Aerrow Shapiro’s Pick – #18 – You Don’t Know Jack (2011 Video Game)

In the Fall of 2009, I have written an article on the computer game franchise You Don’t Know Jack (or YDKJ in short), which had most of its back catalogue re-released on the game’s official website at the time of the article’s release.  Now, fast forward to 2011, the year that Jellyvision Games (in co-operation with THQ) released a new edition of YDKJ in a multi-platform sense (for XBox 360, Wii, PS3, DS, and PC).  The changes are so great with a fresh new experience that it prompted me to write the review for this new edition of this comedic trivia game.

Like the previous games, YDKJ parodies the game show format with questions written with comedic twists, turning a question like “What are the dietary preferences of tortoises?” into something like, “What would the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortoises order from Pizza Hut?”  As usual, correct answers earn you cash, while wrong ones cost you with a humorous comment from the host poking fun at those moments.  And of course, the game comes with screws, forcing your opponents to answer the question whether they want to or not.

What is different from the previous games is that in the 2011 edition of YDKJ (hosted by Cookie Masterson from some of the franchise’s previous games), the questions are all set in each “episode” (whether on-disc or in DLC).  Each episode comes with a “Wrong Answer of the Game” in which a wrong answer related to its sponsor can, in lieu of getting such punishment, can earn you its sponsor’s prize plus some cash.  For example, if a sponsor in an episode is “Supreme Court Children’s Vitamins”, picking the wrong answer that has a connection to the sponsor can win you a supply of the aforementioned vitamins.  Additionally, there is a timer that affects the potential money at stake in each question for each play; so depending on how you answer it, if you answer quickly, you might either earn or lose a high amount of money.

And to add more fun in the game are additional question/mini-game types.  The franchise’s speed round staple, the DisOrDat, returns in this edition where you either associate an item in question to one category or the other (or sometimes both).  Question types new to the game include Who’s the Dummy (where you answer a ventriloquist dummy’s question with its difficulty to pronounce its b’s, p’s, and m’s), Cookie’s Fortune Cookie Fortunes (with Cookie “Fortune Cookie” Masterson) (where a question is made based on a proverb from a fortune cookie), Funky Trash (where you answer a question on whose trash do the items in the trash are associated with), The Put the Choices Into Order Then Buzz In and See If You Are Right Question (which is self-explanatory), and Nocturnal Admissions (where host Cookie explains a dream he had and asks what movie he was watching that is associated with it).

After ten questions and/or mini-games (which span two rounds, with five for each round and the second round doubling  the possible amount of money), the game goes to a bonus round called the Jack Attack, where you match seven phrases (one by one) with those that fly on screen.  The catch: it must fit with a certain clue.  For example, if the clue is “BFF”, you must match each character or person with its best friend.  Then after this round, the winner is determined, and the game is over.  And if that is not enough, you can sit through the credits at the end of each game with some funny commercial parodies with an option to play the game again.

While the questions in the game have little or no replay value (since the questions and answers can be easily learned upon the first try), it is best recommended when playing with friends.  And for the XBox 360 and PS3 versions, there are some downloadable packs of additional episodes, complete with questions and new prizes.

Because of the game’s humorous usage of “pop culture and high culture” and the its fresh new take, I recommend the 2011 edition of You Don’t Know Jack as my pick.