I don’t know about you, but I usually associate Trivial Pursuit with either snobby dinner parties or dull Christmas Day afternoons. Amazingly, then, EA has managed to change my stance by delivering this surprisingly stylish and fun to play console iteration. The commentator is pleasingly random too: “You got that question wrong, no goldfish flavoured ice lolly for you this time!â€
The main reason it’s entertaining is because the questions are up to date and relevant to us Brits. There’s stuff about UK bands, TV shows and football teams while modern questions consist of events in last year’s Olympics and films released in the last few months. Some questions give you pictures to choose from, others ask you to stick a pin on a map or point to a country. The majority though are multiple choice, so even if you don’t know the answer there’s still a 25% chance of getting it right.
I’ve probably knocked up around eight hours of play so far and only seen a handful of repeated questions. Extra question packs can be downloaded too. The movie pack is the only one available at the time of typing, but it’s free to download and more are promised.
For the single-player mode EA could have done the lazy thing and merely added some rubbish AI opponents to play against. Fortunately though they’ve gone down the other route and created an addictive ‘Clear the Board’ mode. It’s both score-based and against the clock, with every question answered correctly building up a score multiplier. There are also objectives to clear, a few of which unlock achievements. At the end of the game both your score and completion time are loaded onto a leaderboard, so you can see how well you did. Or didn’t do.
The classic mode is strictly for Trivial Pursuit purists. Seriously, babies have probably been conceived and delivered in the amount of time that it takes to play through a game. For multi-player shenanigans ‘Facts and Friends’ is the one to opt for – it’s fast paced and the board has been littered with power-ups, such as the ability to steal wedges. Before your rivals answer a question there’s the chance to bet if they’ll get it right or not; bet correctly and you’ll earn a slice of wedge too.
A few months back I was confused as to why EA didn’t include this in Hasbro Family Game night. Now I see why – they’ve been able to add enough stand-out features for it to warrant a stand alone release.