Liverpoool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
That Trivia Game is a quiz game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. The game is the first quiz game to release for PS4 and with it being a quiz game it will naturally receive comparisons to the Buzz Quiz games that released exclusively on PS3 and PSP, so the question must be asked of how it stacks up in comparison to the Buzz Quiz games.
There are six characters to choose from including three males and three females with each of the characters having four styles in which players can choose their own personal preference of colours for the clothes and hair. Players also have the options of providing the character with a name of choice and selecting a buzzer sound for the character, such as an alarm, beep, cow bell, elephant, moo, magic, siren, splat, whistle, quack; lion and much more besides.
There are many categories of questions available to select from including: American History, American Politics, Modern History, Films, Music, Outer Space, Science and Technology, Sports, Television, The Ancient World, The Natural World and much more besides. It should be seen as a great move to see such diversity in categories as it results in there most likely being a set of questions that would be to everyone’s preference, which if anything makes the flow of the game fairer.
The first round is the basic one in which players attempt to answer as many questions correctly as possible with each answer scoring 250 points, although there are four possible responses to choose from and a countdown timer in the bottom right of the screen. At the end of the first round; players are given the opportunity to bet the points they have accumulated from correctly answering questions throughout the round on a single question with the betting being anywhere up to 750 points in which will earn the amount of points back that have bet by answering the question correctly or losing the amount of points by answering incorrectly. This is a great design choice as it provides players or an opponent with the feeling that there is always a chance of catching up at the end of the round, regardless of how far a player is ahead or behind of another; therefore providing a sense of unpredictability to the outcome of each game.
The second round is the countdown round which provides players with some hope if they are unsure about the answer to the question as players can wait for the wrong answers to gradually disappear, although the points that would be earned for answering the question correctly will decrease the longer they wait to answer the question.
The third round is the quick draw round in which the faster players answer the question correctly the more they are rewarded with more points, although the longer they wait until they answer, the fewer points they will receive, which pressurises you into attempting to figure out the correct answer as quickly as humanly possible while always keeping the round feeling alive due to the possibility of gaining a serious amount of points on the leading contestant; regardless if they answer the question correctly for as long as you answer the question quickly and correctly.
The final flash round provides a cycle of possible answers to the question that appear on screen briefly for a couple of seconds before disappearing, although the answer will continue to flash until one of the contestants has answered it correctly. There is a lot of risk in this round; as players will earn 1,000 points for answering a question correctly, but will lose 1,500 points if they answer a question incorrectly, while the player who answers the question first will shut the other player out from answering that question, resulting in the opposition not having an opportunity to gain or lose points if that player is yet to attempt to answer the question.
The end of a game will result in analysis of each player’s performance, such as the total amount of questions answered correctly and incorrectly, alongside the total number of points accumulated for each player throughout the course of the game as the winner of the game is announced; followed by the presentation you would expect at the end of a game show in which the presenter shows his appreciation for the contestants’ participation and showing his excitement in looking forward to the next episode, while the audience will applaud and the contestants politely wave to the cameras.
The humour of the game comes in part from the buzzer sounds that players can choose from when customising the character, while the vast majority of the humour is provided by the host as he has a personality that shines through as would be expected from a game show with catch phrases in between rounds, after category selection and in between questions with such comments as, “Don’t worry about it, someone has to be the loser!” when players answer a question incorrectly, so there are certainly elements of wit and sarcasm coming from the host of the game show.
That Trivia Game supports the share feature that allows you to upload a video or upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as players are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so players still have the chance to decide if they would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between the game footage and the reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.
That Trivia Game supports the remote play feature that allows play to commence on almost any PS4 game on PlayStation Vita via a Wi-Fi internet connection by pairing up the PS4 and Vita via configuring the settings on the PS4 to enable the Vita to connect to it, then entering the code provided from the settings menu on the Vita’s PS4 Link application with the initial setup taking around only two minutes. The game’s performance during remote play is amazing, particularly in regards to the graphics and audio as it performs exactly as you would expect the PS4 version to do so with perfectly mapped controls that replicate that of the DualShock 4 controls. It would be great to see a Vita native version of That Trivia Game with cross-play multiplayer; resulting in Vita vs. PS4 multiplayer or vice versa.
The control scheme is extremely easy to master and does not cover many buttons as players select their answers to each question by pressing the corresponding colour of button during the majority of rounds, such as pressing triangle to select the green answer; pressing O to select the red answer; pressing square to select the purple answer or pressing X to select the blue answer, while pressing X will select the answer of choice during the final flash round, alongside pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu.
