Austin Powers--Operation: Trivia
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
It's pop culture trivia, baby, and it freaks me out!
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You don't hear that every day.
Austin Powers Operation: Trivia borrows much of its format and style from Berkeley Systems' You Don't Know Jack series, but adds that Austin Powers flair. Your computer becomes a game show, complete with buzzers, categories, questions, and the all-important charismatic host. You will team up with either Austin or Dr. Evil in their respective quests to save or destroy the world.
Operation: Trivia is all about presentation. Its design is utterly Austin Powers, from the psychedelic backgrounds to the hallucinogenic animated transitions between questions. The sound, from the groovy tunes to the clever sound bites, entertains as it invokes that late-'60s mood. Playing is a simple matter of using the keyboard to buzz in and choose questions and answers.
The pop culture-oriented questions range from common knowledge to obscure headlines. Four styles of play add variety to the game, but the predictable pattern of the questions tends to get tiring. Despite the game's large database of questions, questions begin repeating after playing the game a few times, and knowing the answers ruins its competitiveness. (Playing this game alone is about as much fun as being placed in a burlap sack and beaten with reeds. Operation: Trivia is about getting a few friends together and laughing at each other's ignorance of pop culture.)
On the other hand, the game comes with so many sound bites that each new game has a new intro narration, a new ending, and new responses from Dr. Evil and Austin Powers--most of them by an authentic Colin Mahan--to the players' actions. I've played the Windows version of this Windows/Mac hybrid many, many times and I have yet to hear the same opening or ending narration twice. And it's worth it to play through the game just to hear what happens at the end.
Austin Powers Operation: Trivia is a party game, pure and simple, and Austin Powers fans will love it. But if you play on your own, or bristle when you hear the word "shagadelic," this one's not your bag, baby.
