27/10/2022
I tried twice to do live reviews, plus one attempt at a more detailed written review, of all the Jackbox Party Pack 9 games that will be part of Mattbox! 2023, but I kept on stumbling in trying to explain the games! So I'll just give a brief review here based on my first impressions: all the games in the pack definitely look like they'll be fun to play, which is something that I don't think can be said about the previous party packs, so that's a big plus right there! That said, I don't know if any of the games from Party Pack 9 will stand out in the way that games like Drawful Animate and Job Job did for me in Party Pack 8. But at the very least, this pack has no stinkers in it like Monster Seeking Monster (Pack 4), Zeeple Dome (Pack 5), Joke Boat (Pack 6), or The Devils and the Details (Pack 7), just to name a few examples of some of the not-so-good-games!
I think Nonsensory stands out the best of the five games in Party Pack 9, it's the one (to me anyway) that appears the best able to provide laughs, entertainment, and fun through it's (admittedly nonensical lol) gameplay.
Fibbage 4 gives this pack a game that's tried, tested, and true to the Jackbox series, and plays essentially the same as Fibbage 3, though the final round has you trying to come up with one lie to to use to fool people on TWO questions that are asked at the same time! There are other new things like video questions and fan-submitted questions, but for the most part Fibbage 4 is similar to Fibbage 3 in terms of gameplay, as well as entertainment and fun.
Junktopia reminded me a bit of Patently Stupid, though I think Patently Stupid is a better game than this one. Try to make the most money from weird items you're given in order to your player back into a human (your player gets turned into a frog at the beginning of the game for whatever reason). Overall, this one I feel is the weakest of the bunch, but there's still plenty of fun to be had here!
Roomerang is kinda unique in that it's essentially a role-playing game where players give responses to what they would say or do in the scenario the game gives them, but give those responses based on the roles they've been given. There's a Survivor-esque feature to this game, in that players are "voted out" at the end of each of the first few rounds (nobody actually gets eliminated though, the "voted out" player is basically just given a different role to act out as). Roomerang takes a role-playing game and combines it with a reality TV show, but this works in it's favour (at from what I've seen of this game so far)!
Finally, Quixort is a team-based live action game where players are supposed to put answers (in the form of falling blocks) in the correct order before they hit the floor (or put answers that don't belong in the question in "the trash"). The best way I can summarize this game is that its like trivia meeting Tetris meeting the Fastest Finger question from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Quixort seems a bit chaotic, but I think this adds more fun and entertainment to the playing experience (at least from my perspective lol, as I'll likely just be commentating on this one to try and make this fair for both teams when we play it)!
I certainly look forward to streaming these games on Mattbox! when new episodes will be set to go live in the new year! 😃
