Anticipation Review

This is a review that I just know you’ve been eagerly awaiting. All a quiver with something or other.

So. Small history lessons. Back when we had out local video/game rental place this game was prominently displayed on the top shelf of the NES section. Something about it really just made me not want to rent it or play it ever in my life. Maybe it was all the collars on all the shirts. I didn’t appreciate collars back then, and I wouldn’t have appreciated this game back then either.

But I’m older now. I like a good collar on a shirt, and I like a good mashup of Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and something else I can’t think of. That’s what this is all about.

There is no plot for this game. It’s a board game. I will not add nor take away points for this. Solve puzzles faster than everyone else and you win. Boom. Easy. Done.

Puzzles is what this is all about. You move on a Trivial Pursuit styled board. Each color is a different category, and you need one “wedge” of each color to progress from one level of this 3d board. You roll a die, you get a number, you land on a color. The game then begins to play a game on connect the dots for you. Every player gets the chance to buzz in and enter their guess as to what the image is. Whoever gets it right, gets the wedge. There is a time limit while the computer draws the picture and the amount of time left (it’s another die counting down from 6), is how many spaces you’ll move if you answer the puzzle correctly. So if you need a pink wedge and are on a blue puzzle and the blue tile is 4 spaces away, you’ll want to try and answer the question when there’s a 4 on the die. So there’s some thinking that has to go into it.

There’s not much to be said in terms of graphics. You have little Monopoly style tokens that are your representation in the game and they look sufficiently board gamey. The board itself is just colored tiles in a black void. When the computer is doing the drawing the graphics are also equally mediocre, but you can usually tell what everything is supposed to represent. It’s a tree, or a shoe, or a clock, or numbers or letters or whatever. Award winning? No. Perfect for what it is? Absolutely.

The music is amazing. It’s really got that game show vibe to it. Short little tracks that fit the puzzle themes perfectly. Nice opening music, winning music, all of it. Like above, is this going to be a soundtrack to praise the Gods with? No. Is it perfect for this game? Yes.

So, all that said… is this a good game? Totally. Is it a ton of fun? Hells yeah. Should you and some friends get together and play it? Right now. My one and only critique I think is that the rounds are a little short. There are three levels to the board game and after the third it’s game over. A fourth I think would be even better.