Go with C for every answer, never fails

You're the best around! Nothing's ever gonna keep you down! That $500 price tag for the X?box Series X isn't gonna cause you any problem?s because you're getting that bad boy for free.

Microsoft keeps coming up with ways to give away the Xbox Series X to the elite of the elite. A couple weeks ago, we learned about the Xbox Hall of Fame where the most dedicated players could win the new console for their dedication to Xbox over the past seven years. There's also the ongoing Taco Bell promotion where on??ly the most hardcore T-Bell fans (okay, maybe just the? luckiest) can win an Xbox Series X.

Now, Microsoft is channeling the ghost of 1 vs. 100 (kind of) with a trivia show where you can win an Xbox Series X. It's a part of the Xbox FanFest which is now an ongoing digital (and eventually maybe physical) event. The first step is to register for FanFest which comes with access to "upcoming activities and offers." It's also good for?? 100 Microsoft Rewards?? points if that's a promotion you partake in.

The very first exclusive FanFest event is a 25,000-player trivia contest on October 23. Here's how it works: There are 10 rounds, each with 7 multiple choice questions. You have 15 seconds to answer. Each question is worth a maximum of 60 points, and that decreases by 4 points for every second that lapses. So, accuracy and speed are paramount. That's how you get aro??und people just Googling the answers.

There are 5 knockout rounds. After Round 3, it goes from 25,000 players to 5,000 players. After Round 5, it drops from 5,000 to 1,000. So on and so on until only one person wins Roun??d 10 and is crowned the Xbox Trivia Champ.

Here's what makes up the winner's prize package:

• Xbox Series X
• SteelSeries Arctis 7X wireless gaming headset
• Razer Kishi universal gaming controller for Android
• 6-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
• Moga Clip controller mount
• 5,000 Microsoft Rewards points ($5 worth)
• A discount code for $10 off a Razer Kishi universal gaming controller for Android (which they already won)

This is surely not the only opportunity to win stuff t??hrough Xbox FanFest, it's just the first opportunity. If trivi??a isn't your thing, maybe a chili cookoff is right around the corner. If chili cookoffs aren't your thing, maybe the next Xbox Series X goes to the best sax solo.

Anyway, registering for Xbox FanF?est seems like your best chance to win a free Xbox Series?? X, especially if you know a thing or two about video games. Or just keep pumping Taco Bell into your arteries if you like those odds better. We all know a thing or two about the Cheesy Gordita Crunch.

Xbox FanFest [Xbox]

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'Am I sexual? Yeah...' ~ Nick Carter, a mummy, circa 1997

The Super Mario series turns 35 this September, so chances are that if you read this game blog, the franchise has been in your life for as long as you remember. I'm old enough to recall the first time I played the original game. I was 10 years old, and it was at a demo kiosk in Toys R Us. I'll forever associate the series with tha?t point in my childhood. ;

Of course, I've grown up a lot since then, and so has Nintendo. When they first started releasing their own home consoles, their sole focus was catering to children, but now that many of those '80s kids have kids (or even grandkids) of their own, they've branched out to create games that appeal to? all ages. That sometimes means throwing in a cheeky reference now and again, intended for adults to understand but kids to avoid or ignore. 

There is just such a referen??ce in a recently released Nintendo game, and the only thing I found surprising about it was fans' reactions. Specifically, a lot of fans denied that there was anything sexual about it, seemingly unwilling to admit to themselves that yes, sometimes Nintendo does dick jokes. I'm not going to spoil it here, because it's actually related to one of the quiz questions below, but please, if you were one of the folks who doesn't believe that Nintendo ever gets "inappropriate," you have a lot to learn. With?? any luck, this fun quiz will teach you a thing or two about the birdos and the bees. 

_{[Photo credit: Before Mario]}

How this quiz works: To keep it simple, all answers will be true or false. We'll black them out with anti-spoiler text. Select the text to reveal the secrets that lie b??eneath! 

1) Nintendo once created a set of playing cards that featured topless women.

True! Nintendo got its start making cards, many of which were popular with the Yakuza and other criminals. They also dabbled in running at least one "Love Hotel" for sex workers and printing a set of playing cards that featured topless women (link NSFW). There's even a report that one of these topless ??sets featured Marilyn Monroe, but I wa?sn't able to find proof.

2) One of the endings in F-Zero GX features a character taking medications that are implied to be for erectile dysfunction. 

False! F-Zero GX has a lot of weird endings, with Mr. EAD's being one of my personal favorites, but as far as I know, none of them imply anything about erectile dysfunction. Keep in mind though that the game came out a few years before the b??ig Viagra boom. Things may have been different if it were released for the first time today. 

_{[Photo credit: Jessica Nigri]}

3) Before the first Pokémon games were released in the US, Nintendo of America suggested that Pikachu be redesigned to be a "tiger with huge breasts...like a character from the musical Cats."

True! It may seem ridiculous now, but before Pokémon took the world by storm, there was no evidence that a monster-catching JRPG would be a hit outside of Japan, so you almost can't blame Nintendo of America for thinking there series needed a little spice in order to sell. It's al??most like they saw 20 years i?nto the future, in a world where furries are more mainstream than ever, and entire modeling careers are based on the premise of being a chesty electric mouse.

4) The new Paper Mario featured an object that may or may not be a penis reference. 

True! This is the one that inspired me to write this whole darn quiz. Though there's no solid consensus among fans, this object in the new Paper Mario looks a lot like a sex toy to me, and the fact that it's #69 in the catalog is just the "icing" on the cake. Maybe someday Nintendo will conf?irm or deny i??ts inspiration, but I highly doubt it. 

5) There's a side mission in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword where, in order to make a shop girl happy, you give her some lingerie. 

False! There's a fair amount of innuendo in some of Skyward Sword's subplots, with at least one shop girl who is clearly in love with Link, but getting her sexy underwear isn't the way to satisfy her. Instead, you just lead her on until she gives you gratitude crystals, or if you??????????????????????????'re feeling cold, break her heart, which in turn scores you gratitude crystals from her shot-blocking Dad. 

6) Nintendo once published a game about suicide and half-naked teen girls that's planned to be adapted for a Hollywood film. 

True! Not to spoil it, but Fatal Frame V: Maiden of Black Water is without a doubt one of the most "mature" games Nintendo ever published. Though the sexual content was slightly toned down for Western audiences, it's still packed with boob physics, revealing unlockable costumes, and even a side story starring Ayane from the notoriously horny Dead or Alive series. It's also about ghosts of p??eople who committed suicide, with many of the game's biggest scares coming from the sight of apparitions reliving their self-inflicted deaths. There's still a free demo for download on the Wii U if you want to see fo??r yourself.

