The Jackbox Party Pack 2

Jackbox Games - 2015 - PS3/PS4/XboxOne/PC

As I did when I reviewed the original Jackbox Party Pack, I'm going to divide this review into several little mini-sections: one for each game in the pack. The Jackbox Party Pack 2 is at its core, the same concept as its predecessor - a bunch of multiplayer mini-games where your cell phones are the input devices. The novelty here is that because your phones are the input devices, no one knows who typed or drew what except for the author. So now on with the review:

Fibbage 2
This is exactly the same game as the first time around, but with new questions. The game presents you with a weird fact, and you have to fill in the blank to try to trick your opponents into guessing your answer. Still pretty much Balderdash if you've ever played that.

Earwax
In earwax, you're presented with a category or an event or some similar thing and you have to choose a sound effect to match what's presented.  Then two player's selections go head to head and a judge votes on which is the most appropriate sound effect. I thought this game was pretty weak and the selectable sound effects started to repeat with just two or three rounds of play. Disappointing.

Bidiots
This was the strangest game in the pack. It seemed like an attempt to evolve on Drawful, which I believe to be the strongest game in the previous pack. In Bidiots, each player draws several art pieces based on several prompts. The pieces are assigned random monetary values, then players bid on each piece. Sometimes you'll be given clues to what a piece is worth based on the prompt that was used to draw it, but it's not always clear what prompt matches with what piece. And sometimes, you're not given a prompt at all. It turns one of the best games in the previous pack into one of the most unsatisfying experiences in Jackbox Party Pack 2. The rules are unclear and the games take way too long. The fun and silliness of drawing and guessing other's drawings turns into a boring bidding game. Bidiots was also a huge disappointment.

Quiplash XL
This is pretty much Earwax but without the sound effects. Players type in responses to the game's prompts to fill in the blank, then a judge votes on the best one. Quiplash still seemed somewhat lazy to me but was slightly more enjoyable than Earwax, only because a freeform response seemed more creatively satisfying to me than picking from pre-defined sound effects.

Bomb Corp.
I'm not sure who worked on this game whether it be a different group internally or a secret different studio altogether or something, but this game is so different from the others in the pack, both in visual aesthetic and gameplay quality. This is definitely the highlight of Jackbox Party Pack 2. In Bomb Corp. , each player is given a crucial step to disarming a bomb on their phone, but all steps need to be followed in order to diffuse the bomb correctly. It's a really fun excersise in communication and cooperation as all players need to work together to diffuse the bomb properly. This game was pretty cool

Summary
Even with the inclusion of the excellent Bomb Corp., The Jackbox Party Pack 2 was still a disappointment to me. Other than Bomb Corp., the pack felt like a rushed package with incomplete or creatively dull ideas resulting in unsatisfying gameplay experiences. The absense of the well-known "You Don't Know Jack" mini-game was puzzling as well. I'm not sure if they tried to rush this package out in order to capitalize on the success of the first game or what, but that's what it felt like. If you haven't played the games from the first Jackbox Party Pack, I'd strongly reccommend giving those a look first. But if you have, prepare yourself for a disappointment

The Jackbox Party Pack

 Jackbox Games - 2014 - PC/PS3/PS4/XboxOne

Being the giant trivia nerd that I am (I attend trivia at a local bar nearly every week), I was eager to try the video game version of the You Don't Know Jack party game. I had heard positive buzz about the game and that it combined good trivia questions with excellent writing and a silly sense of humor, which I found to be true. I saw the 2015 edition of the You Don't Know Jack game on a steep sale in the Steam store, but it came bundled with a bunch of other games from the You Don't Know Jack developers. I wanted to play You Don't Know Jack and figured the other games were probably just throw away titles that the developers shoved in with You Don't Know Jack, but I was pleasantly surprised to be mostly wrong. This will be a bit of an unusual review since I'll be covering five games at once, but I'll try to give my opinion on the package of games as a whole and then some quick thoughts on each game in the package.

