User Reviews

I like it when they fall in the lava! It's also really good when they don't. Their reactions are fun to watch and the host, Rutledge, does a great job interacting but more casually, like a dad watching their children play. I read that the lava is made with cornstarch and xanthin gum, which I would not want to be submersed in. But given the chance I would love to run the course just to see if it's as tough as it looks. Good episode, quite a few moments of scream-at-the-tv action, especially when they almost fall in.

Season 2 has some changes and they're okay but at the same time a bit annoying and intrusive, although maybe I'm wrong about a few things: Like the other team who just played standing near the host and throwing in their 2 cents, which is worth 3 cents less in my opinion... The host is better on his own... Also, the fun of the whole falling into the lava is how they make it seem like it's a body count action/horror and that the person dies, since we never see him again... When they return right after it's... I don't know... Maybe I'm knitpicking...

Also, not sure if they had the whole volcano race last time but it's not bad but doesn't add a whole lot... This season seems a lot busier and noisier but it's still a fun show...

In season 2, they've added the unnecessary and anti-climactic complications of the "Exit Pass" and the final round, aka the Volcano. Unfortunately, these completely unnecessary complications make season 2 a whole lot less fun than season 1.

Each player is required to acquire an Exit Pass before they can exit the room. This requires the team to fully cover every obstacle in the room to reach all 3 passes. The problem is that reaching an exit pass is anticlimactic. It slows the game down to a crawl. It reduces instances of teamwork when some teams split up intentionally just to get to the exit passes. Prior to exit passes, in the first season, the game was focused on individual players or teams determining for themselves what the easiest path was to the exit in the shortest amount of time. The decisions the teams made were natural and more exciting and fun to watch.

The Volcano is the mandatory head to head final round after the 3rd team is eliminated. It seems like this was only added as a cliché of the physical competition gameshow genre. So even if the first team scored a record time and the 2nd team was mediocre in the first round, the mediocre team could still win the $10,000. Nobody wants to see the mediocre 2nd place team get lucky and snatch a win this way. To make things worse, while the various rooms rotate with each episode, the show always ends with the same boring Volcano. ((My recommendation to the producers is, if you must have an extra round, make it a bonus round only for the winner of the first round to compete for a grand prize, where they are only competing as a team versus obstacle course, not versus the 2nd best team.))

I enjoyed season 1 and recommended it to friends and family for some mindless entertainment. But so far I'm enjoying season 2 considerably less than the first season, and after watching only two episodes of season 2 I think I've seen enough!