As for the Hollywood movie, it was announced on the same day as Fatal Frame V, but it still hasn't materialized. The last we heard, Silent Hill movie director Christopher Gans w?as attached to the project, so we'll see if and when anything comes of it. 

7) In the original Animal Crossing on GameCube, one of the default nicknames given to the player by villagers is "Sexy Beast."

False! The original Animal Crossing was definitely more outlandish and potentially offensive than the current games, with villagers that will call you a psycho, an idiot, a "freak mental case," or even a cheap-no-fruit-buying-bum, but none of them call you a Sexy Beast ?(unless you teach them to).

8) Mario once tried to seduce a woman who was named after a large fish. 

True! In the highly divisive Super Mario Bros. movie, there is a scene where Mario attempts to use his sexual magnetism to trick a woman named Big Bertha (named after the giant fish monster from Mario 3) into giving him a necklace. At first she just punches him in the face, but later they get p?retty dirty on the dance floor before Mario hightails it out of there with the goods. 

9) One of the mainstays of the Legend of Zelda series once hired a man to build a bridge for him before repeatedly thrusting his pelvis into the air. 

True! In one of the most gachimuchi moments in Zelda history, Tingle uses his hard-earned rupees in Freshly Picked Rosy-Rupeeland to pay a family of construction workers to build bridges for them. They are an extremely suggestive group, known to present their bulges to the player in a completely unapologetic way. Every member of the family looks more or less the same, which wouldn't be unsurprising if it weren't for the fact that Duko, the third of the bunch, is actually a woman. This makes her one of Nintendo's most boldly gender-nonconforming characters.  While it's not exactly great representation, it's at least better than this stigmatizing N64 commercial that Nintendo put out a few years earlier.

10) Before the ESRB existed, Nintendo published a romance sim on the Famicom that ended with a woman inviting you to her bed for sex.

False! Nintendo did publish an interesting romance sim on the Famicom that, depending on which ending you got, could earn you a real-life VHS tape of a popular idol telling you how much she cares about you, but all of the actual sex games o??n the con??sole were published by third parties. 

11) In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, there is an unlockable gallery picture of leading character Rachel in a sexy bathing suit, but the bottom was censored in Western release.

False! There is in fact a slightly more revealing outfit for Rachel in the game, but it's nothing that could qualify as a swimsuit. Intelligent Systems, developers of the Advance Wars series, would save that trick for a few years later. Fire Emblem: Awakenings, a game from the same team, does in fact feature a censored bikini butt, though many agree that Nintendo's attempts to cover that particular derriere only worked to make it mo??re eye-catching.  

12) In Zangeki No Reginleiv, a game rated Cero-D (Japan's equivalent to the ESRB's M rating), there is a boss fight against an ogre who is completely nude.

False! This was Nintendo's first Cero-D rated game, but it wasn't for nudity. Developed by the creators of the Earth Defense Force series, Zangeki No Reiginleiv is extremely gory. It's about a world that's invaded by various characters from Norse mythology, and using real motion controls, you can cut off the??ir limbs in a bloody display of over-the-to??p violence. 

fully losing my mind over this Nintendo ad where Kim Cattrall is horny for Mario??!!?? pic.twitter.com/fjnOajDccr

— Marc (@MarcSnetiker) May 6, 2020

13) One of Mario's enemies once asked the player to help free them from imprisonment by finding their vibrator.

True! Captain Rainbow, a game that mixes Smash Bros., Chibi-Robo, and Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer's island of misfit toys into one weird bag of fun, features a storyline that delves deep into Birdo's struggle with gender. While it's played for laughs, the story is actually pretty intense, with the Mario boss being imprisoned by a robo cop for using a woman's bathroom. The cop coded them as male, so he put them in jail, and it's up to you to prove they are a woman by finding their sex toy and using it as evidence to prove their gender. And it works!

Scoring

1-4 correct: Peachfuzz under the armpits

4-8 correct: Let the shaving begin

8-12 correct: Fully matured

13 correct: You've seen too much

Score better or worse than you thought you would? Got your own sexual? Nintendo trivia to share? Let us know in the comm?ents. ;

The post How well do you know the sexual side of Nintendo? appeared first on Destructoid.

Everyone did, Phil included

Fond memories of the Xbox 360 are not in short supply. The long-awaited launch of Halo 3. The annual barrage of quality indies during the Summe?r of Arcade. Xbox Live parties that stretch??ed 'til 4am. Your third red ring of death. Wait.

But one that keeps coming up, probably because it was criminally cut short long before people were tired of it, is 1 vs 100. The twice-weekly community-driven interactive trivia show was beloved by most all who played it. It turned everyone into a game show contestant, offering up Xbox Live games and currency for those lucky enough to be part of the hundred-strong Mob or The One. It's not uncommon for people to lament that Xbox should bring back 1 vs 100.

That opinion goes all the way up to the tippy-top. "We should do it again," Xbox head Phil Spencer says in an interview with Australian outlet Stevivor. Spencer isn't necessarily talking about 1 vs 100 specifically because that's a property Microsoft doesn't own and would require some sort of leasing agreement. But, spiritually, Spencer wants to do something that's the same as 1 vs 100.

Games like HQ Trivia have proven that there's a very sizable audience for live trivia shows. And Microsoft is in prime position to offer it. With Mixer as a streaming service and Project ??xCloud allowing people to essentially use their Xbox from ?mobile devices, most of the barriers to hosting a live event are eliminated.

This sounds like a matter of when rather than if. Spencer confirms that him and Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty have brainstormed how something like this might work. He also says r?esurrecting this sort of? trivia show "is something we'd love to do" and that he "suspect[s] you'll see something from us in that space because I think it just should happen."

Xbox exploring alternatives to 1 vs 100, says?? Phil Spencer [Stevivor]

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Last night's contestants struggled

Everyone has their own personal knowledge gaps, and it's trivia's job to root out these embarrassments and expose them to an unsympathetic and h??igh??ly judgmental world. I'm awful at anything to do with historical events or dates. Some people don't know pop culture. Others struggle with science.

This week on Jeopardy, the contestants put off "Video Games" as long as th?ey possibly could??.

Things, uh, could've gone better. These were the pr??ompts:

• This company's "Infinity" allowed you to play characters from The Incredibles and Cars, to name a few.

