Global Pursuit

This game by National Geographic was entertaining, but overly complex. I also came away thinking that I didn't learn much about geography, since it is more of a puzzle-building exercise, than one which requires map knowledge.

Each time you match a map piece in your hand to the one building on the table, you are asked a question. If you get it right, you get a chip. You continue until you run out of cards or answer incorrectly. You then replace the cards you played and play continues clockwise. An unecessary complexity is that there are three categories of question, each worth a different number of points.

Initially, we played thinking the questions were worth 3, 2, and 1 chip, but it turns out they were worth 20 (blue), 10 (yellow), and 1 (white). The 20-10-1 scenario makes it hardly worthwhile to choose the easy questions, since it turns out they are not noticeably less difficult.

I think what I really want to do in a trivia game is ask and answer questions, and the reason this game was not great, is because there was too much other stuff in the way. Since it turns out the other stuff wasn't teaching me anything, and there was no strategy thanks to the ranking system, it felt like busywork that detracted from the fun of asking and answering questions.

I liked Global Pursuit, but didn't love it.

Global Pursuits

We kicked off our game program with National Geographic's Global Pursuit -- a circa 1987 Trivial Pursuit knockoff.  I like trivia games and I like geography so I was hopeful for this.  And I won so that's good.  But really, this game is too complicated; eliminate one or two elements and it could be a really good game.

Here's the gist:  there are five sets of map cards.  You mix them up and deal cards to each player.  You can either make one big map or five separate ones -- we chose that options.  You role a 12-side die to see who goes first and I'm not sure there's any other use for the die.  One map card from each of the separate categories is placed face-up on the table -- and you need a big playing surface because these maps get big.  Then the first person  matches a card in their hand to an edge of one on the table.  Then they are asked a question from a trivia card matching the color of the map the used.  Each card has three levels of questions leading to three different amounts of points: level one (easy) is one point, level two is more and so on.

Okay, by now you probably see how crazy this all is.  Too much stuff. Too many details.  I just want to play a trivia game and maybe learn a thing a or two.  And this isn't even all of the rules/procedures.  No wonder nobody ever heard of this game.  No wonder I found it at a thrift store.

Yes I won.  Woohoo!  Thing is, I only answered three questions right.  Other people answered more questions correctly but I chose only hard questions so I got twenty points per question as opposed to 1 point per question.  And the two easy questions I chose were hard! --Stephanie