Trivial Pursuit review

The partnership between EA and Hasbro may at times come off as something that younger gamers will benefit from the most, but there are some gems for all ages included in Hasbro’s vast catalog of games. Trivial Pursuit is one such game, and the two companies recently released it across the major consoles.

While they could have been forgiven for simply making Trivial Pursuit a digital experience rather than one you play on your coffee or kitchen table with friends, there was more work put into it than that, and to the benefit of the player. Rather than just re-create the classic style of gameplay and call it a day, two new game modes were introduced, as well as a few other nifty features that fans of stat tracking and leaderboards are sure to enjoy.

The classic game mode is here, and it works very well. Up to three friends can play along with you, just like you are playing the actual board game, only now everything is done on your television. You can waggle the Wii Remote to roll the dice, or you can just press A to accomplish the same goal. Moving your puck is performed with the IR pointer of the Wii Remote, which is efficient; it also helps that the game board only highlights the spaces you can move to with each roll, so you don’t have to count and can make quick decisions about your next move. The only part of the experience that is grating is the announcer, who has a variety of things to say, but repeats very often. Luckily he’s pushed to the background on a volume level, so he’s easily ignored.

If you’re looking for something a little different from Trivial Pursuit than the classic gameplay, you have the Facts & Friends mode. This is also with up to four players, but there is a twist. First of all, you do not need to land on the wedge space in order to acquire the piece; instead, you can answer a certain number of questions to earn points for each category, which in turn leads to a wedge. There are also bonus spaces where the roll again spaces used to be, and these can earn you wedges if you’re lucky enough to roll that option. When a wedge is acquired in this mode, either through points or ‚ bonuses, that category disappears from the board; those two things help to speed the game up considerably.

This isn’t the only change to the core game though. Now, your friends can bet on whether you know the answer to a question or not, and can also back up their confidence by saying they know the answer. If you answer in the way they bet you would, they get points, but they can also steal the points by guessing correctly if they claimed they knew. This hurts people who get through Trivial Pursuit by randomly guessing, but should make just about everyone else who actually knows trivia well happy.

There is a single-player mode, so you can enjoy the core experience of Trivial Pursuit with some added twists that make it worth your while, and give the game plenty of replay value even outside of playing with buddies. This mode is called “Clear the Board”, and the objective is to land on spaces in order to “clear” them from the board. You don’t need to answer the question correctly in order to clear the space, but you add to your multiplier and overall score if you do. Each correct question for a category gives the wedge space a boost to its multiplier (up to 10 times), and there is no penalty for answering a question on a regular space wrong, outside of losing the chance to score points on it. If you answer incorrectly on a wedge space though, you lose a multiplier for each response.

Each time you answer a wedge space question correctly, it erases all of that category from the board, making it smaller and easier to navigate. Once you have all of the wedges, you are asked a random final bonus question, the winning point total of which is multiplied by the total multiplier you have remaining. Each incorrect response here also takes off a multiplier point. You can replay this game just for the fun of some trivia, or to achieve a high score or fastest completion time. There are also objectives to complete, which are awarded based on how well you do in different categories, which gives you the ability to try to tackle the game different ways in order to clear them all.

I’m a big fan of trivia games, and though there are many different options out there in both the digital and board game worlds, Trivial Pursuit has been a longtime favorite. This edition is both a nod to the classic board game as well as loaded with options that should make even the most die-hard board game enthusiast intrigued. Let’s not forget that this game costs just $40, which is less than your standard retail game and also about the same price as the actual board game, despite having more options and game modes.If you’re looking for something to play with your friends or family that doesn’t involve exploding zombies or headshots, then Trivial Pursuit will more than fill that need.