• Morrowind and Skyrim are iterations of this "venerable" set of games

• Make your future fighting Ghaul, leader of the Red Legion, in the second iteration of this Bungie game

• In the classic video game Joust, contestants were placed upon these birds

• A big gaming story of 2018 is Fortnite: This genre of game where the winner is last shooter or last team standing

How would you have fared?

The post You probably would’ve gotten these video game questions right on Jeopardy appeared first on Destructoid.

Minecraft, Silent Running and Jurassic Park?

The trivia-hounds of Did You Know Gaming? have released a new video, this time looking at the super successful Super Mario Odyssey, which ??launched on Ninte??ndo Switch last year to universal praise.

The 11-minute video, narrated by Barry Kramer, looks at some of the design concepts behind Mario and Cappy's excellent adventure, as well as the interesting way Odyssey introduces its mechanics to the player. We also get interesting facts about the decision to include realistically proportioned humans in New Donk City, as well as the reasoning behind the complete re-write of the hit title song Jump Up, Super Star!

It's always interesting to hear about the design of Nintendo games. Since Super Mario Bros?. the Japanese giant has also had a fascinating approach to "teaching" the audience how each game works, as well as tinkering with mechanics new and old to lend each Mario game its own unique identity. It's part and parcel of what keeps the plucky plumber on top of the pile, generation after generation.

Super Mario Odyssey is available now on Nintendo Switch.

The post Did You Know G??am??ing? looks at the stellar Super Mario Odyssey appeared first on Destructoid.

That ain't a health bar...

Speaking on his twitter, Naughty Dog animator Jonathon Cooper revealed a very interesting tidbit regarding Sony's awesome adventure series, Uncharted, and its happy-go-lucky psychopath hero, Nathan?? Drake.

Y'see, you may have noticed that the intrepid explorer has been filled with more lead than a pencil fact?ory over his myriad of globe-trotting adventures, yet soldiers on, no problem, like the wise-cracking Terminator that he is. Well, Cooper mentioned that when he first joined the Uncharted team, he learned it wasn't a question of adamantium skin, but a question of luck.

"Drake doesn’t ever take bullet damage," reveals Cooper. "The red UI that shows ‘hits’ is to represent his ‘luck’ running out. Eventually enemies will get ??a clear shot and kill him if he? takes enough near-misses."

So there you have it, Drake is j?ust the master of the flesh wound, playing the ratio of not getting a vital organ punctured until far too many bullet?s have flown his way for him to possibly avoid The Grim Reaper any longer. Considering the guy is generally under fire from several enemies, usually sporting automatic weapons, I'd say he's the luckiest dude on the planet.

The Uncharted series is available now on PS3, PS4 and PS Vita.

The post How can Uncharted’s Nathan Drake absorb all those bullets? appeared first on Destructoid.

Interesting trivia on an all-time classic

Trivia-buffs Did You Know Gaming? uploaded their newest video at the weekend and it would be remiss not to make mention of it, as it is for a SNES classic, a series classic and one of the finest RPG's in history, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

The five-minute video, narrated by Arlo, is filled with tidbits about the 1991 release, in a sentence which just gave me a moment of clarity about my advancing age. The new video takes a look at possible translation goofs, Miyamoto's creative decisions, LttP's memory-inte?nsive score and its abandoned "futuristic" concept.

It's a fun way to while away your coffee break, as well as a wistful reminder?? of just how damn good Link's 16-bit adventure was. Now, where? did I put my fold-out map?

The post Did You Know Gaming’s new video looks at Zelda: Link to the Past appeared first on Destructoid.

Check out the homemade Nintendo DS!

This weekend, Did You Know Gaming? returned with a new episode, looking at the Mario & Luigi series. The video is filled with trivia from the handheld games, particularly Superstar Saga, Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside Story.

The video takes a look at some of the game's international names and we learn of a "Knock Knock" joke competition hosted by Kathy Griffin. We hear what steps were taken to prevent Bowser's guts from making you lose your own, and look at the secrets that can be uncovered in Superstar Saga via the GameCube Game Boy player, as well as investigating the creepy "missing brothers" title screen from Partners in Time.

As to be expected from the DYKG c?hannel, it's a fast video of fun facts, perfect for kicking back with while downing your mid-morning coffee, or eating "Brunch", if that's the ??way you choose to live your life.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions is available now for Nintendo 3DS.

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Hell hath no fury

Last year's DOOM is already one of my favorite first-person shooters. Every piece of the game feels as though it was designed to hit players like a sack of bricks. Its combat encounters are violent and snappy affairs that encourage both constant movement and reckless aggression through the Glory Kill system. DOOM is kinetic energy distilled into a digital form.

But DOOM's 2016 rebirth comes with a certain amount of baggage. After languishing in development hell for ?a few years, the shooter underwent numerous changes before releasing to critical praise. Th??ough the final product is damn near perfect, getting it to that point took plenty of effort.

The most recent episode of Did You Know Gaming dives into DOOM. As expected, the video is full of interesting trivia and insightful quotes from the game's developers. There's info about the absolutely blistering soundtrack -- which includes hidden spectrographic images! -- as well as information surrounding DOOM's opening sequence and the game's host?? o??f secrets.

I had no idea that Academy Award winning actress Tilda?? Swinton served as the chief inspiration for Olivia Pierce, but after checking out the video I can't unsee it. Weird. Now excuse me while I go slaughter a few thousand demons without batting an eye.

The post Doom’s Olivia Pierce was inspired by Tilda Swinton appeared first on Destructoid.

Crunchyroll has the data

With a new year comes the opportunity to open up a new front in the console war, and now it's taking place on the battlefield of people's tastes in anime. Crunchyroll has released a series of infographics breaking down the popularity of its recent offerings based on which console owne?rs were watching via the various platforms' Crunchyroll streaming app. 

The infographics measure how much more popular a show is compared to the median across the other consoles. For example, the one-off special Persona 5: The Day Breakers got 31% more views among PS4 users than on the other consoles, and the magical girl parody show Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! is 162% more popular on W??ii U than the average, and 68% more popular among PS3 viewers.

Other interesting trends and tidbits include popularity spikes for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure on the Wii U, the more niche preferences of PS Vita owners, Xbox 360 and XBone owners' love of battle shows, and PS4 users' recognition of the gloriousness that is wuxia puppet epic Thunderbolt Fantasy.

Check out the infographics in the gallery, see a list of the most disproportionately popular anime on each platform below, and see the most popular Crunchyroll-served by country over here. Which console has the best taste?

