Let’s wander back to the misty days or yore. You know, 2007. Jeff Foxworthy was hosting a game show called ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ and people were finding out that they legitimately had no recollection of the things they learned (or didn’t learn) in elementary school. The show ran for seven seasons on various networks until finally ending for the final time in 2019 hosted by John Cena on Nickelodeon. As you may have guessed, ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’ is back in video game form from Handy Games and publisher THQ Nordic. The game takes the TV show format and converts it to a replayable trivia video game, much like a shorter version of Jeopardy with thousands of questions. Instead of live guests, these are computer generated ones, but the game features full voicework for all participants.
If you’re not familiar with ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’, it’s a show where you answer trivia questions starting with 1st Grade and working your way up to the final question, a 6th grade one. Along the way, actual grade school students would help contestants to answer the questions and they’d get several chances to cheat or ask for help. The game follows the exact same format, though the students are made up of course. You can Copy a student’s work, ask the class, or get a new question. The mechanics change slightly for multiplayer mode, but it’s essentially the same thing there.
To start, you choose a persona that you’ll be for the duration of the game. These are titles rather than actual names, which is more than a little weird. Being referred to as “Eldest Sibling” for a whole game is certainly off-putting in single player mode. Once you’ve chosen your persona and desk, off you go to grade one. There are two hosts and both are intensely bubbly and pleasant, almost saccharine. They talk at length about the game, the students who will help you, the rules, and more. They switch places every couple of questions and thankfully, the developers have thought to include a skip button for dialogue. You’ll need it.
During each question there is a student available as well so if you need to cheat by asking for help, you can. Most of the early questions are fairly easy so if you’re an adult, you likely won’t use this until later, but they’re there, literally chatting and cheering you on. Answer a question correctly, you move on to the next round. In between rounds, the hosts will talk to the school kids. Yes really. The hosts actually ask about what they like and facts that they know and the kids respond. Painful.
While it’s important to preserve the feel of a game show, this is honestly a bit much. You can skip it as well, but this should have a disable slot in the options menu. The dialogue is tedious and atrocious with digital kids telling digital hosts about themselves in some sort of odd parody of a game show. It just feels out of place to have that much chatter in your game that serves no purpose even if it adds flavor to an otherwise short trivia game.
Eventually you’ll either strike out or win at ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’. Either way, you end up with a bunch of points that slowly unlock more students, desks, names, and other items you can use in the game. That’s pretty much all there is here. An endless loop of 6800 trivia questions that slowly unlocks the game bit by bit. You’ll earn a few unlocks at first, but the last ones are hundreds of thousands of points and honestly, who’s going to do that?
Multiplayer in the game is essentially the same thing but you’re competing against each other locally with up to 8 players. It’s a bit more fun and a bit less tedious overall but not wildly entertaining. The simple fact is that the overall gameplay of the game is so lackluster that even playing with others doesn’t make it better. The questions are odd and sometimes too difficult, the focus on American perspectives is weird (the game literally asks you if you want American viewpoints), and the constant set and host changes feel like they take forever. There’s no need for any of it. There’s no need for two hosts. There’s no need to let fake children ramble on. It’s a time suck of the worst kind, especially when you want to just play a trivia game.
Visually, ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ is no more appealing. The characters are odd, feverish folks whose weird positivity gives them an almost cult-like fervor. The kids are cherubic, chatty and irritating, and while you can change their costumes, what do you actually care? The sets that pop in an out move fine but they add to both time and load time and the game just isn’t all that compelling to begin with. Game show music certainly isn’t anything to speak of either, and the incessant clapping (yes, yes, it’s a game show) is remarkably irritating.
To put it bluntly, ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’ isn’t fun. It’s poorly envisioned, glacially paced, and just not all that enjoyable. It’s no surprise that the game show has been canned three times after fairly short runs and the video game version is even worse. It’s like all the fun has been leached out of this title and it was left bereft of any redeeming qualities. Sure some of the questions are good, but not all. For example, who knows that the Dewey Decimal System has classifications for fiction? Ever seen fiction filed under it in any library? I thought not. Or here’s a map of all 50 states, where did Ruby Bridges go to school? Pick a state (no names, just outlines).
And what is the point of all the unlockables? Does anyone care what clothes the kids wear? Or what their desk looks like? Sure it’s nice to unlock new categories, but that’s about it. There’s just no point to any of it and unlocking new weird titles for the hosts to call you certainly isn’t appealing. It’s fair to admit that being called “Annoying Unit” for the whole game is arguably funny though.
‘Are you Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’ simply fails to engage players at every opportunity and after a few playthroughs, you’re skipping basically the entire game and starting to get irritable. At $30, this is not a game that’s going to hold a lot of interest for many players and even those are likely to skip the $10 DLC which adds more questions. At 6800 questions and 11 questions per game (if you don’t lose), you’re looking at a minimum of over 600 games to even get through all the questions and basically no one at all will play that many times. ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’ is one title that if you are smarter, you’ll likely skip.
This review was based on a digital copy of ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ is also available on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on Steam.