Movie QuizUp offers head-to-head movie trivia on iOS

Movie buffs with iOS devices can now challenge strangers and friends the world over in Movie QuizUp from Plain Vanilla. The game offers head-to-head movie trivia, combining big name films like Lord of the Rings and Titanic with smaller films that only the most dedicated of film fans might be familiar with.

In each one-on-one battle, players will work in real time to earn the most points possible over a series of multiple choice movie-themed questions. The questions could be as simple as "who voiced this character in Shrek," to something as obscure as film award nominees from the early 1990's. Since the game works in real time, you'll earn more points than your opponent if you can correctly answer trivia questions faster than they do, and you'll track your score against theirs via bars that climb up the sides of the screen. There's no penalty for an incorrect answer, so if you're feeling especially clueless about an answer, just make sure to answer the question as fast as you can in case you get lucky.

After each game, you'll earn experience points towards your in-game rank, and with enough wins, you'll eventually level-up. These levels appear to be about little more than bragging rights, and the game overall lacks a lot of depth outside of the trivia questions themselves. While most of us would consider ourselves at least casual fans of movies, Movie Quiz Up contains far more challenging questions than casual ones, so it limits its potential audience to those that are willing to either miss a ton of questions because of their obscurity, or those that feel like they know everything there is to know about films.

Eventually, the questions will start to repeat, so if you can memorize the answers to the hundreds of questions available in the game, eventually you'll be able to dominate everyone, but there's very little fun to be had in answering the same sets of questions over and over again. Thankfully, it takes a while to get to that point, so those looking for one or two match-ups everyday should have no problem being given new content each time they play.

Ultimately, Movie QuizUp is a very polished game that simply doesn't offer a lot of bells and whistles outside of the trivia competitions. It has one focus, and it performs it well, but unless you're a diehard fan of movies, the game's trivia rests a bit too far on the side of obscurity to seem "fair." Still, the game's free to download and play, and you can now do just that via iTunes.

Download Movie QuizUp for free on iOS >

Have you tried Movie QuizUp or another similar real-time trivia game on iOS? Do you think the trivia questions are harder or easier than you'd like? Sound off in the comments!