Previews// Smarty Pants

During the course of the game, you can obtain some cards and take part in various challenges that will hopefully move some mountains in your favour, if you’re sucking big-time halfway through the match. When the spinner lands on a particular category, it also has the opportunity to give the player an action card that can be played at certain points in the quiz to alter the playing field.

The ones I got to see involved an “I Know That” card that can be used if another player gets to the buzzer first, resulting in a tug-of-war mini-game to see who gets dibs on answering, and an option to remove one incorrect answer from the multiple choice of four to give you a hand. Certain events with the spinner can result in players getting the chance to choose categories; and giving you double points for correct answers.

Two main game modes were on show – although a ‘Single Player’ mode is also going to be added. The two current modes are: ‘Friends’ and ‘Family’. Most of what I’ve just explained covers the ‘Friends’ mode. This pits players against each other in a bid to earn the most points.

The ‘Family’ mode is a co-operative play option, where up to four players can take part in answering as many questions as possible before the timer reaches zero. Correct answers will fill the timer gauge; however, players not answering will also be given orders to carry out to slow down time. These include dancing, swimming and jumping up and down on the spot.

I was also told that more categories are planned, and that each version of the game will be region-specific. For example, categories such as ‘The USA’ will be replaced in European versions as sections about Europe or even each specific to the country of release, depending on how involved EA wants to make this.

Additional challenges to turn the tides of the game have yet to be implemented, but there will be voices to help give Smarty Pants some quiz show-style atmosphere.

As I wasn’t given the definitive number of questions to be shipped with the game (and as this can’t be infinite!), I asked whether the WiiConnect24 system would be used to download more trivia packs later down; unfortunately it doesn’t look like this will be possible in Smarty Pants.

Those gamers who are getting sick and tired of the number of party games coming to Wii won’t be won over by the release of another “non-game”. For what Smarty Pants actually is though – a trivia game not unlike Buzz on PlayStation2 – it seems to be doing a few new and interesting things to make sure the family board game experience can be translated to Wii.