Cheggers' Party Quiz (Wii) Review

Starring the allegedly ever-lovable Keith ’Cheggers’ Chegwin, Cheggers’ Party Quiz is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a quiz game, and it’s designed to be played at parties, or at least by a few people with nothing better to do. There are no huge fanfares about the whole thing, there aren’t a large amount of Wii specific features - it’s just a basic, but solid, quiz game. Chegwin plays host in the quiz via a series of tiny cut scenes between each round of questions, wherein he introduces each round and makes random comments. Sometimes disturbingly about how he’s not wearing any trousers. And, as the CG model shows, he isn’t…

The questions are centred around the entertainment industry, so music, TV and films mainly. Apparently there are thousands of questions contained in the package, but unfortunately quite a few of them seem to tread very similar themes and are slightly adjusted. The variety of round types is pretty good though. If you play a long game you get the full repertoire of rounds, which include basic multiple choice questions that you answer by tapping the corresponding d-pad direction or by pointing and tapping A, rounds where you have to buzz in before you get a chance to answer (thus enabling you to block others from answering even if you don‘t know the answer yourself, like an annoying git), rounds where you have to guess who’s in the slowly-revealing picture…you get the idea. You can also opt for short and medium games if you have less time on your hands, which cut out some of the rounds.

Obviously, this isn’t a game that’s designed with single player in mind. Disappointingly, there isn’t even an option to have AI opponents play against you, or fill in any missing slots if you don’t have four players/teams. As you can imagine, sitting alone and playing it is tantamount to being one of the most boring experiences ever, and so you really need to have friends/people you can pay to pretend to be your friends around if you’re going to get anything out of the game whatsoever. Luckily for us, we managed to rope a couple of people into playing with us and so experienced it as intended - thankfully it was much more enjoyable with people around rather than when we just tested it sitting alone like sad people with no friends. One of the players, of the distinctly very-casual-gamer moniker was impressed with the game, as was our other lab-rat who has slightly more experience in gaming. Fairly wide appeal, then, if you fancy a quiz game. However, they both raised the issue of the variety of questions; play it a few times and you start to pick up answers fairly quickly.

In terms of Wii features, Cheggers’ Party Quiz doesn’t go out of its way to include them but makes satisfying usage. To ‘buzz in’ in the rounds where you have to, raise that Wii remote quickly. The Wii remote’s speaker lets out your buzzer sound. You can point at answers. Nothing overwhelmingly brilliant, but solid. That pretty much sums up all of Cheggers’ Party Quiz - despite claiming to be the ultimate quiz game, it falls short. They could have chucked in some video clip questions, some ‘guess the tune’ things (though that might have involved Keith having a little sing-song, so it’s perhaps best it didn’t happen…), they could have chucked in some extra little mini-game things to break up the questions, but they haven’t. We’re not too sure on the choice of host either. Keith Chegwin is mildly funny but can get irritating with his screeching and random babble; inoffensive for the most part, but there were probably better choices. We are left with a title that is worth a play if you have a few friends and if you can get it on the cheap, but not something that is going to bowl people over. Basic, satisfactory fun.