Four Real - Bid on It!

Maybe it's not too late to return it?


Four-gettable Loser   January 4, 2001
Sean O'Neill (Seattle, WA USA)
24 out of 25 found this review helpful

We received this as a gift and at first were excited about the game. Soon after beginning to play, we realized that this game was a loser.

Players/teams bid 1-4 chips in a `Name That Tune' format, betting who can provide more answers to each category. The problem is that the categories are extremely vague, which makes it quite difficult to determine if you are going to be able to answer any of the questions. The difficulty of the questions is also quite variable, which leads to frustration with the game. You are constantly bidding high to try and move ahead, but the vague categories do not help you know whether or not you have any chance of getting the correct answers.

The absolute worst question of the night (which triggered our decision to abandon the game rather early) was: "What are the four divisions of University Games?" How ridiculous can these guys get? I like to play trivia games, but I usually do not spend any time reviewing the annual reports of game manufacturers.

My wife and I play a lot of party games and this one was one of the worst ever. Some reviewers mentioned problems with the adhesive bid chips. Since we will never again play this game, durability will not be a problem. Other games that ARE worth your time and money include Tri-Bond, Outburst, and (the always classic) Trivial Pursuit. One other personal favorite is Beyond Balderdash (not trivia-based, but always fun).

Sean

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Long, Slow, and Mostly Boring   December 2, 2000
This game leaves a lot to be desired. The rules are vague, but that's OK, most of us can deal with that. The vinyl bidding circles quit sticking to the plastic poker chips after the first game, but you can always just hold the number in your hand and flip it over at the appropraite time.

No, despite these problems the real downfall of this game is the questions! Maybe we didn't shuffle the cards very well, but literally every 10th question or so was "Name first four movies". That gets old fast, unless you are a movie buff. Then there are the slew of name memorization questions like "Name the four oldest members of Backstreet Boys" or "Name the four youngest members of N'Sync" or "What are the first names of Vice President Al Gore's wife and 3 daughters", and so on. Real useful bits of knowledge there. And then there is my personal favorite: "Name the top 4 favorite actitvities of University Games employees". Give me a break! Like anyone cares! Why is that a worthwhile question for a game?

Anyway, we found many of the questions to be uninteresting and/or rediculously hard or obscure. A tough question every once in a while in a game is understandable, but when every third question is a stumper it makes the game last forever and people lose interest. The only way we had any fun was to allow the question reader to keep pulling cards until they came across a question that the bidder would have any chance of knowing. As obscure as most of the questions are, we ended up going through half of the cards in one game.

I highly recommend not wasting your money on this game. There are so many other knowledge games that are more entertaining like TriBond, Timeline, or even Battle of the Sexes.