Trivial Pursuit has been a tabletop mainstay for many a night in and with the Wii being the family favorite around the TV this should be a match made on heaven, but is it? 

 

Trivial Pursuit is the classic family game with players pitting their knowledge against each other over six categories which cover Geography, Entertainment, History, Art and Literature, Science and Nature and Sports and Leisure. The aim is to move your puck around the board collecting wedges (cheeses in our house) and then moving to the middle when you have them all for the final question.

 

 

There have been many incarnations of this game, with plenty of different question boxes including children’s and genus editions. The Wii version is very much in the entertainment variety. There are loads of questions to play through and having played seven half hour games not one question has been yet been repeated which is impressive.

 

Graphically there is nothing much to shout about, the board look good on screen with little animations when you move the pieces. To roll the dice just swing the Wii-mote and flick up to release.

 

Most of the questions are presented on a multiple choice format, with the occasional slider answer or map to find locations. My main concern is that that game is far too focused on entertainment questions and it feels a little dummed down because of this, which will alienate fans of the board game. Here are some particularly bad examples; a history question asks who was the first winner of the X-Factor (I am ashamed to have known this) and a geography question was based on pinpointing a location from a film. Whilst I am all for making a game as accessible as possible, having such a heavy focus on entertainment seems pointless, (games like Scene It do it better) Trivial Pursuit for me was all about the broad range of questions that everyone had their own strengths and weaknesses in, not who watched Eastenders that week.

 

 

On top of the Classic mode there is also a Fast and Friends mode, you can again have multiple players but this time, with every correct answer you win a part of a wedge, fill a wedge and the board will eliminate all of the remaining questions on that category, you play until there are no categories left. To spice things up there are also hot spots that generate mini games, such as hold the bomb and stealing a wedge. Each player is also able to bet whether the person being a question will know the answer or if you know it, bet correct and earn some extra wedge pieces. Once all of the board has disappeared each player will be asked a question, get them wrong and you lose a wedge, lose them all and your out of the game.

 

There is no doubt that you will enjoy playing Trivial Pursuit for a short burst but after a while the questions will just not challenge most people and therefore it will feel more like you are going through the motions.