Friday, 25 September 2015

Trivial Pursuit LIVE! (Xbox ONE)

Trivial Pursuit LIVE! is a simply trivia game brought to you by American developers, Ubisoft San Francisco. The most notable aspect of the game, that is annoying from the outset, is the location selection. It always raises my suspicions when a game has an option to select English (UK) and English (USA) from as the first thing you do and in this instance, I was completely right. I always select UK because that’s where I am from so I do not understand why I had an Arts and Literature question come up regarding Archie and Jughead and nothing at all about the Beano or Dandy.

What is the point of having a specific English option if you are not going to have relevant questions? It sure as hell wasn’t for a language choice as I had to listen to the most irritating American* ‘quiz show host’ voice. If I have to hear the words, ‘Needa wedge, wanna wedge, gotta get a wedge,’ ever again I will most likely need mental help (if I don’t already.)

*A quick note that I do not find the American accent generally annoying. I’m sure if it had been a British voice, I would have been irritated by that stupid phrase regardless.

The game consists of either a three or five round game show depending on how much time you have on your hands. There are several different types of round. Quickstarter – a round where there are five questions and each subsequent question is worth double the points of the previous question. All of my friends complained about this. Grab Bag – A round where you have a grid of sixteen answers and only eight of them are correct and it’s completely stupid because as soon as you select a wrong answer you cannot continue even if there are correct answers remaining. Close Call – a round where you have five correct answers and the best answer gets the most points, which is really stupid because the person who is last always goes first. There are also blitz versions of the last two rounds where you all go at the same time rather than taking it in turns. Switchagories – a round where a players gets to select one of two categories and they get double points for getting the answer right. This is a horrible round for many reasons. If I had a choice between History and Arts and Leisure it’s like asking me to chose between wanking with sandpaper and sawing my foot off. What is the point of giving me an advantage for answering a question in two of my worst categories? Oh right, there isn’t one.

The final round gives you two options and a statement and you have to select which of the options the statement applies to. Do this correctly five times (once if you are playing multiplayer with a single controller) and you get a wedge. The winner is the person who gets six wedges. Wedges are awarded for achieving various score landmarks throughout the game up to a maximum of four. You then get a wedge for each final round question session you get right.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 15 Achievements

The achievements are not too hard for this game. The invention of Google makes general knowledge a piece of piss, especially when you can pause the game to look stuff up. However, several people complained about the answers to some of the questions but I’m at an age now where if they are using the internet to look stuff up, the chances are that they looked up the wrong stuff, assumed it was right and just pissed their pants about their own inability to utilise a search function to find the correct information.

There are six different categories for trivial pursuit and an achievement for answering 50 questions correctly in each category. There is one for answering every question correctly throughout the game, which can obviously be a problem if you get Close Call. The easiest way to do this one is to play a four player human multiplayer game as that eliminates the luck element from all rounds and leaves you free to answer away. You can also cover off Greedy Grabber by doing this if you get Grab Bag. Simply answer incorrectly with the three non-you-players leaving you free to try and select all eight correct answers in the grid.

All of the rest can be achieved on your way to winning 25 Gameshows which takes a lot longer that I thought it would, even by just playing three round games. The reason for this is that there is a lot of unskippable bullshit between rounds with stat attacks and updates on who is 1st, 2nd 3rd or 4th. After. Every. Single. Round. This is never amusing but becomes insufferable after game the 2nd game you play.

You get this along the way but I thought I would mention some glitches with the Sense of Entitlement achievement. You basically unlock titles as you go along. There is a title for most things like answering all questions in a round correctly, answering 50 science and nature questions correctly, etc. However I managed to unlock the title for 50 questions for Geography but not 30 questions?? It’s clearly glitched and stopped counting correct answers for whatever reason. It didn’t stop me unlock the achievement though thank god.

Downloadable Content – N/A


Trivial Pursuit LIVE! is fun to play with friends but not by yourself. The achievements are a slog more than anything and I won’t be revisiting alone again.

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