MeekinOnMovies On....You Don't Know Jack

You Don’t Know JackiOS / Android / Facebook / (Ouya?)

In this world, there are few places for B-type personalities to massage their egos. You can write a 13,000 word diatribe defending the “Star Wars” Prequels,get a writing gig, kick-start that graphic novel. but the ability to have an honest-to-goodness pissing contest is the privilege of the macho. So they play trivia. 

But once people know you’re good at trivia, they don’t want to play with you any more - especially if you celebrate correct answers like Superbowl touchdowns.

Until...you meet a pretty girl. I wooed her with a trip to the giant Dave & Buster’s trivia machine, the sly maneuver of giving my prize tickets away to a kid, and not much else. Trivia came up again, and I mentioned owning “You Don’t Know Jack”. 

Her eyes lit up, and I was suddenly inviting a girl back to my place to play video games. This is why I fondly refer to the 'old' You Don't Know Jack as the game that got me laid....

So years later when I saw that same girl’s Facebook page light up with stats and updates about her “You Don’t Know Jack” scores, I was instantly curious. Little did I know a mini phenomenon had swept the nation. You Don’t Know Jack was mobile! There were people, all across the country, playing this game? And they wanted to win? And they liked the jokes? And I can play DIRECTLY against people on FB whom I base my entire life worth upon my sense of superiority over? 

At this rate, You Don’t Know Jack is going to be the best man at my wedding.

So I downloaded the game and immediately had trouble doing much of anything because the game doesn’t play nice with 3G connections. After getting myself a more stable connection, I found myself enthralled. “You Don’t Know Jack” gives you an asynchronous gaming experience that actually manages to feel simultaneous thanks to some ingenious voodoo.

It works like this: You Don’t Know Jack is broken down into a series of episodes. Your Facebook friends play the game, and their score for each question is calculated, and pushed to your phone or iPad while you play that episode on your own time - so it looks like you’re playing against four other friends. So while your buddy Joe may have played his episode against completely different people, for your experience, it’s as if you’re playing Joe in real time. It works splendidly. Many a delight comes from watching a friend you know get a particularly easy question wrong, or shooting your way to the top of the standings after answering a hard question the fastest. This is totally addicting stuff.

You Don’t Know Jack presents itself as a ribald, irreverent trivia show. There are fake sponsors like “The Warehouse Supply Warehouse” (with all your warehouse supply, supply needs), and Nacho-pedic Beds (and pillows). The writing of the questions and associated jokes is fairly strong, and while there are a few groaners, the quality of writing is incredibly strong considering the bone crushing amount of content Jellyvision has pumped out in such a short time.

Annddd if you want to play a lot of that content, you’re going to have to pony up some dough. While the app is free, and you get one ‘free’ episode per day, if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to play more than one a day, heck, you may want to play five, or six, or seven games in a day. Which is cool. “You Don’t Know Jack” has successfully brought the arcade to the iPhone, asking you to pony up about 2 bucks for a thousand coins, which equates to five or six additional episodes or so (depending on how many coins you’ve previously won, earned bonuses, etc). I’m a big fan of this sort of structure in my mobile games. If I want to play more, or feel like I should support the developer, I can drop a buck or two and feel like I’ve done my good deed for the day. Similarly, it’s also entirely possible to never pay a dime for “You Don’t Know Jack” and have a daily dose of irreverent trivia.

The trivia itself is mostly a mixed bag depending on your tastes. Hosted by the tastily named Cookie Masterson, each game is broken down into 5 questions (and five associated wisecracks by Cookie). The topics range in variety from pop culture to movies, to sports, to science, to English and grammar, and a variety of others. The faster you answer the question, the more money you earn, and you lose more money for a wrong answer if you buzz in quickly, too. 

The final round consists of a “Jack Attack” which has you doing some quick-fire word-association, and there are a few other trivia formats that occur occasionally through a game, as well, such as a “Dis or Dat” which has you associating a phrase with one thing or another, and the accurately titled “put the choices into order and buzz in and see if you are right….Question”. The person with the most money at the end of the game wins coins (used for purchasing more “episodes”) and bragging rights. Yes, you can *actually* brag on your friends Facebook walls if you enjoy the taste of victory with a side of petulance.

On the subject of petulance, it’s entirely possible you’ll hate this game for the reasons I like it. The so-bad-they’re-good jokes tickle my fancy, while it may grind yours like sandpaper. The graphic heavy A/V presentation could tax older devices and lead to lower scores, and it’s entirely possible for folks to buy ‘Point Boosters’ for a round that allow them to get 3x, 5x, or 10x the points for a correct answer.

Look, if have ever fancied yourself a trivia hound, you owe it to yourself to at least give “You Don’t Know Jack” a try. It’s completely free and playing your first few games will cost you absolutely zero dollars, and barely 10 minutes of your time. It’s engaging, it’s funny (to me), and hell, you may even get laid (or learn something!).

There's also a healthy dose of Celebrity episodes, and the game is constantly updated with new jokes and questions. If you like trivia with a side of crazy - give it a shot. It's free! 



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