Crunchyroll reveals 2016's most popular anime by conso?le [IGN via NeoGAF]

• Xbox One - Dragon Ball Super
• PlayStation 4 - Persona 5 the Animation - The Day Breakers
• Wii U - Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!
• PS Vita - Brave Beats
• PlayStation 3 - Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!
• Xbox 360 - Fairy Tail
• Wii - Dream Festival!

The post What does your console sa?y about? your taste in anime? appeared first on Destructoid.

Jellyvisionary

Jackbox Games has a great thing going with its Party Packs. It's way easier to get people to play a game if they already have the equipment, nearly everyone carries a smartphone around these days. I've found that it's far less intimidating to get a group together to play Jackbox ?games than it is to pass out complicated controllers and explain button configurations. Since all that's required is a touchscreen and internet access, you don't even need a smartphone to join in. At my house, we've lent people who don't have their phones a Kindle tablet or a Wii U GamePad, and the??y were able to play along just fine.

Ease of access is just part of the formula though, and it wouldn't mean much if the games you were trying to share with your friends weren't any good. Fortunately, The Jackbox Party Pack 3 more than delivers on the promise of quality made by its predecessors. This year's installment continues to demonstrate that no one (no, not even them) makes a better party game. Each of the Jackbox games vary slightly in quality and complication, but all of them are simple enough that everyone can play. More importantly, they're eno??ugh fun to keep people coming back. It's a party in a box, just like it says on the label.

Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC [reviewed], Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV)
Developer: Jackbox Games Inc.
Publisher: Jackbox Games Inc.
MSRP: $24.99
Released: October 18, 2016 (PS4, PC, Mac, Fire TV), October 21, 2016 (Xbox One)

Unlike previous installments in the Jackbox series, none of the games here have been available before now. Sorry to those who were waiting to grab the likes of Drawful 2 as part of a pack. That's okay though, as the games you do get in the bundle more than make up for it.

There are five games in Party Pack 3, and I'll discuss each of them in turn: Quiplash 2, Trivia Murder Party, Guesspionage, Fakin' It, and Tee K.O. There really aren't any clunkers in th??e bunch, and the group I played with enjoyed each ??of these games on their own merits.

The first game is also the most familiar -- Quiplash 2, an upgraded version of the breakaway hit from last year's Party Pack. The original Quiplash came into being as a Kickstarted effort, and was popular enough to make it into The Jackbox Party Pack 2 as Quiplash XL last October.? Since you play remotely over the internet, you don't necessarily need to be in the same room to join a g??ame. This makes it a perfect fit for streamers, and I'm not ashamed to admit I've gone looking for games to join on Twitch when I can't get a group of friends together.

For those who aren't familiar with Quiplash, here's how it works: Each player is provided the setup to two jokes, and has 90 seconds to answer both of those prompts with the funniest line they can think of. The players who didn't answer a prompt will then vote on which answer they like best, with the winner receiving more points. If the vote is unanimous, the winner gets a Quiplash and a sizable score bonus. Up to eight people can play, and any overflow can still participate by voting from the audience. Audience members' votes aren't weighted as importantly as those of the participants, but they can still swing the outcome of a close matchup or provide extra po??ints to their favorite.

As I mentioned, Quiplash is pretty popular on Twitch, and many of the new features are intended to help make things easier for people who want to stream the games in Party Pack 3. The audience now supports up to 10,000 participants at once. You can require people who join your games to have a Twitch ID, making them slightly more accountable and slightly less random. You can also hide the room code that allows access to your game ?until all of your friends are in, preventing strangers from joining early and pushing your friends into the audience. There's a toggle that allows the first player in to censor player's answers, and perhaps most useful, you can extend the timers for streamed ga?mes to compensate for the 12 to 20 second delay Twitch viewers contend with.

Apart from the streaming features, Quiplash 2's biggest draw is the welcomed ability to create your own prompts; you can even make an entire themed episode if you want. You can open up the creation process to your friends just before you play, or build the whole thing yourself before they come over. Either way, you can save prompts or episodes to play later. You can choose to keep the prompts secret as they're being written, or make it public to make sure ?that nothing is repeated. It's important to make sure that everyone understands the format before you open it up to others, or some of your custom prompts may not play ??very well. If everyone's on the same page though, this feature has the potential to become the best part of the game, with group in-jokes and collective memories adding serious replay value to a game that already had loads of it.

One unavoidable downside is that the ann?ouncer (understandably) won't read your custom prompts out loud. If you have an odd number of custom prompts or run out midway through a game, that's not a problem, as t??he built-in prompts will take over seamlessly. The ability to create your own game is a simple addition, but once you've tried it, you'll always want the option there.

I invited a large group over so that we could check out some of the audience features, and these have also been improved since Quiplash XL. Audience members now have the option to answer prompts alongside the players, though audience answers are never seen in the live game. O??nce a game is completed, both audience members and participants can click on the "Gallery" bu?tton to revisit every answer provided during a match. Both of these are small things, but they do help keep the audience engaged while waiting for the players to provide their answers, time they'd otherwise just be sitting idle.

The second game is called Trivia Murder Party, and it's a perfect fit for all those Halloween parties that are just around the corner. This is the only game in the bunch that doesn't have a family-friendly mode, and I'd recommend not letting kids or grandma near this one, as some of the imagery is disturbing. That being said, it's c?lear that this is what th??e development team spent the most time with, and of the four brand new games, this is the one my group enjoyed playing the most.

Trivia Murder Party is what might happen if the You Don't Know Jack host became obsessed with the Saw movies and set up a torture dungeon in his basement. You play as cute little Sackboy-esque voodoo dolls, and the goal of this one is to escape a haunted house by answering a serial killer's trivia challenges and performing mini-games better than the other contestants. The trivia questions are considerably tougher than you might find on a YDKJ episode, and for every one?? you answer wrong, you're pitted against the other players who goofed up in various challenges. If you're the only player who answered incorrectly, you might have ??to "cut off a finger," meaning one of the four choices to answer a question will be inaccessible to you for the rest of the game.

If multiple living players answer incorrectly, they'll have to participate in a variety of mini-games, from seeing who can answer simple math questions fastest to drawing something intangible like "the future" or "moral ambiguity," and waiting for the other players to vote for their least favorite. There's a great variety of these, and some bring to mind the classic prisoner's dilemma or the Holy Grail sequence in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The loser(s) of the??se challenges are dest??royed rather gruesomely, continuing to play as ghosts.

