Quotations seems to be fertile ground for games. It seems that every year someone comes along who thinks he can do it better, and before you know it we've got Out of Context, or Notable Quotables, or Daring Passages. The most recent entrant in the quotations game is Quote Unquote, voted best trivia game by Games Magazine last year.
The game comes with a set of double-sided quotation cards in three levels of difficulty. Each side contains four quotes from or about three different people. You're told the general category the person fits under— Sports, History, Stage & Screen, etc— but that's all the help you get.
On a team's turn, they pick a category slide the cardboard cover sheet for that category down a bit, revealing the next quote. This they read aloud. After hearing it, they may try to guess the identity of any person on the card who has not yet been guessed. A correct guess earns points— the fewer quotes thusfar revealed for that person, the higher the point value— while an incorrect guess costs points. This helps discourage random guessing. Someone from the team must look at the answer to see if they're correct. If they guessed wrong, that player is not allowed to guess at that person again. So you'd better be playing with people you can trust not to whisper the answer into their teammates' ears.
But it does get easier as the card progresses. Obviously, this is partly because more quotes means more information. But as an additional solving aid, the three names on the card are somehow related. They might share the same nationality, first name, general classification (ie, pioneering women), etc. As you might expect, the connections on the harder cards are less obvious than the ones on the easier cards.
When all three identities have been guessed, the card is flipped for more. The first team to gain 20 points, or the team with the highest score after two cards, wins the game.
I wanted to really like this game. I tend to enjoy game shows, and the mechanics seemed reminiscent of some of weekday television's best efforts. And while it's a good game, it's got some problems.
The first is presentation. The card holder, made from sturdy blue plastic, is the nicest component of the game, but it could have been designed better. The pegs used to prevent the quote shields from sliding down have to be pressed in pretty hard in order to work. The cards themselves are printed on colored oaktag, giving the game a home-produced DTP look I don't expect from a packaged game.
Of course, look doesn't really matter if the game plays well. Quote Unquote is certainly not a poor game, but it seems uneven. The easy cards can be really easy, while the hard ones can be quite obtuse. It's not a matter of the people they've selected— most players will recognize the names without much difficulty. The quotations, however, don't really provide much guidance on the more difficult cards. Perhaps this is a good thing, giving advanced players an even greater challenge. We found the game dragged when nobody had any clue who these people were. The rules are also unclear as to whether or not you have to reveal a new quotation on your turn. It seems that if only person remains on the card, you must reveal a new quote for that person (thus lowering the value of a correct guess) even if you already have an idea who it is.
As a party or family game Quote Unquote seems a trifle dry and slow-moving. On the other hand, since hearing the quotes is all that is needed for play, I think it would excel as a travel game for long car or train rides.