I have not tended to be a big fan of board games over the years, but there are a few I ‘ve always enjoyed and Trivial Pursuit is definitely one of them. It ‘s a splendid way to celebrate and exploit my great (well mediocre to good anyway) ability to recall masses of largely useless information.
It ‘s been years since I ‘ve had a chance to play the board game and last time out I think I got thrashed by my brother (with his near photographic memory) “ so I ‘ve been occasionally plotting my revenge ever since.
As soon as I saw the iPhone version of this classic game hit the App Store, I grabbed it up and started testing out my trivia knowledge again. Read on for some thoughts on how the iPhone game stacks up
What Does It Do?
It ‘s Trivial Pursuit. It ‘s a very faithful recreation of a classic, translated very nicely to the iPhone.
The Classic Mode of the game is played just as it always has been in the board game. Roll the dice, move around the board and answer questions, if you get a question right you keep rolling and moving “ the object being to land on the squares with wedges for each of the 6 main categories (Geography, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, Sports & Leisure, Entertainment, and History) and answer a question correctly to gain that wedge, and to fill your wheel up with all 6 wedges. When you ‘ve collected all 6 wedges you have to go up into the middle and answer a question from a randomly selected category in order to win the game. Of course, your AI opponent is trying to get all the wedges faster than you and win the game.
You can choose from 3 difficulty levels, and the AI becomes more challenging to beat as you move through them.
There is also a Pursuit Mode “ where you answer questions and reach the finish line as fast as possible. I haven ‘t played this one much as I enjoy the classic mode a lot.
You can also play with up to four players using Pass ‘N Play or over a local WiFi network “ and you can choose your player name and choose a mascot as well.
What Does It Do Well?
It looks great. As you might expect from Electronic Arts, production values for the game seem quite high. The screens are colorful, and there are interesting effects to liven things up a little, for instance spinning dice and wedges winding their way down into your wheel when you ‘ve won one.
Gameplay is fluid and easy. If you ‘ve played the game in the past, you ‘ll be fine diving right in without any need to glance at the instructions. The game feels slick and solid throughout. I ‘ve not had a single crash in 5 weeks of using it.
Content “ the questions “ seems pretty good. The App Store description says there are ‘thousands ‘ of questions and I ‘ve seen very few repeats in over a month ‘s use.
It ‘s fairly challenging. It ‘s far from impossible to beat the AI, even at the hardest setting “ but it ‘s tough enough to keep you on your toes.
I ‘m very fond of statistics (hey I like trivia so why not), so I love that it keeps and shows you some good stats on how you do overall in the game, as well as broken down by category.
What ‘s Not So Good?
Very little.
My only wish list item so far is that I ‘d like to see Facebook Connect added, and / or some method for playing your friends who are not local. Basically, it would be cool to have more potential opponents, and to be able to find random opponents when you feel like it.
Overall
Trivial Pursuit is a very good iPhone game. It ‘s faithful to the classic board game, so if you ‘re a fan of that, you ‘ll like this lots. And it is slickly designed, plays smoothly, and runs rock solid “ so even if you ‘ve never played the board game, if you just enjoy trivia challenges, this is a very appealing option as well.
It may even get me ready to take on my brother again sometime soon. 🙂
You can find Trivial Pursuit in the App Store now, priced at $4.99.
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