Each of the games in the Jackbox Party Pack assumes that all players in the room have either a smartphone or tablet or laptop or some other internet-enabled device. Each player uses their internet device, usually a smartphone, to connect to a web app and enter a "room code" which links the game together with the other devices and players in the room. Depending on which game in the pack you're playing, each player will submit either answers to questions, or drawings or whatever data is required for the game through their smartphone. I was actually quite surprised and impressed with how responsive the web app was when submitting data from my phone. There was almost no delay at all. It's a kind of neat strategy of utilizing the smartphones people likely already have as input devices and displaying the other game information on the main TV screen. I hope to see more party games integrate with smartphones since it's often hard to play video games with really large groups of people since controllers are usually limited.

You Don't Know Jack 2015 Edition

Likely the most recognizable game in the pack, You Don't Know Jack 2015 edition was the first game I played. It was pretty much exactly what I was expecting: good trivia questions delivered with silly humor. I thought the humor was a little hit and miss. When the writing was funny, it was funny. But when the jokes didn't land, they definitely did not land. The trivia questions were difficult, but still fair. If you weren't too familiar with the question category, I found it kind of hard to contribute since the game penalizes you for wrong answers. But if you like trivia and enjoy questions delivered with a crude sense of humor, you'll enjoy You Don't Know Jack

Fibbage

If you've ever played the party game Balderdash, you'll find Fibbage very familiar. In Fibbage, you're presented an incomplete sentence about weird fact and it's up to you to fill in the blank. Then everyone's answers are displayed on screen and you have to guess which is the actual true answer. You usually want to try to be as tricky as possible answer submissions, since points are awarded if your opponents guess your false answer as the correct one.

Drawful

Probably my favorite game in the pack, Drawful is pretty much the same concept as Fibbage, but with drawings. You'll be given a wacky subject that you'll have to make a drawing of. Once your drawing is complete, it's displayed on screen for all to see. Your opponents have to come up with fake answers for the title of your drawing while also trying to figure out what your drawing is actually about. There's a lot of fun to be had with this one, since the names of the drawings given to you are often crazy. Then add in the fact that all players are drawing on their phones with their fingers. This results in the drawings usually ending up being totally ridiculous. Then guessing who made what with your friends and figuring out what the real titles are while sifting out the hilarious fake title submissions is a great recipe for fun.

Word Spud

This one's fun, but you'll probably only play it once or twice. You'll be given a starting word, then a randomly selected player has to make a compound word or phrase from the initial word by adding another word. For example, the starting word might be "Video", to which a player might add "Game". Then another random player would be given "Game" and be expected to add another word to it. After each submission, all players can vote on whether to accept or reject the new word. If the word is accepted, the chain continues, otherwise a new random word is generated. The fun here is thinking quickly to come up with words to complete a clever or funny phrase. At the end of the game, which usually lasts a few minutes or so, Word Spud will show you your entire word chain which when read out loud is usually worth a few laughs. 

Lie Swatter

Probably the weakest game in the pack, lie swatter presents a true/false trivia question and awards points for the most correct answers. This is probably the most simple and least creative game in the pack, but it's also playable by up to 100 people at a time, so this might be the way to go if you have a really large group of people. 

Summary

I've been having a really great time with the Jackbox Party Pack. It's great to put up on the TV when I have more people over than I do controllers for traditional video games. You Don't Know Jack is fun for when you want to show off your random knowledge while being amused with crude jokes. Drawful was the surprise hit of the pack for me, easily providing hours of hilarious entertainment. Fibbage and Word Spud are midly enteraining, while Lie Swatter felt like a shoe-in. But if you often host large-ish groups of people (5-8) and are looking for video games to play, I would still highly recommend the Jackbox Party Pack

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Naughty Dog - 2001 - PS2/PS3/Vita

Remember when 3D platformers were a thing? Prior to playing Jak and Daxter, I couldn't even think of the last 3D platformer I played. I think the Mario games are kind of singlehandedly keeping that genre alive right now. But back in the late 90s/early 00s, they were all over the place. Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time were some of my favorite platformers from this era, but I somehow never played any of the Jak games. I was a little hesitant to try Jak and Daxter because I didn't have the best experience with the last Naughty Dog game I played. But a friend of mine was insistent that I must play Jak and Daxter, and I'm glad I did. It's absolutely worth a look if you dig 3D platformers.

