Customer Reviews

University Games Pointless The Board Game

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Being a great fan of the TV show, I was looking forward to the board game.

Luckily it doesn't dissapoint.

It is easy to setup and has 4 rounds that closely follows the format of the TV version, with up to 4 teams playing.

Minor gripes (that stop this being rated as 5 stars):

1. The board I find unnecessary as it is just as easy to keep a running score using the score pads provided (maybe the addition of an electronic scoreboard with the usual TV sound effects would have been better).

2. As already mentioned in other reviews, anyone who would be interested in this game will almost certainly have been a regular viewer of the TV show. So the fact that all the questions have been taken from the first 2 series of the show is a let down, and a bit of a cop out from University Games. As even I am able to remember some answers. Surely they could have mixed these up with new questions just for the board game.

Despite this I would still highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a bit of trivia.

The game comes with a good bank of those all-important questions which it would be virtually impossible to write oneself. Those who enjoy the TV game show however will appreciate that is almost impossible to recreate the slickness and tension of that programme in one's own living room.

This board version of the game doesn't really work all that well. The rules are surprisingly complicated (and annoying different for each round) and the whole thing is a bit laborious, particularly the first time through. The actual board itself, with its fiddly little cardboard counters and unimposing size, is irritating and difficult to work with especially if there are several competitors.

I suspect a lot of people will dispense with the official rules and play the game more intuitively. My advice is to try to have one person who acts as a dedicated quiz master (unlike in the rules where this job rotates among the competitors). I would also get rid of the board and counters and keep tally instead on a large piece of paper. Having a limit on the amount of time each player is given to come up with an answer also helps to keep the game moving.

As with most games it improves with familiarity. You just need to stick with it and be prepared to do some significant tweaking.

I saw this in the shops ages ago and kept wondering whether or not to invest. With Christmas approaching I decided to take the plunge and was dismayed to find that it was out of stock everywhere! Luckily it came back into stock at Amazon just before Christmas and I snapped it up. And I am very glad I did!

Fans of the TV show know the drill - 100 people are given 100 seconds to try and answer a question. Players of the game are looking for the obscure answers that they didn't think of. I think the board game does a very good job of re-creating the show and I think it is a lot of fun. The box says it is for ages 10+ but I think it is definitely a game for adults - I think children would find it hard to give answers to many of the categories and might get a bit bored. I agree with the other reviewers who say that the rules make it seem much more complicated - once you understand what they are saying it is really straightforward.

An important technique to learn is how to put the question cards into the holders by touch alone. It isn't really a problem - just grab a card without looking and then hold it under the table to slip it into the question holder without looking.

What I love about this game is that it makes you doubt everything you thought you knew! A question seems quite simple, but then you find yourself thinking - "Oh hang on, that might not be right after all" and then you have to go for a safer, more obvious, higher scoring answer.

If you like the TV show I would definitely recommend it. The only thing that could be improved would be to re-create the drama of the falling score in some way. There must be someone out there that could create a little computer program that would do this?

Overall, a good game is a lot of fun to play.

When I saw this game for the first time I thought this will be so much fun. Unfortunatly we had to give the instructions a very good read before understanding it. But once you do unerstand it it is hours of fun. The format is so much different from the actual show as I think it had to be. Overall in my opinion a great buy for any fans of the show.

This is a good game and with a few plays could be very enjoyable. However it doesn't play like the TV show so you spend quite a while reading through the rules which slows the game down alot. Also the fact that no team drops out of the game like the TV show slows the game down even more, which is a shame. One tip I would give is get a timer to help speed up players answers and set it to a limit (15/20 seconds).
In spite of these downs its still a fun game and even funnier hearing some of the answers teams give to certain questions!

I bought this game after watching the throughly enjoyable TV series.
Overall it was a fun game for the family, didn't take too long to play, with a mixture of difficult and easy questions.
All answers and scores are written down on paper, so easy to keep track of everyones score, even though the game has a scoreboard which was not really required, but overall a very enjoyable game. 9/10

I bought this game as a Christmas present for my husband who loves the TV show. Little did I know at the time that it would become the most played game ever and the talk of Christmas! Our whole extended family was crazy about it and they demanded to play it daily when we visited with them and it never got old!

The set up of the game is slightly different to the TV show so it took a while reading the instructions initially to get the hang of it but after the first time you play it becomes very clear and easy to use. Lots of people have said they don't get why the game board is needed but we loved using the game board! complete with our own sound effects to indicate what number it was going to land on!

They give you a really decent amount of cards, like I said in the last 8 days we have played it at least 12 times and we're not running out of questions yet! It has a wide variety of categories and we loved all the geography questions.

If you're a fan of the gameshow (and even if you're not as none of our extended family had heard of it) you will absolutely love this game! It will give you hours of fun and is great for large numbers of people too as you can team up.

I am a fan of the TV show Pointless and thought that it might translate to a good family game. However the board game version is very disappointing and I would doubt very much whether anyone would play it as described in the rules, as the format in the TV show is much more exciting. In the board game you play several rounds but there is very little point in winning the early rounds as no real advantage is gained. The board itself is truly pointless. Very disappointing.

As a major fan of the TV show, with the marvellous Alexander Armstrong and the possibly even more wonderful Richard Osman, I thought this would be an entertaining game for the whole family, and indeed it is. You have to understand the rules pretty thoroughly or you'll get hopelessly confused, but if you spend a few minutes really studying the instructions you'll be fine.

I would have given this five stars in all categories, had it not been that game hasn't been updated - all the answers only go up to 2009. This creates quite a few anomalies; for example answers to the question "Name films featuring Sacha Baron Cohen" don't include "Hugo". So you have to preface your questions by saying "up to 2009...". Still, this is great fun, and highly recommended. I hope that in the near future a supplementary pack of new questions will be made available so that the life of the game is extended.

The board game looks good and has been fairly well put together but it could have been better overall. It becomes a bit boring and fiddly with the small counters skidding over the board - different types of markers or 'pins' might have been better, or perhaps even a small electronic device to recreate the feel of the programme? It's also a bit hit and miss over keeping the answers well covered while playing.
Feel like it needs some tweaking to be as entertaining as the programme - we generally abandon the board and counters and just ask the questions and keep score on the pads, flows better that way.
I would save your money until they develop it a bit more!