Unfortunately, there is no touch pad implementation, which is surprising as it could have been used as an alternative to answering questions with a tap towards the top, left, right or towards the bottom representing the appropriate face button. However, there is light bar implementation as the light bar flashes the standard blue colour during character selection before turning a light blue colour for every controller being used within the game, although the light bar of the controller of the player that is tasked with selecting the category of questions for the upcoming round will turn a flashing green, then back to a light blue colour, while correctly answering a question will turn the light bar a flashing green and an incorrectly answered question will turn the light bar a red colour. The DualShock 4 controller vibrates heavily as players have to choose the category before the start of each round, which is a great design choice as it emphasises the pressure on the player who needs to select the category in regards to that player needing to choose a category of questions that best suits their own level of knowledge.
The graphics are simplistic, while having their own cartoon style to them and a range of expressions that show the emotions of the contestants when they have answered a question correctly or incorrectly, which if anything works together in harmony to provide some charm to the game as the host, contestants and studio set look exactly as players might believe them to do so if they were presented as a cartoon game show.
The presentation of the game is minimalist with a very small number of menus before getting directly into the game and remains solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, character selection and answer selections during gameplay with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The background of the menu screens consist of what players would expect the backstage of a game show to look like with big television screens with people making sure that the quiz programme is produced as well as it can be as a director provides instructions.
The audio consists of a voice-over from the host of the game show as he introduces the quiz and each round asks questions and makes comments regarding the selection of categories and the performance, cheering from the audience and the chosen buzzer sounds, alongside incidental music, which collectively forms the audio that players would most likely expect to hear during a quiz show on television. Unfortunately, there is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation, which is surprising as it could have produced the audio for the incidental music in the build-up to the start of the game, during category selections and at the end of the game; the voice-overs from the host throughout the course of the game; cheering from the audience or the buzzer sounds from each contestant or perhaps even a mixture of particular optional combinations of audio.
The trophy list includes eight trophies with four bronze, two silver and two gold. The trophy list for That Trivia Game is rather easy, so there are not exactly any difficult trophies to mention as players will more than likely earn all of the prizes pretty quickly, especially with the aid of online research via a search engine. As long as players achieve the Perfect Game gold trophy for answering every question correctly in an entire game, then they should actually earn every trophy the game has to offer, such as the Awesome Player gold trophy for earning 12,500 points in a single game; the Double Flawless silver trophy for answering all of the questions in two consecutive rounds; the Beat The Computer bronze trophy for beating an opponent controlled by artificial intelligence; and the Four-In-A-Row bronze trophy for answering four questions correctly in a row. However, there are a couple of trophies that may be missed unless paying full attention to the requirements of the trophy list, such as the Fast Quick Draw silver trophy for correctly answering a Quick Draw question within one second of the question being asked and the Big Spender bronze trophy for winning a bet of 750 points on a question. It is estimated that depending upon knowledge and a good trophy guide or research skills to provide some helpful tips that this would be the quickest 100% of a trophy list that could be achieved as it would take around fifteen minutes to 100% the trophy list.
The local multiplayer is effectively a reproduction of the single player game for between two to four players, although there is no method of having two human controlled contestants against two A.I. contestants, which is a rather odd omission. However, despite that omission; the local multiplayer is perfect for friends and family and is a game that people will join in and play, regardless of whether they have never played a game or are casual or hardcore gamers.
However, there is no online multiplayer, which is surprising as if no one lives locally then players will have no choice other than to pit their wits against the A.I. controlled contestants. There are no online leaderboards, resulting in there being no rankings of who has won the highest amount of games, who has answered the most questions correctly or the total accumulation of points. There are also no customisable and sharable quizzes, which was a huge and quite popular feature for the Buzz Quiz games on PS3.
The artificial intelligence is more than capable of providing a challenge by answering questions correctly, but in an appropriate balance where players are not going to find the A.I. answering every single question correctly in record time and leaving the solo performer in the dust before the first or second round is over, so there is an element of realism in the regard that would not expect a human to know everything or answer every question correctly. However the level of the artificial intelligence cannot be adjusted, so if players are not too good at their trivia and are still learning, then they may have to persevere.
The lack of any online functionality collectively builds to leave room for improvement regarding the replay value, although there are still positives as there are six characters to choose from each with their own character customisation, some variety in the layers of rounds, while there are plenty of questions and lots of categories of questions to choose from with local competitive multiplayer.
Overall, That Trivia Game offers up some great fun in single player against A.I. or in local competitive multiplayer for two to four players, which provides perfect fun for friends and family. Despite the lack of any online functionality; it must be said regarding what That Trivia Game does deliver is a great, entertaining quiz experience even during single player with more than a fair share of categories and questions to make everyone happy and at a respectable price of just £7.99; That Trivia Game is a quiz night that most certainly should not be missed!
Jason Bonnar
Analysis
- Title: That Trivia Game
- Developer: Happy Dance Games
- Publisher: The Game Room
- System: PS4
- Format: PSN Download
- Cross Buy: No
- Cross Play: No
- Players: 2-4 Players Local Competitive Multiplayer
- Hard Drive Space Required: 923MB