Jackbox Party Pack 7 PS4 Review – It feels like Jackbox games have been around forever now and you have to wonder how developer Jackbox Games continues to come up with new ideas for them. Well, you will be pleased to know their creativity hasn’t stopped as Jackbox Party Pack 7 is one of the best collections in years with five games that each stand out and hold their own, with none of them feeling like throwaway experiences.
Jackbox Party Pack 7 PS4 Review
Champ’d Up For Quiplash 3
Two of the new games that definitely fall below the standard offered by the other three are Champ’d Up and Quiplash 3. Quiplash 3 brings back the game about having the funniest answer for the third time and has mostly remained the same. The three-round structure is back, but the final round has been switched up, with players now having to answer a question in three parts.
For example, the question might be “Three Zoom backgrounds no one is asking for.” At which point you put in an answer like “Your toilet, the inside of your stomach, and mouldy bread.”
However, every time I played Quiplash 3 I found the final round to be quite bland and not offer as many funny and inventive answers as what was previously offered before. The round also now continues in the traditional head-to-head format, with each person being given a different question, rather than the final showdown format of the previous third round, which allowed you to truly compete alongside your friends to top the leaderboard. It isn’t horrible, but it doesn’t end the game on the strong note that it used to.
Champ’d Up, however, is almost the exact same as Jackbox Party Pack 3’s Tee-KO. Here, instead of drawing designs, you are drawing fighters and coloring them in, alongside picking names for them, before sending them into the ring to battle it out against one another.
This mode definitely matches the creativity and crudeness offered with Tee-KO and me and my housemates definitely had our fair share of laughs as we chose fighters and drew some stuff that probably can’t be mentioned in this review.
The only issue here though is, like with Tee-KO, if you aren’t a fan of drawing (like me), you aren’t going to have a lot of fun creating a fighter and I found myself wanting to just play the other four games in the pack. However, if you can get a group of friends who love drawing and creating their own characters with personalities, you will definitely have a lot of fun with Champ’d Up.
Blather Round For The Devil And The Details
The next two games to highlight are Blather Round and The Devil And The Details. Blather Round is effectively a game of charades but played in word form. Every player will pick an object, person, character, place, etc and then when it is their turn in the game they will stay silent and use a collection of pre-selected words to give hints to the other players as to what their answer is.
For example, you might be given a prompt that says “This place is _ and _” At which point you could fill those words with anything like: Bright, Busy, Ugly, Crowded, Dirty, Clean, Open, Airy, Urbanised.
The game doesn’t stop there, though. You can then use players’ guesses to give hints. So, if someone entered L.A. as a guess you could pick that word and say that the actual answer (which for this case we will say is Hollywood) is “Like LA”.
This is probably the hardest game to grasp initially out of the pack, but after you have got over the initial hurdles, Blater Round is a great pop culture guessing game and it can lead to some loud screaming matches between players as they try to figure out what the answer is whilst being close with their guesses, but not quite landing the right answer.
The Devil And The Details is the gamiest of the Party Pack 7 games, but it is also a rollicking good time and an incredible feat of teamwork and enjoyment. The set-up is that you are a family of devils who has moved into a human neighbourhood and in order to come off as human you need to complete menial tasks, like driving to a pharmacy to pick-up medicine, phoning the internet company, cleaning the dishes, and a host of other tasks which everyone knows all too well if they are past the age of living with their parents.
Some of these activities can be completed alone and some require you to collaborate with your team, such as one player giving the directions and the other driving or one player being given a list of food items and the teammates having to collect those items from the fridge, freezer, pantry, etc. All of this goes towards an overall family total point score, which ensures you pass each day as a human.
But, you will also be competing with other members of the family for individual points, by completing the tasks which are worth more points. Furthermore, the family member with the most at the end of the three-day week will get the top place.
There’s another twist to the experience, however. Members of the family can complete selfish tasks to get additional points in order to improve their personal score. However, other family members can try to stop you and attempting to chase after these tasks might result in the family failing to reach the designated score.
This game is absolute chaos, but it is good chaos. Me and my housemates all fell in love with the Saturday morning cartoon presentation (complete with its own theme) and unique and frantic take on teamwork. The Devil And The Details is definitely one of the best parts of this pack.
Let’s Talk About Taking Points
Whilst all these games have their place in the pack, Talking Points is by far the star of it. A game about impromptu public speaking in front of your friends, where you have to present a talk/presentation, whilst another player chooses the slides is a hilarious and belly laughing experience that forms one of the best games Jackbox has ever made.
At the start of the game, each player writes three topics they can discuss on a template presentation name and then are given a random selection of three they can choose from. The topic you choose is what you will present and these topics can be pretty much anything.
Some of the ones we came up with in our house were: “Help! Help! I Am Stuck In My Mother’s Womb! It’s Hot In Here!” and “What It Is Like To Grow Up Without A Father”. But really, these prompts can be anything. The ones here are the safe-for-work ones we came up with. If you want to get dirty you absolutely can.
Following this, each player will present their talk, whilst another person chooses the images that will appear on the slides. For the talk based around growing up without a father the first image that appeared after our teammate introduced himself, was a mother and son sitting on a sofa with a man next to him, but he had a box over his head with a smiley face on it, which rightfully caused an outburst of laughter from our entire house.
Players then pick the best by engaging the most with the presentation, clicking a positive or negative rating as much as they want to.
The flexibility Talking Points offers is astounding and it is best played when you forget all your insecurities about public speaking, get up in front of your TV and act like you are about to start a TED Talk. Playing this with a group of friends who can all let down their barriers and joke and talk about ridiculous topics, some of which don’t even make sense, is a great time and I and my housemates will be playing this one for months. It really shouldn’t be missed and I would love to see what crazy iterations to the formula Jackbox Games can come up with.
One Of The Best Collections Of The Series
Jackbox Games have really outdone themselves with The Jackbox Party Pack 7. Each game is strong and holds its own, with Talking Points and The Devil And The Details being the two standout games from this pack, with each one surely going down into the history books of the franchise. I suspect their addictive gameplay and unique twists and turns will be tweaked and evolved in future editions of The Jackbox Party Pack.
Whilst not being as attention-grabbing, Blather Round is a fun alteration on charades and serves as a great cooldown game after the two hectic and chaotic experiences mentioned above. Champ’d Up ultimately is just a variation on Tee-KO, but the formula works just as well here as it did in that game. Quiplash 3 is the most disappointing game of the pack due to its new final round, but the experience is still as quick and light-hearted as it has always been.
Simply put, if there is any Jackbox Party Pack you should pick up, this one is up there with some of the original classics that made the second screen experience such a hit back when it first released. Jackbox Party Pack 7 is a hilarity-inducing collection of titles and a welcome step forward for the franchise.
Jackbox Party Pack 7 is available now on PS4.
Review copy provided by publisher