National Geographic: Challenge! Wii Nintendo Review

As you’d expect from a quiz title, National Geographic Challenge!’s primary modes of play involves one to four players answering multiple-choice questions based on geographical knowledge. Mii support is standard and a nice personal touch, though it’s disconcerting to see their heads on regularly-proportioned bodies. Quiz Mode is the first you’ll see using the multiple choice structure as its basis and employing a points-based system of determining the winner, with rounds of questions under varying conditions; fastest finger first, putting answers in order, betting points on result of next question, and other such rules. Despite the rather basic building backdrop that surrounds your Miis as you are given questions, and the overenthusiastic voiceover guy who needs to expand his vocabulary, this mode can be quite enjoyable with two or more people, and the changeable difficulty and question number settings help to adjust how you want to play.

Explorer Mode is similar to Quiz, albeit with more of a board game setting. After each player chooses a profession (from a list that includes astronaut, the rather hopeful time traveller, mariner, treasure hunter and mountaineer), they take it in turns to capture a select region of the globe under their profession’s insignia, usually by answering a few questions successfully, or by competing with another player if they already have hold over it. Each region has a number of points, with the winner decided by whoever reaches a set total first. The basic backdrop and overall settings are the same here, but the new rules provide a far more interesting take on the quiz-based formula. Control, like Quiz Mode, is fast and instantaneous, allowing each player to point and click on territories and answers, or to just use the Wii Remote D-pad for more stealthy answering. Again, the sheer number of available questions, depending on the region of focus you select before the start, ensures that no two playthroughs are the same.