Ghost players are treated a little differently than those who haven't been murdered yet. If all living players answer a question correctly, no mini-game is triggered, even if?? ghosts answer the question wrong. Ghosts can vote on some of the challenges that living players are thrown into, and are still allowed to answer trivia and earn cash for every correct answer. As the announcer/murderer tells you, though, "Don't get too obsessed with the scores, it's mostly about the killing."

Play continues until only one? player is left alive. At the end of ten rounds or whenever only one player is still in possession of a ??corporeal form, it's time for the final escape sequence. If the last two living players die at the same time, one is chosen based on their score to lead the escape. During the final round, each player is asked the same questions, and moves closer to the exit for each correct multiple-choice answer. However, the living player is at a distinct disadvantage. Multiple answers can be correct, and while the living player has two options to choose from, each of the ghost players has three.

If a ghost manages to catch up to the living player during the escape sequence, they'll steal the body. This makes it possible for a dead player to ?steal the victory, but they'll have the same disadvantage if there's still space and questions to answer between them and the door. This leads to some great back and forth jockeying for position at the end of a match, and my group all particularly enjoyed how intense this final round felt.

We did have a couple of minor issues with this?? mode, mostly relating to the audio. The announcer/murderer uses a voice deepening vocoder to hide his identity, and the instru?ctions he gives can be difficult to understand if there's any background noise or side conversations. (At one point during our session, the vocoder stopped working, revealing the killer's identity in a well-done audio joke.) Similarly, the audio levels seemed inconsistent, with the jarring noise used to indicate that a player has selected an answer being much louder than the announcer's instructions. This didn't take anything away from the experience though, and I think my group will be returning to this mode for years to come.

Guesspionage, the third game in the bundle, is the one we spent the least time with. That's not to say it's bad, but we did enjoy the other offerings more. Guesspionage plays a bit like Family Feud, in that all of the questions are based on surveys conducted by Jackbox Game??s. Each player chooses an agent as their avatar, then takes a turn answering what percentage of the population surveyed answered a binary question using a sliding percentage scale. When they're done, the re??st of the players and the audience decide whether they think the first player was too high or too low.

Points are awarded based on how close the primary player was to the correct percentage, and those who are second-guessing the primary get po?ints only if they correctly guess whether the percentage should be higher or lower. If the primary player gets the percentage exactly right, they get all the points for that round and the second-guessers get nothing.

Play continues like this until every player has chosen at le??ast one percentage. In large games, if they think the primary player was way off ??(by 15 percent or more), they can indicate as much on their device. If they're right, their points are doubled for that question, but if they're wrong they get nothing. In smaller games, this feature is disabled until the second round of play.

The final round shows a grid of nine answers, a??n??d each player is given three guesses to determine which of these was the most popular to the question provided. More points are given for selecting the most popular answers.

As previously mentioned, my group e??njoyed this game, but it's easily the one we spent the least time with. Some of the surveillance jokes fell a little flat, and the backgrounds and graphics were a sometimes distracting and unrelated to the topic (a man loading clothes into a dryer, or someone pulling toilet paper off a roll, for example). The game itself is fun and well-made, but I can't help but feel that more attention was given to the other games in the pack.

The next game is called Fakin' It, and it's the one that'll probably need the most explanation. It's basically a technology-enhanced, streamlined version of Werewolf, with one player d?esignated as the Faker, and the other players trying to identify and catch the Faker before three rounds have passed. Unlike the other games in the pack, this one o?nly supports up to six players at a time, down from eight.

Fakin' It is probably the game that will get the least amount of love on streams, but that's because it pretty much requires all of the players to be in the s?ame room with one another. Players are asked to raise their hands, point at one another, make faces, hold up a certain number of fingers, and other physical activities to indicate the answers to questions sent to their device. Every player but the Faker receives the same question, and the Faker is just told to blend in as best they can.

This is a great example of how much fun asymmetric gameplay can be, and Fakin' It is one of the best use cases for Jackbox Games' phone-as-a-controller technology. You have to keep up a steady poker face if your phone tells you that you're the Faker, and it's hilarious trying to interpret your friends' actions to determine if they're the chosen one. This game plays best in small groups of four to six; three seems like too few, though the game compensates by removing one round to assist the Faker. It also helps if all the players know each other fairly well, so you can pick up on unspoken dialogue and facial expressions. We brought a new player? into our group, and since he didn't know anyone, he was at a huge disadvantage trying to figure out who was fibbing.

At the end of a round,? all players are asked to vote for who they think the Faker is. If they vote unanimously and correctly, the Faker is caught and play moves on to the next round. Audience members can vote too, but their votes aren't counted. The percentage of audience members who correctly identified the Faker is shown on-screen though, so it can help the players determine which of them is faking. Communication between players is encouraged, though it might have been nice to have just a little more time between rounds to discuss what had been learned from the previous question. If the Faker manages to evade capture for three rounds, they escape. Points are awarded based on how long the Faker avoided capture, and whether anyone voted for them while they were lying.

The final round changes up the rules, and each player is given a couple of questions to write down the answers to. This is very well done, as the Faker's questions are related to the rest of the groups, but probably won't match up exactly. For example, during one round the main group was asked to write something good about themselves, while the Faker?? was told to write down something they look for in a mate. Writing "L?ooks" or "Personality" would allow you to blend in, but typing "Giant knockers" would get you caught in a hurry.

Fakin' It has the highest learning curve of all the games in Party Pack 3, but it has the potential to be the most rewarding. My group liked the retro-sixties, Spy vs. Spy aesthetic of this activity, and this is the only game in the bunch that's hosted by fan favorite Cookie Masterson (Tom Gottlieb). The tutorial recommends using real names and sitting in a semicircle around the TV so that everyone can see anyone else, and my group ignored this advice at our peril. Our first game didn't go very well, and the people I played with agreed that a practice round before the game started would have been appreciated. Once we had the hang of it though, Fakin' It turned out to be a lot of fun.

The final game in the pack is Tee K.O., and it's the artistic game in the bundle, the spiritual successor to Drawful and Bidiots from earlier Jackbox Party Packs. In this game, players are encouraged to create pictures and slogans that will be combined to create a t-shirt, and the rest of the players vote on which design they like best. While drawing on your phone is never easy, Tee K.O. removes? some of the frustration by allowing you to undo a mistake and choose between several colors to create your masterpiece, so it's much more forgiving tha??n those prior games.

In?? the first section, each player must draw two pictures of anything they like within 90 seconds. The second section encourages them to write as many slogans or phrases as they can. The third section shuffles these slogans and drawings so that everyone gets a few that they didn't make themselves. At that point, they'll need to choose the picture and phrase that they think will make the best, funniest t-shirt design. Everyone will get three pictures to choose from, and depending on how many slogans your fellow players created, you'll get three or more to match up with these drawings.

