Trivial Pursuit 1+1 Megapack

Boardgames are always tricky propositions to make into video games, the main reasons being that throwing a dice and moving an icon around a board is quite boring when done virtually, and also that - unless you're sitting around a television and, say, a PlayStation 2 with three other people - they tend to lose their primary purpose. After all, bankrupting an AI character when it lands on your hotel in Mayfair is never going to be as much fun as bankrupting your little brother.

A mobile phone is probably the most difficult gaming platform to convert your humble boardgame onto of the lot. That's because there's no chance of introducing some fun gameshow style buzzers, a la Buzz. And it's also a trickier prospect than, say, DS to work in some sort of Bluetooth compatible multiplayer. You're limited then to a virtual board and dice and passing your phone from one player to the next, which - as Trivial Pursuit 1+1 ably demonstrates - results in a game that's about as exciting as watching a chess championship on TV.

Of course, Trivial Pursuit is a classic boardgame, renowned for having a vast library of questions to test your intellect. And this game offers two of them in one - the Genus Edition and Music Edition. In the former, all sectors of your general knowledge are tested with six categories of question - Art & Literature, Geography, Sport & Leisure, History, Entertainment and Science & Nature. The Music Edition meanwhile sticks to questions about rappers' real names, who dissed who at the Brits, and which boy bands trashed various classic songs.

It should be able to deliver some degree of entertainment value, then, on its questions alone. And this is indeed the case. The hundreds of questions included in these two games will more than keep the average brainiac happy on the move.

The problem is, well, everything else. Trivial Pursuit's presentation is weak and decidedly lacking in any sort of frills whatsoever. Everything from the title menu to the blocky, slow-moving board offer functionality and nothing more.

There's also the problem of playing alone. Trivial Pursuit might be a good general knowledge test, but as a boardgame it's pretty bland. You simply throw the dice and try to land on one of the board's six squares which contain wedges for you to win. Once you have all six wedges, you try to land on the board's central hexagon and answer one final question to win. However, rolling the right number to land on these squares can take some time. Time which, when you're playing alone, you could do without spending moving back, forth, and back again.

What the game needed was something more quick-fire for a single player mode. And it tries to deliver that with its Time Attack game - where you answer questions against the clock for points and only have five lives. But for some unfathomable reason, the board is still used in this mode. You still have to throw the dice to try to land on the appropriate square, although any square will win you the wedge. This mode's bonus round - where you answer six quick-fire questions bonus points is what's needed as its own play mode.

The whole thing is slow, visually poor and quickly becomes tedious. The only saving grace here is the multiple choice questions, which will suck in any quiz addict. But it's at the cost of your sanity as you repeatedly throw the dice and manoeuvre around a featureless board trying for the tenth time to land on the Science & Nature wedge. It might be Trivial Pursuit, but on mobile it's no classic.