Smarty Pants continues EA’s current run of great family Wii titles, but going into the hot quiz market, does it hold much chance against other new releases like Buzz and Scene It?

Smarty Pants is another quiz game that rewards quick thinking and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the world. Rather than try and woo you over with flashing buzzer controllers, Smarty Pants uses the Wii Remote, which lends itself really well to a buzzer game. To answer a question all you need to do is hold A and raise your hand, first in the air gets to answer the question. These range from arts and literature, sports, science, and music and are selected by spinning the question wheel when it is your turn. There are also a few special cards that you can play, like too hard, which will replace the question, and I know it, which lets you steal a go from your opponent, allowing you to score more points.  

Smarty Pants uses either supplied characters or you can bring over your Mii. At the selection menu you are able to adjust your age, this is a really good idea as the questions themselves will balance out for each player, younger children will have slightly easier and more relevant questions.

There are plenty of questions to play through, having played for over 3 hours there was not one question repeated, which is a nice change. That and the range of questions is really impressive, however I did notice a large amount of Harry Potter questions under the banner of arts and literature, who has the rights to those games? 

Play modes are pretty simple, allowing for a great pick up appeal, you have single player where you need beat the clock with as many questions as possible, family play and all against all. In this mode you can even wager how many points each question is worth, this will take you to a shooting range with an assortment of moving targets with points on them, the points have plus and minus values so, hitting a negative figure means you can sabotage anyone elses chances of winning, or if you feel lucky, hit a positive figure and play for high points.

This game does not have the pizzazz of other titles like Buzz and Scene It however it has one important thing, quality. The questions are varied and the raising of the wii-mote and a few mini games really make this game worth a look during those cold winter nights in with nan and the kids.