Each t-shirt is matched up against someone else's design in a head-to-head battle, and both players and audience members can vote on which design they like best. Unlike some of the other games in the pack, audience member votes carry equal weight, so your design might be the favorite in the room and still lose the battle. The winner of a round faces the next design until all the T-shirts have been displayed, and there are bonuses if your shirt survives for several rounds or c??omes out as the winner in this head-to-head section.

The aesthetics in this game are worth mentioning; everything is vivid and colorful, and my group noticed that the backgrounds made even the crappiest line drawings on the shirts look like works of art. There are cute mascots for every player, and the announcer's British accent means he says "drawrings" fairly frequently. If a shirt design gets 100 percent of the vote, a deep voice will announce "SHIRTALITY!" in a nod to the Mortal Kombat series?, bef??ore the losing shirt is burned and crumbles into ash.

After th?e first head-to-head section is complete, each player creates one more drawing and adds as many slogans as they can think of, then there's another round of t-shirt creation and battle. Any pictures or slogans that weren't used in the first round are added t??o the pool for the second, so players may have a few more slogan options in the second round.

As you might imagine, there can be a long time between rounds as everyone is finalizing their drawings and selecting the wittiest slogans to match them. There's a toggle that allows audience members to submit suggestions which will appear on the main screen, though they can't draw or submit slogan ideas unless they're actually playing. Unfortunately, I didn't fi??nd this toggle until after we had shed players and didn't have an audience, so our audience was stuck doing nothing for long sections while others were working on their shirts.

We did notice that the later a design appeared in the battle phase, the more likely it was to win the tournament. A repeated ?joke is only funny a few times, so the novelty a new shirt has gives it the advantage in the battle sections.

Tee K.O. has some additional features included that are pretty neat. After a game is completed, you can check ??out a gallery of all the designs created. You can tweet a design if you like, and you also have the option to custom-print and order a shirt created using the game's interface. Transactions are handled through Paypal; it costs $16 with free shipping in the US, and there are a variety of men's and women's sizes available. I can't see myself ordering shirts this way, but it's really cool that they made it an option. My friends and I did have some trouble going through the?? ordering process, but that may be because the game hadn't officially released yet.

Here's a shirt you can wear on your torso! #TeeKO //t.co/a94qDUAVVM pic.twitter.com/m3awRWJZFk

�Qalamari (@Qalamari) October 17, 2016

There were a few other technical glitches with Tee K.O. as well. Near the end of the first section, two of the announcer's audio tracks triggered at the same time. This happened in every game we played, so there's probably an errant line of code causing the overlap. We weren't able to access the gallery consistently either, with some players getting stuck on a loading screen until they gave up. Some ??players had difficulty choosing slogans based on where the buttons showed up o?n their device, and at one point I got locked out of the shirt creation process and had to forfeit that round. While annoying, none of this was game-breaking, and we all had a blast pitting our tees against one another.

So, let's sum up. Quiplash 2's new prompt creation gives it near infinite replayability, though your experience will vary based on who you're playing with. Trivia Murder Party is a bloody, comic horror take on You Don't Know Jack, and it might just be my favorite of the bunch. Guesspionage is a perfectly fine game, but doesn't reach the heights of some of the others in the pack. Fakin' It works best with a slightly smaller group, and is loads of fun if you can get a group of old friends together. Finally, Tee K.O. combines artwork and silly phrases well, though it may bore your a??udience in? between battle sections.

There's a lot of value here for the price, and even if you could buy each of these games separately for five bucks apiece, I'd still recommend picking up all of them. You'll need to invite at least three friends over to get the most out of these games, but if you have the means and the opportunity, you'll get way more than your money's worth out of The Jackbox Party Pack 3.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: The Jackbox Party Pack 3 appeared first on Destructoid.

Trivia time!

[In what I hope will be the first of a new community feature, Taterchimp set up his very own trivia show! How much random useless video game knowledge do our fair Dtoiders possess? Only one way to find out! If you want to contribute with technical know-how, impossible questions or as a potential contestant, be sure to hit up our lovely host.~ Shade]

Hello everyone! Today I am happy to announce what I hope is the start of something beautiful: The jbsgame.community Trivia Podcast! For the very first episode, I was joined by GajKnight and ShadeOfLight to do some t????rivia battle! The questions were fierce, but sometimes the rain was even fiercer!

The rules ?are posted below, bu?t if you want to head straight to the action:

You can find the first epsiode here.

The show?? consists of three main rounds, and one bonus round for the winner.

Round 1: Game Sharks

Player 1 will be asked a question, which has a numerical answer. The question is designed to be something that anyone could take a guess at, yet almost impossible to get exactly right. For example: “How many coins are in World 1-1?" Player 2 then has to choose if Player 1’s answer was higher than the actual amount, or lower than the actual amount. If Player 2 is right, then they received 100 points. Otherwise?, Player 1 gets 100 points. If Player 1 manages to get the answer exactly right, they will receive 300 points. Each player gets 3 rounds of selecting the value, and 3 round of guessing higher or lower.

In this episode: "How many Pokémon currently exist, not counting those revealed for Sun & Moon?"

Round 2: Buff the Listener

Player 1 will be asked an open question. They can submit an answer to the question immediately for extra points, or choose to make it multiple choice. If Player 1 answers, Player 2 is forced to take the multiple choice. Otherwise, Player 2 can make the same choice: answer the question out of hand for extra points, or select from multiple choice. A correct answer provides 400 points, a multiple choice answer gives only 200. Each player gets 3 questions for which they get the first call.

These questions can range from specific game trivia to industry facts. These questions are designed to have a difficult exact answer, but the multiple choice allows for some lucky guesses.

In this episode: "In EVE Online, how did player Ricdic make over? $5000 in in-game cur??rency?"

Round 3: GANNONBALL!

The final round contains the most specific trivia, with the least amount of player assistance. This round should separate the men from the boys. Players are asked a list based question, and alternate naming things that b??elong on that list until one player can no longer provide a correct answer.

So for example, a round could be ‘?name the Koopa kids’. Player 1 provides an answer, then Player 2. As soon as one person cannot answer, or answers incorrectly, the other player may name up to two additional items from the list for bonus points. Play alternates between rounds. Each correct answer is worth 200 points.

In this episode: "Which items can you get from item boxes in Mario Kart 8?"

