Trivial Pursuit Live! – Review

After the recent digitalization of RISK, Ubisoft and Hasbro decided it’s now time for all the board game lovers to emerge in the digital version of Trivial Pursuit. Even though ‘porting’ a real board game imposes the risk of the game itself losing its appeal, the developers tried to wrap the game in the form of a live game show. A bold idea that has certain plusses but also a decent amount of downsides.

Story

You will feature on a game show called ‘Trivial Pursuit Live!’, which is a quiz where knowledge reigns supreme. Answer questions correctly and collect all pieces of the puzzle in order to win. Pretty much the basic principle of the original Trivial Pursuit game, wrapped in a nice package.

As is to be expected, this version of Trivial Pursuit lacks a real storyline, but the efforts that were made to give the game a nice theme, are certainly appreciated.

Graphics

Graphically, even with the parade of colors, Trivial Pursuit Live! will not really wow you at any given time. Even though the colorful scenery is clearly inspired by the original board game, it end up looking a bit like a mix between the ‘Scene it’ games and the ‘Buzz’ franchise.

The characters look appealing, with their overall comical appearance and emotions. On the other hand, the question screens look fairly simple, but they do the job.

Sound

Sound wise the game offers you the choice to pick a game host in several different languages, which is a nice touch for a low priced game. Sadly, not all of the hosts sound all too appealing, but overall they are of a decent quality.

The background music proves to be simple, yet fitting for a simple game show. Overall the soundtrack adds up to the authenticity of the game and the theme they’re aiming for.

Gameplay

The main goal of the game has not changed that much compared to the original board game. You will still have to answer as many questions as you can correctly, earn points and get the pieces of the small puzzle you will have to complete. Now it mainly depends on points, in order to get pieces instead of solely answer questions correctly. Also the fashion how questions are posed has changed, but all in the frame of the game show theme.

Before starting the game you will first have to make a choice between a short game and a long game, even though the long version is still quite short. Both game types will often be finished within thirty minutes. At the end of each game, the one with all parts, the most parts or in case of a tie, the highest score will be the winner.

During the game, all of the different rounds will work with a different mechanic. For example, each turn a player can choose a category, from which a certain question will be posed. If the player that chose the category, answers the question correctly, he will get rewarded with double points. Other rounds involve picking out correct answers from a grid of 16 answers or racing against your opponents to select the right answer the fastest in order to receive the most points and so on. Overall there are a few different ways to answer questions, to keep things interesting. Whilst the variation proves to be quite simple, it’s fun that some variation was implemented.

Sadly, all that has been mentioned above is pretty much all there is to the game. You will only have a few different ways of answering questions, and the rounds will always stay the same, even during new playthrough. Even though there is a great diversity of questions, you will find yourself wanting more variation after you’ve played several matches, locally or online.

Another thing that is quite sad is the fact that you will always need to play with four people. Even if you just want to duel one or two friends locally, the game will always add a third or a fourth player, which is actually quite annoying. You will never be able to have fun, with only your friends if you don’t have a four man team; a small annoyance, but a noticeable one when playing a lot of matches.

Conclusion

Even with the options of choosing two different play types, the different quirky characters and the statistics data the game has to offer, you are left wanting more. It feels as if the developers did an effort to make a great port, but failed to deliver enough diversity to keep the game fresh and interesting. Even though the original game does not have that much variety either, the game show wrapping of the digital version simply shouts for a bit more of pretty much everything that is currently implemented in the game. Overall you will probably enjoy yourself when playing the game, but you will quickly move on to other things, especially if you’re a fan of playing online. That being said, be sure to try out Trivial Pursuit LIVE!, locally with friends as this remains its most fun feature.

ThaMofo

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