Review: You Don’t Know Jack

Posted by Brad T on February 26th, 2011 | 2 Comments | Tags: You Don't Know Jack

You Don’t Know Jack used to be my favorite trivia game back in the day. I can remember blowing half a summer back in high school playing through YDKJ: The Ride with a pal. When I heard that the PS3 was getting a brand new version of the game, I jumped on this baby at launch. Is YDKJ 2011 worth the trip outside to go pick up?

This version of YDKJ keeps with the format of an actual kind of game show. When loading it up, you’re treated to different stagehands talking or the trademark commercials. Each game consists of 10 questions, divided into two rounds and the final round: The Jack Attack. Before each question, you’re treated to an animated title card of that specific number question. “Five” is my favourite with all of its autotuned glory. While they show the same bumps every time, it seems that every few games, one of them will change ever so slightly to keep you entertained. For example, “Two” is a mountain climber climbing up a giant two. Usually he just yodels off that its question two, but once I had him fall off the cliff and scream. That kind of stuff, be it small, gives the crowd a nice laugh when they’re used to the same old.

As always you begin the game with a screw which you can use on your opponents. It makes them answer the question in 5 seconds, and if they get it wrong you get the money. Of course this is a double edged sword, because if they guess right, you lose money. I found that when you’re selecting your opponent to get screwed, the controls are really fidgety. Usually I would complain about something but like this, but I saw it as intentional. David, Eric, and myself were playing a heated game a few nights back, and David went to use his screw. He tried to select me really fast, but accidentally ended up choosing himself. A good laugh was had by all. (I did the same damn thing on a different occasion.) Speaking of laughing, this game has voicechat support. Make sure you use an earpiece though. I was using the playstation eye, and its really difficult to talk to your buddies with cookie talking out of the same speaker.

The best new feature to formula is “the wrong question of the game.” At the beginning of each game Cookie will notify you who the game’s sponsor is. You need to keep an eye out to the wrong answer that corresponds to that sponsor. They’re always funny and can be real game changers if you answer the correct wrong answer when everyone buzzes in the real right answer. There are also other funny types of questions, like “Who’s the Dummy” in which Cookie’s Ventriloquist puppet asks the question. The “Nocturnal Admissions” with Cookie Masterson was also good for a laugh, as it always asks a movie that he was dreaming about. His dream descriptions are usually hilarious and somehow always involve his two cats. Sadly, I never ran into a gibberish question. I always liked thos in the old games.

Only a few gripes with this game. First of all, theres no buzz controller support, so you’ll need 4 dualshocks. For a game with little to no controls I thought that was a shame. The worst problem I had with this is that the game doesn’t let you mix local with online. I wanna say its a sync issue, because during the dis or dat round, each player gets to play their own round. In local games, only one player gets to play that. At the same time, the Jack Attack appears synced with everyone, so I’m not quite sure what the hell the reason is.

YDKJ is a welcome party game at a bargain price. Its packed with content (over 70 episodes), and there are even dlc packs available. This one is on my goto list of party games, just make sure you keep it local or online only.

For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

We Purchased this game out of our own Pocket.