Prizes, Prizes, Prizes!

So what is the prize for all of this? I will award whoever wins a game of their choic?e under $10 on Steam.  Feeling generous? You can take your prize in the form of a $10 don?ation to a charity of your choice!

Bonus Round:  Test Your Might

Double or nothing! At the end of the game, the winning player can attempt to up their prize to a $20 Steam game or a $20 dollar charity donation! And because I’m not a dick to sick kids, you? will never lose your donation. It may not do??uble, but at least $10 is guaranteed.

Before electing to play, you may hear the category.  There will be one question, and you must answer it yourself - no multiple choice, no ask the audience. The question could be on anything and everything related to gaming. Kid Icarus’ famous cheat code? Master Chief's voice actor?  The last boss in Final Fantasy VI, alphabetically? All fair game.

In this episode: Listen in to find out!

With the rules all laid out, it's time to go to the episode proper, featuring GajKnight and ShadeOfLight:

You can find the first epsiode here

Without spoiling any results, the winner decided to play for charity today, and for once a certain Nintendo character did more good than harm! A donation of $20 was made to Charity: Water. Destructoid has some hist?ory with this charity. In fact, there is the well out there that was put toge??ther with money raised from a Destructoid charity drive some years ago. Charity:Water's goal is to provide clean and safe drinking water to those who wouldn't otherwise have it.

It's an absolutely great cause, so please feel free to donate at their website. 

Now I do want to apologize for ??some audio issues. I'm still learning how to set up podcast kind of stuff (advice is appreciated!), so I didn't capture everyone on their own track. Because of that, I appear louder than Gaj and Shade do. I think I got it into a much better state than the raw file, but I just wanted to say that I only expect the quality of the show to go up! In the mean tim??e, I hope you'll enjoy the show for what it already is.

Also, on the subject of the audio portion of the show, I want to (read: legally have to) thank //www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/electronica for providing my intro and closing music.

I definitely had a blast recording this, so I am looking forward to do some more episodes. You can guess what that means: I need contestants! If you would like to join me for another episode, drop a comment, or send a PM. I use Skype to capture the audio, so I think that is the only requirement to participate. I suppose knowing anything about video games is a plus, as well! [You can also send an e-mail to the Dtoid community managers at community[at]jbsgame.com or specifically to shade[at]jbsgame.com]

I hope to see you ?next time at the Destructoid Trivia Show!

The post jbsgame.community Trivia – Pilot Episode! appeared first on Destructoid.

These facts and more in this Vsauce3 video

Vsauce3 has been pumping out these cool stop-motion videos for some time now, and they're actually quite interesting to w??atch. This one's about the Wii U, the first Nintendo console to support HD. But I'm sure you already knew that.

Stick around for four additional facts and ??some disassembly of a Wii U in this video. Somehow it's always a beautiful thing to watch a console being stripped down. There's something gorgeously primal about it. Maybe it's the power play aspe?ct. BDSM with a Wii U, brought to you by Vsauce3 and Brittany Vincent.

The post Did you know the Wii U GamePad uses the Earth’s magnetic field for positioning? appeared first on Destructoid.

Wanna see what makes this baby tick?

Vsauce3 is back at it again, with another stop-motion video like the previous Oculus Rift Fact Surgery we featured not long ago. This time, it's delving ?into the inner workings of the Game Boy while delivering some facts about th??e popular handheld.

I feel like they missed a big opportunity here to post this video on the Game Boy's 25th anniversary, but such is life. It's a neat little video with some tidbits you may not h??ave known, so it's worth watching, even if for the stop-motion work, which is always cool.

Additionally, you can check out the accompanying episode of Did You Know Gaming? featuring Jake of Vsauce3, for some more?? tasty morsels of Game Boy trivia goodness. I love these kinds of things. If only I fe?lt this way about learning useful things.

The post Check out the inner workings of a Game Boy and learn something while you’re at it appeared first on Destructoid.

Dig deeper into Valve's class-based online shooter

I've fallen off the Team Fortress 2 wagon in a big way; I used to play for at least 2-3 hours every day but the constant stream of updates and deluge of new items dulled my interest. Watching this latest episode of Did You Know Gaming on TF2 brought back some good memories and reminded me of the game's long and pro??tracted development phase.

Team Fortress 2 was worked on for eight years before being finally released; the first Team Fortress was a Quake mod that Valve snapped up and had re-released on its own Source engine. When TF2 was originally shown off it was clearly going for a realistic war shooter look which I'm glad never paned out. I much prefer the stylized ?silliness of the final product.

I should really try out TF2 one more time -- ?maybe I'll learn to l?ove it again.

The post Did You Know Gaming tackles Team Fortress 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Good

One of the most well-received experiments of the Xbox 360 era was the interactive adaption of popular gameshow 1 vs. 100. The social trivia experience is fondly remembered by most, and fans have expressed their interest in its re?turn. While that'll likely never happen, Microsoft looks to ??have something similar up its sleeve.

Speaking with Polygon, Microsoft Studios' Dave McCarthy said "We will do something in the future for Xbox One that is like [1 vs. 100], because spiritually we thought it was a pretty cool experience, ourselves." He also added "It has a good image here. The approach is something we really enjoyed." Phil Spencer originally hinted last May at this style of game returning to the Xbox service, but McCa??rthy's words seem to be a bit more concrete.

Judging by the fact that 1 vs. 100 had more than 114,000 concurrent players at it's peak, the ga?me appears to have a good image among Xbox Live users, as well. A new title along the sam??e lines could go a long way toward swaying people to the Xbox platform. It may not necessarily be a system seller, but it might be a damn fine reason to keep coming back to the Xbox One.

Microsoft: Something like 1 vs. 100 coming t??o Xbox One [Polygon]

The post Microsoft’s working on something similar to 1 vs 100 appeared first on Destructoid.

Trivia game celebrates being old enough to vote with a reissue

I am a nut for pop culture trivia and, for my money, there's no better trivia game experience in the digital space than You Don't Know Jack. This year, the series celebrates its 18th anniversary and has finally arrived on Steam today with nine Jack titles, availab??le individually or in a "Classic Pack" collection.

Individual games are priced at $2.99 (with the exception of YDKJ 6: The Lost Gold, which is only $1.99), while the full collection is available for $19.99, a savings of just under $6. That's a tough call for me, as I'm not particularly interested in getting the Sports-themed iteration again nor the teen-focused Headrush. Then a?gain I'll almost certainly wind up just buying the rest of them anyway, so it seems just as reasonable to simply buy the pack and still save a couple of pennies despite not desiring everything in it.

