Truth or Lies - Xbox 360

The gameplay in this title is reminiscent of the old teenage favorite, Truth or Truth. This was a game where, unlike Truth or Dare that had potential fun in the dares, you ask your friends questions until you’re all bored. Sadly, Truth or Lies doesn’t bring any dares into the mix, but it does bring a lot of opportunities to lie.

The game is based on technology that is supposed to be able to tell when you are lying. While the idea of a game based on that is interesting, it is not implemented in a way that is fun for anyone to play. The game doesn’t even require you to calibrate itself to your voice, which gives players the feeling that the designers know it’s not going to work right. The unfortunate thing is that it’s true.

It doesn’t take long of playing Truth or Lies before a person realizes one of two things. Either, they are much better at lying and much less truthful than they thought, or the lie detection software doesn’t work right. That’s actually the case, as it doesn’t matter whether you’re lying or not, once you get a couple of questions in. The software is going to have no idea which is the case.

To play the game in Normal mode, one of two, you and as many as seven other people share a USB or wireless microphone. Once you’ve set up a profile and calibrated your voice, if you want to, you indicate the age of the players, and their relationship to each other, like Adults, Couples, and Families. Then, you take turns being asked questions that are probably supposed to make you squirm a little bit, but were in fact so tame that lying about them doesn’t really seem like a good use of your turn, since you score points off of being honest. The most honest answers score the most points.

The other mode is Hot Seat, where your friends and family take turns making up questions for you to answer. One person has to handle five questions, and then they’re done. This is the mode that really has the most potential to be fun, but with the lie-detection technology working only haphazardly, there wasn’t any point to it, either.

And that’s the essence of Truth or Lies: pointless. If you really want to play a lie-detection party game, wait for the next iteration, which might have technology that works.