Quiz Wiz is Tiger's entry into the "trivial pursuit" category, bearing a strong family resemblance to the grandfather of irreverent Q&A games, You Don't Know Jack. Pretty standard as far as such games go, you are presented with 5 categories (Sports, Famous People, Film & TV, General Knowledge, and Potpourri) from which to draw potential questions. To liven the trivia up, the game is "hosted" by a wise-cracking fellow, aptly named "Wise Guy". Up to three players can take turns answering (or guessing) at the various questions put forth, with Wise Guy interjecting witty comments as the game proceeds. Unfortunately, the concept of the game sounds much better than the actual execution. Quiz Wiz fails to be entertaining on nearly on levels, from the quickly-annoying presence of Wise Guy to the extremely dry questions offered. Your virtual host just isn't humorous, offering up such lackluster comments as "No way!" and "You are a winner!", made all the more annoying by the sheer repetitiveness. Every answer, whether right or wrong, pops up Wise Guy to comment on your skill (or lack thereof). If the comments were somewhat witty, or if there a few more than the half-dozen or so offered, Quiz Wiz might not have became annoying as quickly as it did. As for the questions, they are uninspired and downright uninteresting. Compared with YDKJ, which always managed to put a humorous spin on its questions, those of Quiz Wiz appear copied verbatim right out of an encyclopedia or dictionary. While the oft-sexually themed questions of YDKJ would be inappropriate for the Com, injecting a little life into the queries would have helped this title immensely. The 5 categories (more like 4 - potpourri appears to be a mixing of the others) are generally targeted at the 20-something audience, with an unusual number of soap opera questions appearing in seemingly all the categories. Quiz Wiz offers several options of gameplay, some of which help hide its defects. Thankfully, you are allowed to turn off the host commentary, but that leaves you with nothing but the dry questions to entertain yourself. In this case, I suppose its the lesser of two evils. You can have up to 3 players in the game, but part of the fun of such Q&A games is "buzzing in" before your opponents - Quiz Wiz is purely turn-based, offering you no opportunity to guess at questions your friends got wrong. Graphics-wise, Quiz Wiz does well enough to accomplish its job. The animations of Wise Guy are somewhat jerky, but messing up the text-based interface would have proved most difficult. The sound effects are fair, with Wise Guy constantly spouting off one phrase or another - which will rapidly annoy even the most stoic of gamers. There is some problem with sound timing, as there are several Wise Guy animations where the proper sounds occur too soon or too late in the movement (blowing a whistle, to have the sound occur 2 seconds later). Nothing particularly poor about the graphics & sound, but then again, nothing particularly grand either. Quiz Wiz, with its numerous faults, earns a negative review. If you're looking for a good multiplayer Com game, pick up Henry, which is leagues beyond what Quiz Wiz manages to achieve. For an illustration on how to do such a gameshow right, pick up a copy of YDKJ for your PC and give it a try.
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