Such subdued sensibilities bleed even into returning favorites, like the sequel to Quiplash. Series mainstay Cookie may have once filled the interstitial moments of trivia staple You Don’t Know Jack with nonstop zingers, but in Fakin’ It, he’s reduced to a bland, by-the-books announcer. Such streamlining also affects the game’s cast. Such poor design extends to the way in which the game avoids repetition: In any group less than the maximum of six players, you can often rule out people who’ve already been the Faker. Unfortunately, the specificity of some prompts (“Hold up as many fingers as steaks you’ve eaten this week” or “Raise your hand if you’ve just had alcohol”) is bound to screw over some friends-say, vegetarians or teetotalers. In Fakin’ It, every player save one is given a cue to which they’re supposed to respond with a physical prompt the Faker must then deftly choose and qualify his or her gestures after the cue is revealed.
The Jackbox Party Pack games have always been divertissements, but some of this year’s offerings are especially shallow. (There ought to be a Digital Sweatshop achievement.) For instance, Tee-KO, a mindless game that replaces the strategy of Bidiots and the intentionally undrawable prompts of Drawful 2, has players first dutifully submitting sketches and slogans and then attempting to assemble an audience-backed winning design-all so that you might pay to have your design printed on a T-shirt and mailed to you. There’s even a despairing sense of this being one giant money grab. Scripting is at an all-time low for the franchise, replaced by the unevenness of a book of Mad Libs. With each new Jackbox Party Pack release, the included games increase in production value, but diminish when it comes to actual substance. There’s an odd dissonance found in the Twitch-friendly social games that make up Jackbox Party Pack 3.
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