Nukezilla Review: You Don’t Know Jack (PS3)

For those of you who might not be acquainted with You Don’t Know Jack, you might be wondering why the return of an old trivia franchise has caused some limited excitement among gamers-in-the-know. Conveying its appeal is no mean feat, but I can start by explaining that the method of delivering the questions is what gives it its charm. For example, a normal trivia game might ask the question:

Q: Which of the following scientists were not involved in the design of the first nuclear bomb?
a) Feynman, b) Oppenheimer, c) Bethe or d) Planck

Jack prefers to obfuscate the question by distorting it through a pop culture lens with colourful asides and mockery from a gameshow host who ties proceedings together. If our beloved mascot were more well known, it might go something like this:

Q: Suppose Nukezilla’s preferred mode of attack was to actually design and construct nuclear bombs in order to drop them on unsuspecting citizens, instead of breathing radioactive fire. What would the paleontologists of the future to be LEAST likely to name him?

a) FEYNMANodon, b) OPPENHEIMERsaurus, c) BETHEopteryx or d) PLANCKtor

The answer is d) (of course!), Max Planck being the only scientist on the list who wasn’t involved in the Manhattan Project.

People who have had a taste of Jack before probably only want to know one thing: is it like the originals? To them I can say a firm yes. Everything from the tone of the questions to the writing and the appearance of long time favourite host Cookie Masterson makes a return and it’s as if no time at all had passed since the old PC releases.

A few humourous types of question have been added, one example involving interpreting Cookie’s weird dreams about cats and his mother in order to figure out what movie he watched the previous night. Some have been removed like the Gibberish Question which required typing and so isn’t suited to most peoples’ console set ups, but once I got playing, I never missed it.

The humour tries hard as usual and doesn’t always hit, but it succeeds enough and has an enduring charm that makes me forgiving of the occasional fart gag. Even when it wasn’t at its funniest, I was consistently looking forward to the next question to see what bizarre method of asking had been cooked up. At other times it becomes alarmingly self-aware, such as when it gave me a light ribbing for playing alone on Saturday night, or made some Valentine’s Day appropriate remarks on February 14th before the start of the episode.

Unlike most entries in the You Don’t Know Jack series, the new game is split into 73 episodes of about fifteen minutes each, containing ten questions plus a final Jack Attack round which combines trivia knowledge and fast-reflexes. At first this seems like an odd decision, since it means that each episode is essentially single-use for anyone who has played it but I soon saw the wisdom in it. It prevents that trivia game malaise of gradually seeing more and more questions you’ve had before. Better still, it means each episode can be written more tightly, with questions that refer to previous questions and a good spread of subject matter. There’s even a feature called ‘Wrong Answer of the Game’ by which eagle-eyed players can nab points for picking an answer related to a fictitious episode sponsor.

Make no mistake, like any trivia game this is undoubtedly best played with friends on a couch, so you should be aware that for the console versions you’ll need a controller for every player (maximum of four). More disappointingly the (cheaper) PC version restricts multiplayer to two players round a keyboard, with no online option.

Speaking of online play, the console versions have it but I was not able to consistently find games on the PS3 version. Those of us with local friends to play with have nothing to worry about; we’re playing the game as it was meant to be played but if there’s a follow up, I’d hope to see more work done on the online side of things. It could be more attractive to the lone player if it were less of a haven for people trying to farm achievements or trophies at the expense of fun.

After such a long absence, You Don’t Know Jack delivers more than we had any right to expect and at a budget price of $30 it’s hard not to recommend. Still, it would have been nice to have an international release to save me from importing in order to join in on the fun. Here’s hoping that Jellyvision keep on supporting the game with DLC, as rarely has a game been so suited to regular content updates. I’m left with only one question:

Q: If Nukezilla were to look to the stars in order to decide a rating for You Don’t Know Jack, what rating would they award by choosing the constellation MONOCEROS as their inspiration?

a) 2 stars, b) 5 stars, b) 12 stars or d)