I decided to have my friends over to play Smarty Pants on the Wii the other day. Now, there's something you should know about my friends; they aren't trivia players by nature. They believe that what is good in life is to crush your enemies to see them driven before you, you know, the basics. So when I first invited them over for trivia on the Wii, they came to it rather skeptically. They rolled their eyes and complained about other trivia games they'd played. Within moments of starting up the Wii, all the complaints were gone, and they were hooked.
In solo and family modes, you race the clock to correctly answer questions before the timer expires. The solo mode really didn't hold up on its own for me. The game doesn't save your solo progress, so each time, you play based on whatever age (skill level) you put. Now, I know a few more books and little more science than the average person my age. But I am also pretty clueless when it comes to sports, and I stare at the screen and try and figure out if they mean football Giants or Baseball Giants ... or if there is some not Giants team I've not seen before. So the challenge wasn't enjoyable. Also, because your age doesn't change often, you're pulling from a much smaller set of questions and start to see repeats.
Playing in family mode, you take turns answering while the other players yell support and suggestions (not required) and "Dance," "Wave" and "Shake" their Wii controllers to slow down the timer (OK, so also not required, but at my house, you don't want to be caught being the punk who cost us the game!). If you get four in a row, you also can be eligible for a bonus minigame for extra time! These are fun, but they’re not the reason we love the game. I don't play Wii so I can play on my own, and I don't know about your friends, but mine don't want to play to be helpful.
Now remember, my friends are in this for the bragging rights and for the trash talk, the putdowns and the comeback stories. When they come over, we select our Miis and move right over to a "friends" game. Then we have a few choices: How long a game do we want (determines the number of rounds), and do we want points to be determined by how fast you answer (countdown) or by a shooting gallery of moving positive and negative point targets?
If we're in a hurry, we'll pick countdown because it's simple and fair. All questions are worth the same, and the points drop if you take too long to answer. Wager takes longer because each player gets a turn for each round and each turn gets its own wager. But if you want to play for excitement and heartbreak, this is the only way to go. On the low end, questions will always be worth 500 points (even if you manage to drive the wager negative), but on the high end, you can push it up into thousands of points for each question, making powerful leads for those who answer right and eating entire banks for those who choose poorly.
The competitive mode also brings in the FLAMING SPINNER OF DEATH. OK, so there is neither flame nor death, but it does spin. Grab your remote and spin; there is a top and bottom section to the spinner. Then you (and everyone else) wave your remote and try to “nudge” the spinner onto your favorite category. On the bottom, you're aiming for trivia categories you're good at (or at least your friends are worse at). Watch out for the pitfalls of landing on the "Player X Chooses" tiles. On top of the spinner are "cards." On your spin, if you line up the spinner with a card, it's yours!
Cards are the gateway to minigames. Some cards don't require minigames. "Narrow it down" just removes one option. "That's too easy" lets you battle it out for a harder question for your opponent. Around my house, that means any time my girlfriend manages to get Art or Fashion questions. There also is an extra points card in which you have to do the "double point dance" (wave your Wii-mote around) for the chance to multiply your answers by how well you danced before the round.
Since the game constantly adjusts questions based on how well you answer in that category, every player's question will be at a different skill level. So people who become good at manipulating the spinner can push the game in their favor. With about 20,000 questions and everyone at different skill levels, you've got a lot of playtime. The categories include the following: Books, Science, Art, Fashion, People and Places, Entertainment, Sports, and Game.
Smarty Pants is enjoyable as a casual trivia game. It has a good "You're in a family game show" kinda feel to it, but much friendlier than say, You Don't Know Jack. Don't get this game to play alone; the solo mode was amusing once, but the amusement wore off quickly. Because of the broad base of questions and with the game tracking your skill, this is a great game for people who don't normally like trivia games. Additionally, the nontrivial skills of influencing category choice and point values mean that it isn't always the person who knows the most who wins: It's that damn smarty pants who knows which questions really matter.
