Pub Fun Quiz Plus Review

The humble pub quiz used to be a weekly event of dignity and prowess. Ten years ago, it was perhaps the pub quiz that suckled today's TV gameshow masterminds into their geeky greatness.

Not so these days. The pure electrical buzz is palpable as you step into a pub as dozens of internet-ready doodads lurk hidden under tables, preparing to discover any possible answers from the goldmine of useless trivia that is the internet.

Of course, there must be a few teetotal souls whose only aim on such a night out is to offer a salad of electrical stimulation to their cerebellum. For these people, we have Pub Fun Quiz Plus, which essentially tries to replicate the pub quiz scenario without the need for visiting a boozer at all. Questions come in sets of ten, and it's your job to try and get them all right.

You are offered three different game options, which provide you with timed modes alongside the more friendly take-your-time offering. Generally, though, gameplay is much the same. All the questions appear on a fairly blank screen and just get a little beer graphic on the top left and side of the display for company. It's not inspiring, and unfortunately the gameplay is about as sparse as the screen layout.

As mentioned, rounds come in the form of ten questions. However, these sets of ten questions are all the game contains. Once you've done one set, you're just offered another set. No ceremony, and no sense of progression.

The final aim of the game is basically to get all the questions right. Not just in the round of ten, but all the questions the game has to offer. But your goal is not arranged into any satisfying game structure. You actually have to delve into a menu to find out how close you are to this final state of quiz nirvana, and in satisfaction terms it's a bit like reading a dictionary. Distinctly ho-hum.

It's some mitigation that the questions themselves are actually pretty good, although in the end it just makes it seem an even greater pity that the game itself is such a disappointment. You get a wide selection of literature, film, music and sport questions, as well as those that mine the dark depths of your general knowledge.

And unlike some other quiz titles, many of the questions sparkle with that sort of quirkiness that makes you interested in the answer, even when you don't have any idea of it in the first place. The sort of fodder that might pop up in a pub quiz, in other words.

But even if the questions are good, we're looking at Pub Fun Quiz as a game rather than merely a pub quiz handbook, and as such it fails pretty dismally. With sparse presentation, no real game structure and no sense of progression or achievement, Pub Fun Quiz leaves you hankering for a pint, and not in a good way.