About 10 years ago, I used to sit next to my husband at his desk, both playing a really fun trivia game that I have never heard about before. It was entertaining and witty, and it let you screw your opponent. Literally. With a screw. Yep.
Not too long ago, I was surprised when I got home by this bald head with blue eyes on the cover of an Xbox 360 game case – yay! “Jack” is back, and funnier than ever!
A game of You Don’t Know Jack is composed of ten questions split into three rounds and can be played by up to four players, locally or online.
You Don’t Know Jack is not your conventional trivia/party game. Sure, you get questions with multiple answers and you must press a button as fast as you possibly can in order to answer correctly to get points. But the questions aren’t exactly asked in a conventional manner.
First, you have your host, Cookie Masterson, who oozes sarcasm most of the time, makes you laugh a lot with witty jokes, and on occasion belittles you enough to make you feel as dumb as a post but without being offensive. Then, you have his surfer friend Chad who relays famous quotes in a more… colloquial type of language, dude. And then there’s a ventriloquist’s dummy with a speech impediment who is able to make the simplest question more complicated by replacing certain letters with others. Oh yes, you also get to interpret dreams that your host had after watching a particular movie, where his cats and his mother become the lead characters. Weird, funny and confusing!
These types of questions are a nice change of pace from the regular trivia, but still fall in the multiple choice category. Slightly different are the Dis or Dat and Jack Attack rounds. Dis or Dat has you picking a category for seven words that will appear on the screen from two completely different things, such as non-profit organization or designer jeans, the name of a pope or the title of a Britney Spears song, a Nevada brothel or a ranch salad dressing, a McDonald’s slogan or a Barry White song… and other completely opposites.
Jack Attack is the final round of each episode. Here you are given a general theme and you must pair up words by pressing the button as the right combination flies on screen. But while one word/expression in black flies towards you, the matching one in white flies away from you. It does get a bit confusing and I always have this reflex of gradually leaning back as the words seem to get bigger on the screen.
In trivia games, you usually get rewarded for answering correctly, and the faster you answer, the more money you accumulate. But there are hidden prizes and a hefty bonus for wrong answers as well, if you find The Wrong Answer of the Game. This Wrong Answer is always connected to the name of the “sponsor” (such as Supreme court children’s vitamins or Fistable Bowling Equipment Inc.) of the episode you’re playing, so it may contain words that go in the sponsor’s name, synonyms or just fit the theme. Of course, answering these should be done while in a single-player game as not to lose on purpose in a multiplayer game.
Multiplayer gets quite competitive with the game’s signature Screw move. Each player receives one screw per episode, which can be activated to screw your opponents. Basically, if you don’t know an answer, you can use the screw and someone else will have to answer it. If they answer wrong, you get a nice bonus, but if they get it right, you’re the one who ends up screwed. Literally.
The best things about You Don’t Know Jack are definitely the little intros for each question and the random chatter before and after an episode, which include a recording zombie artist, and especially the humorous writing. There was a particularly silly joke about Facebook that made me laugh out loud… and earn an achievement from doing so!
On the down side, you may find the episode structure repetitive, so this will be best played one or two at a time. It’s also easy to get screwed, since multiplayer games rely on quick reflexes – the same reason why Jack Attack in multiplayer can completely turn scores around.
Still, it’s great to see this franchise return. Be it alone or with family or friends, You Don’t Know Jack is an extremely fun trivia/party game to have around.