Smarty Pants - Surprisingly Awesome

Blaine

Blaine

CAGiversary!
My fiance bought me a stack of games for christmas, included in the pile of titles I've specifically asked for was Smarty Pants. It stayed shrink wrapped until we went to a party last night... but it turned out to be amazingly fun.

If you don't like board games, you probably won't like it at all. But if you're into Cranium or Apples to Apples or Trival Pursuit - Smarty Pants is a perfect storm of video and board games.

The questions are diverse (including the first time I've ever seen genuinely good video game trivia questions - ranging from Mortal Kombat, Legacy of Kain, Command and Conquer, The Sims, Half Life... old school and new school games and not just Nintendo games) and the play of the boardgame is very balanced.

A few of the features seemed a little unnecessary (dancing for bonus points) but it certainly doesn't detract from the game.

One of the nicest features (when using 'wagering') is that all of the players participate in a shooting gallery with positive and negative values that will determine how much the chosen catagory will be worth. Invariably, 3 out of the 4 people would be screaming "Aim for negatives!!" when one of the players speciality was coming up.

I think the MSRP is $50 which makes it sorta dicey. A lot of reviewers panned it for it's price. A good boardgame tends to cost $40, sometimes more. So if that turns you off, that's understandable.

For a party game, which usually means 'mini games' these days and on the Wii particularly... Smarty Pants is certainly one of the best group games to come along in a while.
 
Sounds like fun, but I already have Warioware, Ghost Squad and RRR2. Plus a friend who I normally end up playing Wii with has Strikers so pretty good on the party games. However, sounds like fun.
 
Interesting. I really hadn't heard much about Smart Pants -- now I'm way more interested in it. Thanks, OP.
 
Gameinformer just agreed in their january issue. Said the $50 price was a bit steep but it was like Trivial pursuit Cranium type game.

I will be getting this one, and thanks for the write up. The amazon price is not bad!
 
Hmm I'll have to look into this. Any idea how many trivia questions it has? I don't want to drop $50 if it's going to run out of questions in a few hours...
 
Just picked this up at Best Buy for $29.99. I've been playing Scene It? with the family, but my 11 yo doesn't know much about older movies. This should be better for her, I hope.
 
[quote name='SilverPaw750']Hmm I'll have to look into this. Any idea how many trivia questions it has? I don't want to drop $50 if it's going to run out of questions in a few hours...[/quote]

20,000 if I remember correctly. It also tracks them so there shouldn't be many repeats unless you play it a ton of times.

[quote name='Kosh']Just picked this up at Best Buy for $29.99. I've been playing Scene It? with the family, but my 11 yo doesn't know much about older movies. This should be better for her, I hope.[/quote]

The game allows you to enter the ages of the players and then tailors the questions to each player based on their age group.
 
[quote name='lebowsky']

The game allows you to enter the ages of the players and then tailors the questions to each player based on their age group.[/quote]

only in family mode I think.
 
yep, picked this up for $28 on black friday at target... love it. played a lot over the holidays with family. we had a blast. great trivia game.

i think the msrp is $50, but most places seem to charge $40 for it (not sure why) and there seems to always be a sale (like now) for $30, and it's definitely worth that.

my ONLY complaint is that single player mode is... virtually absent. it's only a practice mode, which is understandable really. but none of the questions you answer work toward your profile. i'd like the profile to be fleshed out a bit more, more stats, etc. and have it so you can build on that in single player... not sure what building on the profile would do, other than stroke your ego, but it would seem more... complete.

regardless... awesome game!
 
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