Hasbro Trivial Pursuit DVD

Trivial Pursuit is back, bigger and better than ever. Better still, it's interactive!

Well, sort of. There is a DVD. It is interactive. But unfortunately, you don't get to use it often and when you do, you'll more than likely be seeing the same questions, over and over again.

Trivial Pursuit DVD is very similar to as the normal version of this popular trivia board game. You still get your scoring token, which contains six pieces that you have to fill by answering questions corresponding to different categories. For those who haven't played before, the object of the game is to fill this token with scoring wedges. Wedges are received when you land on a wedge space and correctly answer the corresponding question.

It's fairly simple. You roll the die, move to the amount shown on the die and when you land on a space, you pick a question from a category of your choice using the included question cards. There are six categories of questions to choose from; Television, Trends, Gossip, Music, Film and Sport and Games, so there should be something for everyone. There are six spaces on the board which provide an opportunity to gain a wedge space and when you land on one of these, you must answer a question from the colour coded category shown on the board.

The main difference between the DVD version of the game and the standard version is when you land on a wedge space, you are required (at least according to the manual) to answer a question from the DVD, rather than the box of question cards. This sounds fine in theory but note this; there are 3600 questions in the box of cards and just 150 questions on the DVD. Yes, only 150 questions! This means you'll more than likely be seeing the same questions over and over again. After playing this game more than once, you'll easily be able to memorise the questions on the DVD, which simply ruins the experience. We guarantee that after a couple of plays, you'll stop using the DVD and simply use the question cards - where the chance of getting repeat questions is highly unlikely.

It's a major disappointment, especially considering that the DVD functions are quite intuitive. There's five types of questions that are randomly selected; audio clips, video clips, matching puzzles, scrambled puzzles and newspaper headlines. Our favourite was definitely the video clips, especially for the Sport and Games category. More often than not, you'll be played a clip of a famous sporting event and then asked a question relating to the footage. We did notice however, that the questions on the DVD are much easier than the cards. Also, the scrambled puzzle question seems to appear quite a lot more than the other DVD items; it gets very repetitive after a short while.

The DVD is very functional and easy to use; it only requires the arrow keys and the enter key on your DVD remote control. The interface depicts a large scoring token and you use the arrow keys to navigate to the different categories. There isn't much in the way of interaction though - the cut scenes between the menus are largely uninspiring and after two or three questions, you'll be sick of hearing and seeing them. When you finally fill your token and win the game, there is a small and largely boring fireworks display shown, but they have failed to even bother extending their congratulations

Overall, we don't think Trivial Pursuit DVD is worth the extra money, as you'll more than likely ban the DVD from your games after a very short time. Stick to the standard version of the game; that is, until they improve the interaction.