➤ To question I answer 🎮

After having cheered us with the discreet transposition of the famous Monopoly, of which you can read our discussion by clicking on the following link, Ubisoft and Hasbro go down the track again, together, with another "ninety piece" of board games, or that Trivial Pursuit which, for over 30 years now, has been putting a strain on the brains of millions of families around the world with its general culture quizzes.

Among the most appreciated and famous exponents of the genre, able to record good sales despite the (voracious) videogame market has literally exterminated many of its peers, the Trivial Pursuit, for some, during the moments of aggregation it has transformed into a real and own custom, similar to the aforementioned Monopoly or the more popular Christmas bingo. The executives of the French publisher and the American toy giant must have thought it was good and right to translate it into a renewed digital version, like Monopoly: Family Fun Pack, and so it was born Trivial Pursuit Live !, a product exclusively designed for the digital market, with an affordable price and for all Sony and Microsoft consoles, both current and old generation. We have whipped the PlayStation 4 version and these are our impressions.

The famous Trivial Pursuit translated into a curious and tight digital TV show!

Different twins

You know the Trivial Pursuit board, with its elegant colored cards, dice and iconic cake-shaped placeholders? Well, forget everything or almost everything, since the videogame transposition of the game created by the three Canadian boys Chris Haney, John Haney and Scott Abbott, conceived in 1979 after a tight challenge to Scrabble, does not present the same dynamics seen in Monopoly: Family Fun Pack and Trivial Pursuit by Electronic Arts (2009), where painstaking replicas of the rules and elements of the board game are re-proposed, but transforms the challenge into a sort of modern television quiz, without however including the bulky presence of the presenter, a meticulous female voice off-screen delegate.

Gone cards, throw of the dice and the board, the only recognizable visual element of the Trivial Pursuit are the circular placeholders, in which, exactly as in the original work, the colored wedges conquered must be positioned by answering exactly the questions, divided into the classic six categories , namely Geography (blue), History (yellow), Art and Literature (brown), Hobby and Sport (orange), Entertainment (pink) and Science (green).

The main menu looks very similar to the one already seen in Monopoly: Family Fun Pack, with a handful of items arranged in comfortable square and rectangular sections; these include access to the Hasbro Channel, online rankings, an overview of the player's profile, the so-called milestones, game options - where you can also consult a simple tutorial - and of course the start of a new game, both offline and online. Usable up to a maximum of four players, with artificial intelligence (in three different difficulty levels) ready to replace any vacant seats, the games can be played at the best of three or five rounds, and the winner is decided based on the number of wedges conquered: whoever arrives first to six wins the challenge directly, however, if the rounds end without a player being able to fill the cake, the winner is whoever has the most wedges or , in case of a tie, who has the highest score. The questions are not proposed according to a univocal scheme, but in six different ways drawn at random, with the exception of the peculiar final round that closes all the games: in Scattista a sequence of multiple choice questions is proposed, where the correct answers earn more points when given in series; in Scambiagoria the players can select in turn the category related to the set of questions, and you get more points by answering exactly those of your selection; Testa a Testa offers a list of items of different "quality", which must be selected and ordered on the basis of a precise reference (for example, countries with more births or cities with higher latitude); Finally, in Surprise Fishing, a board with eight correct and eight wrong answers is proposed, and you alternate to select one box at a time. Surprise Fishing Blitz and Head to Head Blitz are variants of the two basic versions, while the aforementioned Final Round proposes a series of quick questions related to all six categories, in which it is easier to win wedges but also to finish out of the game in case wrong answers.

According to the official press release released by Ubisoft and Hasbro, Trivial Pursuit Live! offers a set of over 1200 questions, more than enough to ensure a good variety in the first few weeks of playnevertheless, as happens in all quiz games, whether digital - like Buzz! and Nat Geo Quiz - or canned, as time goes by questions already seen previously re-emerge, to be supplemented with any expansions. As specified, the title is playable up to a maximum of four players, and offline it is possible to change hands even a single DualShock 4, although this solution involves some limits in the turns that provide for the simultaneous response. It goes without saying that Trivial Pursuit Live! give your best by playing with friends and family on the same sofa, even for a purely "logistical" reason; although online the games are quite fun, tight and extremely competitive, the risk of drawing unfair and unfair opponents is very high. In most cases, in fact, by keeping a device connected to the internet at hand, you have plenty of time to do quick searches with Google, distorting not only the single game, but also the online rankings that can be viewed in the main menu of the game. In short, as it is sadly known, the occasion makes the thief man, and given the spread of cheaters and disloyal people that proliferate in the servers, this detail must also be taken into account, since it is impossible to control or prevent others from cheating. It should also be noted that, at the moment, the servers are not very populated with players, and often you end up playing one-on-one with other lone wolves. Finally, the absence of invitations in matchmaking and the impossibility of creating a private match to play with friends on your list, aspects that force you to face only strangers, can be questioned.

For a handful of wedges

Given the peculiar nature of the game and the rather low price, or 14,99 euros for the latest generation consoles and 9,99 euros for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, we are certainly not in front of a product that aims to show the claws of the Sony flagship, such as the recent and discussed The Order: 1886 by Ready at Dawn, nevertheless it is evident too much lightness placed in its aesthetic component.

If in Monopoly: Family Fun Pack we particularly appreciated the physics of the placeholders and dice, as well as the animated reconstruction of the game board, in Trivial Pursuit Live! the television studio that is the backdrop to the challenge and, above all, the protagonists who populate it, not only sin for style and charisma, but also show the side of some rather evident technical problems. Beyond the annoying and inexplicable drops in frame rate that manifest themselves during the opening shots of the show, the models of the eight available characters are decidedly stingy with polygons, suffer from aliasing, have lackluster textures and feature woody and conceptually dated animations. . Fortunately, however, these are the outline elements in a product of this type, and the screens relating to the questions are instead clear and quick to understand, even for those who have never held a joypad in their life. Too bad that the questions and answers, with the exception of very rare cases, are never accompanied by photographic documentation or video clips, as seen in other similar products; they would undoubtedly have enriched the spectacle and personality of the play experience. The technical picture is completed by simple but effective sound effects, a soundtrack from a classic television quiz and a discreet dubbing in Spanish for the commentator, who emphasizes the various phases of the matches with emphasis. The translation of the questions and answers is also valid, and only on a couple of occasions did we spot a small typo.

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Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 14,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

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6.5

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The result of the collaboration between two entertainment giants, Trivial Pursuit Live! it deviates from the more rigorous digital transpositions of other board games, but transforms the original experience into a kind of modern and fast television quiz. Offered at an advantageous price and with over 1200 questions, the title is enjoyable above all by playing with friends on the same sofa, also (but not only) because online it is all too easy to cheat with a search engine at hand. Too bad for the really subdued technical sector and the vast majority of questions not accompanied by photographic documentation.