The first thing that struck me about Jak and Daxter were the quality of the animations in the game. They're cartoony and exaggerated, but they bring the characters to life so well. Now it may be because I was playing the PS3/HD version of the game and it's hard to tell what they retouched and what was original, but Jak and Daxter may have some of the best animation work I've seen in a game. Which is astounding, considering the game was released in 2001. Great voicework too, which was also not the norm for games made in that era. The NPCs are all full of life and personality. It reminded me a lot of characters from Psychonauts, another excellent 3D platformer that everyone should play. It was strange because while the characters and game world had great personality, I felt the overall narrative/story of Jak and Daxter was totally phoned in. I mean the main villain of the game isn't even introduced until more than halfway through the game. Very weird. 

At a basic level, Jak and Daxter plays similarly to Mario 64. There are several "worlds" and each world has a certain amount of stars to collect, or "power cells" in the case of Jak and Daxter. One major difference though is that the world's layout is totally seamless in Jak and Daxter. For example in Mario 64, the castle sort of served as a hub world and each level was entered by jumping into a painting on the castle's wall. And while there's still "worlds" in Jak and Daxter, it's all seamlessly tied together as one giant island. No loading screens or anything like that, which was probably pretty technically difficult to do. I thought this was pretty cool, until I realized one terrible design problem: it takes FOREVER to get from one area to another. In Mario 64, you could just pause and select "exit world" or whatever. Here you have to walk all the way from one area to another, and the game world is pretty huge. It was super annoying when I wanted to go back and visit the earlier areas to pick up power cells that I had missed. So much walking. This game is in desperate need of a fast travel system. There are a few teleporters scattered across the island, but they're too few and far between to be that useful.

Mechanically, the game is pretty solid. Occasionally I felt like the double jump ability in the game felt unresponsive, but aside from that it's a pretty tight platformer. The levels are all very unique and have their own distinct personality. Some have mini-games or vehicle driving sections that can be completed for additional power cells. I feel that variety and cleverness in level design is really important in a platformer, otherwise your game starts to stale very quickly. Jak and Daxter nails this aspect of good game design. Upon entering a new area, I never knew what to expect, only that it would be different from what I was doing before. 

Summary:

If you miss the 3D platformers of yesteryear and have never played Jak and Daxter, it's worth a look. It's got a high amount of polish and style, but some gaping flaws in certain areas. It does character design well, but forgot to write a story for them. It has variety in level design and a huge open world island, but forgot to include a good fast travel system for it.  I'll be interested to play Jak 2 and 3 soon to see if they corrected some of these flaws and improved on the foundation they laid with The Precursor Legacy. 

Journey

ThatGameCompany - 2012 - PS3

Okay, I totally didn't understand this game. At all. This game gets a lot of recognition in the indie game scene for being a case for “games as art” and its won all sorts of awards and what not. I love games with atypical gameplay or games that try to do something completely new or unique. This game definitely does that but… but I don’t get it.

I don’t understand why this game gets the love that it does. Maybe I need to do another playthrough, I feel like I must've missed something. It’s a pretty short game, I finished it in one sitting. You just kind of navigate through the environment really. That’s about it. Sometimes other random players will join your game from online. But they don’t seem to contribute to the gameplay or progress the game in any way that I could tell. I get that the music sets the mood of the game really well, but video games do that all the time.

Summary:
I don’t know; this game was very baffling and disappointing to me