While I still don't have my own PS4, I do happen to know someone who did, so we and another group of like minded individuals managed to finally give Jackbox Party Pack 3 a try. I always love these, so let's see how this one stands up.
The games are: Quiplash 2, Trivia Murder Party, Guesspionage, Fakin' It, and Tee K.O.
It's more Quiplash, which means it comes with the same pros and cons as the original, with the biggest con, of course, being that if your party is too small and/or you are not playing over Twitch/YouTube, this really isn't worth playing. I do appreciate the change in The Last Lash being more than just a question (in my run's case, we had to finish up a one panel comic strip) but it wasn't enough to save it. I know there is potential for Quiplash to be great, I see it online all the time. But for my own personal experiences, it isn't worth it.
Fairly simple premise with an even simpler design. You are all contestants in a survey guessing type game where you must guess what percentage of the people surveyed by Jackbox did what thing (such as drink chocolate milk in the last year, or never buy popcorn at a movie theatre). Every one takes turns in the hot seat and making a bold prediction of what percentage of people said that specific fact. Everyone else then must guess if the answer is going to be higher or lower than what the hot seat player guessed. The closer the hot seat player is to the actual answer, the more points they get, maxing out at 3,000 for getting it exactly right. Players not in the hot seat who correctly guessed higher or lower get 1,000 each (in Round 2, you can also "double or nothing" it by guessing much higher/lower if you think their answer was off by more than 15%). After the hot seat player plays, it then moves on to the next player until everyone gets a shot. The final round is one last guessing game where 9 answers are given for a specific question (such as "What sport would most people like to be professional stars in") and you all have to guess the 3 most popular answers, Family Feud style. The more you get right and the higher that answer is to number one, the more final points you get. For how simple it was, this was surprisingly entertaining. I just wish there was more to it.
I had really high hopes for this. For one, it was hosted by Cookie Masterson of You Don't Know Jack/Fibbage fame, and those were always some of the better ones. On top of that, it did involve actually looking at people in the room, so it seemed far more engaging than most. Basically, it boils down to this: Everyone gets a task on their device (ie. Raise your hand if you have ever talked on your cell phone at a movie) and they must do said task at the sound of "GO!" That is, everyone...except for one. This is the Faker and they must try to blend in with the crowd to avoid suspicion. After the task is done, everyone votes on who they think the Faker is, whilst the Faker tries to dissuade them and convince everyone else that someone else is the Faker. If the Faker escapes, they get points. If the Faker is caught, everyone else gets points, with players getting three chances per category to try to catch the Faker. So wherein does the problem lie? Simple: The questions got too horribly specific. One was about owning a Dave Matthews band CD, which nobody in the place I was playing in did own, not to mention another one was "Getting caught for speeding" when about half the room can't even drive (including me). Thus, the best part of Fakin' It, trying to persuade others into voting someone else, never really happened. The only part that was actually interesting, the last round, has everyone getting questions on their device that they must answer (such as "What do you keep in your refrigerator?") whilst the Faker gets a completely different set of questions that might yield similar responses, but even then, I've seen this idea done better on the flippin' Wii U with Wii Party U! Such a disappointment.
Opposite of Fakin' It, I expected this to be the next Bidiots, an overly complex drawing game with little fun or entertainment. Boy, how wrong I ended up being. The idea of this is that you are trying to design T-Shirts and have them duke it out with other T-Shirts to find the best T-Shirt possible. In order to do so, everyone is asked to draw 3 pictures of whatever they want (though a Suggestion is there if you aren't feeling inspired), with 90 seconds per picture. After that, they are then asked to write out slogans or phrases of whatever they feel like (again, there is a Suggestion button if you can't think of anything witty to write and they can suggest things like "Something you'd see on a park sign") and they have to think of as many as they can (though the narrator suggest roughly 3-4 would be best). Then, your pictures and slogans are shuffled to the other players (and you get theirs) and you must pick your favourite combination of pictures and slogans that you think would win "Best T-Shirt." Then, everyone's choices goes head-to-head against others and everyone votes on which one they like most (even those who's shirts are competing, unlike something like Quiplash where you can't vote if your answer was on there). After this first fight of T-Shirt fights, you are then asked to draw one more picture and write a few more slogans, and then you must pick out another shirt/slogan combo that is sent to you and have another battle. After that, in the final round, the T-Shirts that were considered the winners from both rounds, go into one final showdown to pick out the ultimate T-Shirt, and the last shirt standing wins! What makes this so wonderful is the absurdity that comes from the combos that people can come up, such as this gem: https://twitter.com/The_Great_B_Man/sta ... 5429692418 Of all the games during the various Party Packs, this one probably got the biggest laughs (the Drawful and Fibbage series were the only other ones I could think of as really laughing hard at). And as an added bonus, you can even order these dumb T-Shirts you made as real products you can wear straight from Jackbox. The one downside is that, because of the nature of the game, this one easily takes the longest so it's not good if you want something quick.
Overall, a good pack. It has about the same value to me as 2 did, which is middling, but what is good is really good. As a tiny thing I'd also like to mention, this is the first Jackbox Party Pack where you can choose your avatar in certain games (specifically Guesspionage and Tee K.O.) which I thought was kind of cute for people who get attached to specific avatars from games (I know I was pretty fond of the yellow face from Quiplash).
Gosh, I really hope these games come to Switch. It would be PERFECT!
Went through OneShot. Not all that long. Took about 3 hours.
...until the game directly talks to you. And addresses you by whatever your username is on your PC.
It just gets more crazy from there, but...I'll leave the discoveries to you. Just keep in mind that, anytime you see a computer in the world...that's when things get...interesting.
Continuing on my 2016 Indie-bend, I also tried out Creepy Castle, and it has proven to be very enjoyable. Seemingly inspired by ZX Spectrum, the gameplay is described as an action-RPG, though I feel that term is rather loose compared to how the game plays. It's a 2D sidescroller where movement and sounds is deliberately lo-fi to give that sense that this could totally be played on a handheld. The enemies never move, and in fact, it's more of a turn based system where you two exchange blows until there is a victor (kind of reminds me of Desktop Dungeons in a way). However, just dishing out blows on your own can get pretty boring very quickly, so this is where one of the chief mechanics of the game stands out.
Most fights include a little minigame to try to deal damage. One is a quick-draw kind of scenario where you have to hit the button once the ! lights up, another involves moving a cursor to attack the enemy's face without missing , and so forth. It adds a lot more engagement to what would otherwise be a rather dull fighting mechanic. Light Metroidvania elements too, though nothing major (a few key items you need in order to access areas you couldn't before). Been playing it for the past few days and haven't finished every scenario yet.
Few guest characters, here and there. So far, I've seen: Dr. Fetus, Chica, and Plague Knight.
Been playing more Animal Crossing: New Leaf during my lunch breaks at classes, mostly to pay off the surplus Play Coins I've been racking up. Desert Island Escape is a really neato game, I must say. I can see why they chose to implement that game, of all possible minigames, from Amiibo Festival.
Other than that, I've played some Ever Oasis, which is a really charming labor of love, and Miitopia, with McKnackus, Elby, B-Man, Raxy, and DoM all having appeared as members of my party. (I also cast Super Penguin M as the besmirched noble's son, heh.) Hey! Pikmin is also occupying my current library, and I plan to make a review of it sometime, given all the negative press it got when it was announced.
There is something I want to ask you owners of Majora's Mask, though. As someone who is considering getting the game, and has a Nintendo 64 with an Expansion Pak, would it be better for me to just get the original game, or should I bite the bullet and get the remake?