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.