Following on from last Fridays initial “proper” installment of 1 vs 100 covered here, the extended play sessions of the 1 vs 100  Beta have just begun for people in the UK and Europe.

Extended play differs in a number of ways from the standard game. Firstly each “installment” lasts around 30 minutes with a few short breaks,  opposed to the “full game” which seems to last for a couple of hours. Secondly as far as I am aware there will be no prizes on offer, though taking part will increase your chances of being picked in the mob or as the one in the main game.

Thirdly rather than being divided into “The Crowd”,”The Mob”, and “The One” everyone is part of a giant mob, which was around 78000 people in size in the games I played. Finally if you answer 3 questions in a row you gain a skip, which allows you to not answer a question but keep your streak intact. Aside from this the game plays much like the regular game.

In extended play, the questions are normally based on a theme, with the chosen theme of the initial extended play being Pan Euro. This meant the questions were primarily based on things related to Europe, though a few US centric questions did appear. While I generally did well at the end of the second session I and the rest of my randomly selected party went on a losing streak where we were lucky if one of us got a question right and I did not answer any of the final 7 questions correctly.

Despite my abject failure I was once again fairly impressed with the Beta. One criticism I did have was that you could not tell (at least not easily) where you ranked in the mob. You could only see the top 10 scores, and those in your party so it was difficult to judge if you were doing well, badly or average.

One thing I am wondering is aside from when will the proper version launch (I suspect fall update) is what other games does Microsoft have lined up for the primetime channel.