to in the gameplay department. Sure, it's the same thing that we've been playing for ages, but it translates to a console orders of magnitude better than
Jeopardy! or
Family Feud, and ends up being an entertaining title.
The basic game pits one to three human players against however many computer players it takes to make three total. Then everyone engages in a standard game of Wheel of Fortune. For those not in the know, Wheel of Fortune is a word game that has you guessing letters in a phrase and hopefully figuring out what the whole thing is.
And, for what it's worth, the actual game works flawlessly. You can spin the wheel (with a variable strength meter, so you have no one to blame but yourself when you hit the Bankrupt wedges), buy vowels if you have the money, and solve the puzzles. Letters already taken up are not selectable, so you don't have to worry about using invalid selections. And there are a scad and a half of puzzles -- 2500, by the game's count. Chances are slim that you'll wear this game out before the next iteration comes.
But in the end it's the same experience as the other Wheel of Fortune games. A Solo Mode, that lets you play by yourself, along with a contestant exam that will probably humiliate you (although nowhere near as much as the one in Jeopardy!: 2nd Edition, and behind-the-scenes videos that are worth no more than a few minutes of your time are the additions to the game. There's also a Career mode that keeps track of your wins, losses, and other useless numbers. It's all fluff, really, neither helping nor hurting the game.