Welcome to Win, Lose or Die baby, yeah! That square, Dr. Evil, has kidnapped Austin Powers and devised an overly elaborate plan to take over the world, baby. It's a gameshow that'll test your trivia knowledge from the swingin' sixties to the nineties. If Dr. Evil wins the world will be overrun with bad-tempered sea bass and girls with smoke comin' out their jubblies. If Austin wins it's freedom baby, yeah!
Ok, enough with the attempts at stupid Austin Powers references. Austin Powers: Operation Trivia comes to us from the same company who are best known for the irreverent gameshow, You Don't Know Jack. I'd have to say that Berkeley Systems are not only their own biggest competition, but also their own worst enemy.
The first thing I need to complain about is the fact that Mike Myers doesn't do any of the voices on this title. Whoever does the Dr. Evil impersonation is pretty good, but the Austin Powers voice samples are just atrocious. In fact, it sounds like the announcer in the game is doing all three voices. It's a real shame; because actually having Myers voicing the characters himself would give this title the authenticity it needs to be great.
As it stands, the game is still pretty good. Once you get past the fact that the voices aren't that good and the variety of one liners is fairly limited, Operation Trivia has some genuinely challenging, funny questions in it.
Outside of straight questions, AP offers up some interesting mini-games once in a while. Keep Away, for instance, requires you to keep items that belong in a category assigned to you, and "away" items that belong in your opponent's category. Likewise, some questions will give you seven possible answers, four of which are correct. If you can get all four answers you stand to make a lot of money, but if you get even one answer wrong you lose everything.
Finally, the last question in each show is called a "Crazy Chain," which is a group of questions that are all related to each other somehow. It's a nice touch, even if it doesn't serve any real purpose.
Besides the sad voice acting, the presentation of Operation Trivia is excellent. The music and graphics really represent the sixties well, with a lot of psychedelic colour schemes and layouts. There are a lot of little references to the movies that will cause you to give a chuckle once in a while, like Dr. Evil attempting to do the Macarena.
So what did I mean by the "Berkeley Systems is their own worst enemy" remark? It's simple. Although Austin Powers Operation: Trivia is a good game, it doesn't even come close to You Don't Know Jack 4. I'd recommend YDKJ to just about anyone, but Operation Trivia is strictly for Austin Powers fans.
Oh, and one more thing... Do I make you horny, baby? Do I?
-- Greg Sewart
