Trivial Pursuit Live!

Genre: Party Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local, Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

Trivial Pursuit Live!, originally released on multiple platforms in 2015 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018, is a Party Game that reimagines the classic board game as a game show, meaning that players expecting a digitized version of that board game may be disappointed. However, I tend to take the view that the board game’s “roll and go” style of gameplay is antiquated, so a reimagining of the formula is welcome… as long as it’s done right.

The presentation here is… awkward. Players have one of a limited number of human avatars rendered in 3D, but every last one of them is… kinda’ creepy-looking. The game show they find themselves in is similarly presented in 3D, which looks fine, I suppose. This is paired with an energetic but forgettable soundtrack, and an announcer whose dialogue sounds cringe-inducingly stilted and awkward.

As for the trivia itself, it’s fairly straightforward, although some of the subsets of games do make things interesting, such as by having players rush to pick the answer closest to the correct one. Unfortunately, while the game holds the pretense of the imagery associated with the board game, it seems to have little else related to it. In particular, this game ditches the requirement that a player have “wedges” of every color, thus demonstrating a well-rounded breadth of trivial knowledge. In fact, one wonders why they even call this game “Trivial Pursuit” at all, as all this game ultimately has in common with its namesake are the iconic multicolored wedges themed after six trivia categories.

However, it’s more than a lack of faithfulness that plagues this game. Trivial Pursuit Live! really pushes a “reverse slippery slope”, in that contests like these give a huge advantage to whoever is in the rear, often making the whole thing seem less like a test of skill and more up to the random chance that whoever’s in the rear will know the answer to the question or not, thus thrusting them ahead again. As if to make this stuff more pointless, the “final round” questions are worth so very much more than the earlier ones as to render those earlier efforts nearly pointless. Suffice it to say, there are some huge balancing issues here.

To its credit, I will say that this version of the game makes good use of the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen, which I will argue makes this the ideal way to play the game. Oh, and in regards to its online support, I was able to find a few players online, but suffice it to say the games I played were spotty, and I’m pretty sure half the players were bots who took over for players who abandoned the game.

In the end, Trivial Pursuit Live! is a Party Game that will likely disappoint fans of the board game, but will also likely disappoint players looking for a balanced Party Game too. It’s not terrible, but there are definitely some serious flaws here, and players looking for a nice casual game to play with friends may find this one to be a bit lacking.

tl;dr – Trivial Pursuit Live! Is a Party Game that is really only loosely inspired by the classic board game, instead playing more like a trivia game show. However, even on its own merits, this game has some pretty severe balancing issues that keep it from being as fun as it could have been. The result is a game that seems likely to disappoint just about everyone.

Grade: C-

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