LogFAQs > #968590902

#4: The Jackbox Party Pack 8

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/5/AAA-H0AADwpB.jpg

Like I said in my previous Jackbox writeup, putting Jackbox games onto these GOTY lists feels kind of "free" in a way that feels like cheating. I'm always going to get the chance to play them on my friends' dime with little investment on my part, and there's one of them every single year, so it feels kind of too obvious and lame; each one may be different but none of them are really revolutionizing gaming either. Generally speaking, though, they aren't gonna crack the really high echelons of my lists; the best ones will generally top out at just making the top 10 or so. Until now, I would have considered Pack 3 the best overall, and I included Packs 1-6 as a joint entry at like, I wanna say 19th or 20th on my decades list, partly off the strength of that entry, but also backed up by the other five entries as well. They're all fun, but on their own, they wouldn't rank super highly. They're just stupid fun with friends; they aren't truly revolutionary, life-changing, experiences.

Well, until Jackbox Party Pack 8. Jackbox Party Pack 8 is different.

Because Jackbox Party Pack 8 is the one with Job Job.

Time for another mini-ranking of Jackbox games!

(By the way, I only had a screenshot prepared for Job Job. The rest I didn't save any screenshots from.)

#5 - Weapons Drawn

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/6/AAA-H0AADwpC.jpg

I compare Weapons Drawn to Bidiots; it's a game with a really fun premise that ends up taking way too long to play out in satisfying way. I don't really love Bidiots as much as everyone else, to be honest - the concept of drawing stuff that all looks similar and then having to figure out which is which is great, but the bidding format is really long and kind of randomly unfair to certain players. Weapons Drawn is in a similar boat - I like the idea of drawing pictures of weapons that hide a secret letter somewhere, and trying to be clever about the way you hide it, but beyond that initial premise, the way the game plays out just takes waaaaay too long. There's a sort of social deception game happening here where everyone investigates the drawing and the person who drew it has to pretend like they didn't draw it, but it's hard and not really that fun to try to weasel out of it, so it often just turns into a guessing game where one person is kind of quiet. The game has you go through drawings that are actually used to 'kill' people but then you do all the leftover ones anyway, so it doesn't feel like there's much urgency to it. Funnily enough, the best part of the game is the side-game where you have to invent a name for a guest to invite, and then try to kill other peoples' guests by guessing who named who - I could just play that part and be happy! But the rest is a slog. It's a cool idea, but they weren't able to figure out how to make it work, and it ends up being too high concept for its own good. Still, I think it's playable, and it's pretty good as far as worst-game-in-the-packs go, but I suspect we won't return to it much.

#4 - Drawful Animate

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/7/AAA-H0AADwpD.jpg

If you told me that I would be ranking JPP8 as high as I did, I would never have guessed that Drawful Animate wasn't part of the reason why. I feel bad that I don't like this game more - Drawful has always been a lot of fun in the past and this game should continue the tradition. The problem is, I've just had horrible luck with getting good prompts in this one. It feels like the prompts that worked in the previous iterations of this game have been taken too far, and half of them feel too much like the Jackbox team trying to be funny and quirky in their own specific way, making the prompts just annoying to draw and guess - a lot of the drawing guesses can be metagamed just by figuring out which answer is the most "Jackboxy." The animation should be fun, but some of these prompts are just too stupid and annoying to draw and that makes it annoying to have to draw out TWO different pictures. When the prompts are good, the game is good, and I'm willing to continue playing it for just that reason, but I'm really tired of getting things to draw where the prompt is too Jackbox-humor and just makes me groan and roll my eyes out of their sockets. As far as "fourth best game in a pack" goes, this one's a keeper, though.

#3 - Wheel of Enormous Proportions

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/8/AAA-H0AADwpE.jpg

This one's a modest surprise, and a nice little filler; I'd call it modestly fun in the same sort of way that Guesspionage is, where it won't light the party on fire but it's a nice, cozy game. Really, the secret to this one is that it's probably the most fun pure trivia game in the Jackbox games. Trivia Murder Party is fun, but the trivia questions are mostly meant to be impossibly hard and just exist to kill you (except the final round which is fun), and YDKJ has good trivia but is more reliant on quick, tricky thinking and fast fingers. This one's less gimmicky, and I think in some ways it's more fun for it, actually - picking items that belong to a category from a list, guessing what number of a thing there is, matching two lists of items, there's a lot of variety here and it's a lot of fun because I'm a boring trivia nerd. The actual wheel portion of the game is boring to me, I don't really like roulettes and other games of pure luck, I just kind of zone out and watch the wheel spin around and eventually randomly choose someone the winner, but I don't feel too bad about it really; I just have a fun time solving trivia questions. I'll almost always be happy to play this game even if it's nobody's first pick. Really solid filler.