Review: It's Quiz Time – PS4

Whenever my friends and/or family are over there is one thing that reigns supreme: party games. The likes of Cards Against Humanity, Jackbox Games, and That’s You rule our get together time. Very little has impeded upon this sacred of occasions and most of the time a new activity gets booted to the curb upon introduction. Sorry Joking Hazard. So when I received a review copy of Snap Finger Click’s latest title, It’s Quiz Time, I was curious to see where the experience would pan out. Once the day of Christmas rolled around I brought out this new addition to buddies and relatives alike. What could have easily been a dry, trivia game turned into a layered and addicting good time. No other entertainment form of any kind was touched for close to five hours.
It’s Quiz time is a digital trivia romp hosted by Salli, a sassy, sarcastic, and passive aggressive A.I., who makes up the heart of a game that has over four thousand categories and twenty seven thousand questions. Her personality, quips, and zingers mostly come from the developer’s foresight into play mechanics. At the beginning of a game, with new people, you are asked how to pronounce your name and what year were you born. This will place certain questions and facts into an order so everyone will at some point have the opportunity to know any given answer. However, this takes a backseat to the aforementioned sassiness. Salli’s character traits caused my grandmother to call her “mean” and my wife to flip her off multiple times. It’s all in good spirit of course, but by god can this artificial woman throw some serious shade.

 
Each full game is played with up to eight people in six different rounds. You’ll do typical stuff like answer what’s correct and what’s not to a question, but the magic is in the way this is performed. There’s a whole range of different modes to earn points and claim rights as winner such as: predicting if a player actually answers a question correctly, vocally describing parts of a subject, putting things into order based on another person’s preferences, seeing if people know one another’s interests, the leader facing off against the entire crowd, and of course the tried and true way of trivia question asking. The order and type of round are randomized each game and definitely help keep the experience fresh in this regard. Some will last longer than others and effect the pace of things differently. Don’t worry about staleness though because you saw how much content is in this game above. So far we’ve only seen similarly asked questions which we deduced the answers from down the line.
The very final round will make or break your desire to win. Here fifteen questions are asked that give you more points the quicker you answer, but take away that amount of points if you end up being wrong. So a very close race can easily devolve into a landslide victory or vice versa. Sometimes this final challenge might seem game breaking if one person or a few get extremely lucky. There’s no big downside here except when you lead the whole game only to settle for fifth place. Like any good party game, the ending reveals a bunch of statistics on those who played. Normal stats like quickest answer and most wrong answers are to be expected.

 
It’s Quiz Time also appears to be doing its best to be topical. There’s an event playlist that features a 2017 edition with questions, in the formats I described, relating to what happened this past year. So the base game may refer all the way back to B.C.E. days, but no one has to really feel left out at any given time. Plus, I can only assume the ‘Coming Soon’ slots will have more seasonal playlists as time goes on. Additionally, you can create your own playlist to have certain round types in a specific order if you truly wish. I haven’t dabbled with this too much yet, but it’s certainly a nice feature. Another game mode involves running through the title solo. Here you answer thirty straight questions while trying to get the highest score. The mode runs in the same vein as the traditional final round, so expect to lose points if you give the incorrect answer. Lastly, the streaming mode allows people to play against the internet at large. It isn’t as in-depth as the offline portion, but still fun nevertheless. More of a basic trivia experience if you will.
 
Other notable aspects are the settings. You can turn on a family safe mode and alter the game/questions to certain countries and languages. So sports stars in the United States questions will differ than say in Britain. Not to mention the social media sharing capabilities as well. There will be many times one has the chance to share their feats or failures to their social accounts. I myself shared one that detailed how I got every question wrong in a round. #IgnoranceIsBliss. The only weird mechanical part is using a room code to join a game on the already downloaded app. Probably has something to do with using 3G/4G so everyone isn’t slowed down on one internet source.
It’s Quiz Time will provide wonderful moments for hours. Sadly, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Our passive aggressive Salli can be a little robotic and is very apparent at times. Some of her movements can be stiff and animations are affected because of it. There were other moments when she mispronounced words or numbers like Roman Numerals. LI (51) was pronounced as “Lee.”  Also, for some reason she called my wife Lois on multiple occasions despite having said her name correctly before. All of this wrapped up in a bow could be described as a little too procedurally generated, but the fun never really suffers due to it.

It's Quiz Time PS4 Review

• 9/10
  Overall - Must Buy - 9.0/10

9/10

Summary

Snap Finger Click is home to some of the old school Buzz! creators – and it shows. It’s Quiz Time is a wonderful addition to the PlayStation 4 and any trivia buff’s library. The questions and structure of any given game are appreciatively tiered and offer a lot of fun. Just be prepared for the host’s dialogue to insult everyone and to lose trust in those we thought knew us best. The unexpected custom and event playlists add even more replayability and streamers can find something in here as well. Now I have to go watch Salli tell my wife that questions from the Bronze Age might help her do better in her “old age.”