The post You Don’t Know Jack series arrives on Steam appeared first on Destructoid.

Welcome to the WORLD OF TOMORROW!

Fun trivia for the day!

There are plenty of clues in the Pikmin series to suggest that the Pikmin's planet is in fact Earth at a point when humans are no longer around. The most clear-cut evidence to support this theory is during the ending of Pikmin 2, when the camera pulls back to reveal a blue sphere? strikingly similar to own ho??me world.

Pikmin 3 seemingly not only further supports the theory but also establishes a rough time frame for the game's events. According to the Pikmin Wiki entry on PNF-404, the planet's formal name, the surface of the world has been retconned to resemble Pangaea Ultima, a supercontinent configuration that represents what Earth could look like in 250 million years. Sure enough, laying a map of Pangaea Ultimate over the PNF-404 topography yields a damn near perfect match.

I love it when developers give you clues about a game universe's histor?y without going into specifi??c detail. In a time when background lore is often explained in exhaustive length, it's good to know there are still discoveries to be made if you look hard enough.

Pikmin Takes Place on Earth… 250 Mill?ion Years in the Future [Gamnesia] (Thanks, Nathanial!)

The post Pikmin 3 takes place 250 million years in Earth’s future appeared first on Destructoid.

Cinemassacre's Mike Matei has a 16-bit gaming quiz for you

A few months ago, Cinemassacre and Angry Video Game Nerd collaborator Mike Matei uploaded a video quiz challenging viewers to guess the 50 NES games on display just from their final boss death animations. The bits have? now doubled for this second quiz, which involves 50 titles from the SNES library.

I want to jump to #31 just for sec. It so obviously resembles Double Dragon, but it looks nothing like the two Double Dragon games that actually did release on the SNES (three if you include Battletoads & Double Dragon). This is really bugging me. Help, anyone?

Super Nintendo Deathblows! (Trivia Game) [YouTube]

The post And now, 50 SNES final bosses bite the big one appeared first on Destructoid.

Flex your retro knowledge in this video quiz

Earlier this week, Mike Matei of Cinemassacre shared a video of 50 "deathblows" ??from popular and not so popular NES titles. He had originally intended to compose a list of his favorite final boss deaths from the NES era, but he instead decided to turn it into a trivia game.

Some of the entries are super easy (Mario 3, Batman, etc.), but others?? may give you a bit of trouble.? You'd be surprised at just how varied the NES library truly was.

NES Deathblows (Nintendo Trivia Game) [YouTube]

The post 50 NES games, 50 final boss death animations appeared first on Destructoid.

And other neat bits of trivia from Did You Know Gaming

[Update: For more gaming trivia, visit Did You Know Gaming? directly or the brand new sister site just launched, VGFacts.]

Oh? Did I get your attention? Apparently, Samus' death animation in Super Metroid originally had her breaking out of her suit sans skivvies and ??letting loose a vocalized scream, but clothing was added to avoid controversy and the voice was remove?d for sounding too sexual. True story!

To the best of my knowledge, we haven't shared a single episode of Did You Know Gaming? on Dtoid before (and if we did, it completely passed me by). I myself only discovered it a couple months back, and I've been happily enjoying new videos since. For those unaware, Did You Know Gaming? is a videogame trivia show featuring a rotating cast of notable YouTube stars providing narration. Some o?f the information they discuss is extremely fascinating!

The latest installment focuses on Metroid, as you can see. I'm amazed by how many iconic design deci??sions in the earliest games were made around the limi??tations of the hardware. I'm also surprised to learn that Samus originally had distinct left- and right-facing sprites in her first outing.

Metroid -?? Did You Know Gaming? Feat. WeeklyTubeShow [YouTube]

The post Samus was almost naked in Super Metroid!?!? appeared first on Destructoid.

For a class project, I had to find every letter of the alphabet within some sort of t??heme with out tampering with the images. Some students used household items, others used tree branches, and I, naturally, chose videogame sprites.

Though I didn't compose this with trivia in mind, it certainly works as tha?t. Let's see if any of you can guess every game that the character/letter represents! I'll post answers in a week.

The post Guess ?all these games and win? a free self-esteem boost! appeared first on Destructoid.

Jellyvision has released a version of their classic, irreverent trivia series, You Don't Know Jack for Facebook which features many of the bells, whistles and foghorns found in games for the platform. Each day, players will be able to play a round for free and cash earned through playing is b??anked in an experience system which rewards players with more free ??plays and new fake ads from all new sponsors.

Games run five questions in length and include "Dis or Dat" and "Gibberish Questions," and every round ends with a Jack Attack, making for a tiny little chunk of Jack when you need it. And while you'll be playing alone, You Don't Know Jack puts you in c?ompetition against how your friends, showing how they scored on the same questions and allows you opportunities to brag or give pr?ops.

There's more coming, too. Jellyvision is also working on new versions of You Don't Know Jack for iOS and Android devices, coming later ??this year. Yay!

The post You Don’t Know Jack now playable on Facebook appeared first on Destructoid.

After four retail entries, the Scene It? series has finally made the jump to the downloadable arena. Scene It? Movie Night is essentially a Scene It? downloadable content platform for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, with Mega Movies as the first pack included in the package.

If you've played Scene It? before, you probably know what to expect.

Scene It? Movie Night - Mega Movies (PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade [Reviewed])
Developer: Sarbakan
Publisher: Screenlife, LLC
Released: November 29, 2011
MSRP: $9.99 / 800 Microsoft Points

Scene It? Movie Night is, like the other console iterations that came before, an assortment of movie trivia mini-games. As you might have expected, Movie Night is somewhat of a "lite" version of the previous Scene It? games. Luckily, most of that concerns the presentation a?lone. There are no avatars bouncing all over the screen and trivia mini-games are introduced with much cheaper animation than before, but both are things you can easily live with.

The core of the Scene It? videogame experience is still intact, so if you've played these games before, you'll feel right at home again. Movie Night only offers one mode with seven rounds, two of which are always movie clips trivia. That means most games will last around 10-15 minutes instead of offering the option between short and long games as in the "full" console versions. It also means that some of the fan-favorite mini-games like Pixel Flix -- an 8-bit representation of a movie scene -- can take multiple sessions to encounter. You can't configure anything about this one mode other than enabling "Buzz In" or not, which is a bit of a shame yet understandable given the way Movie Night handles scoring.

With only one scoring mechanism in place, Movie Night opts for a safe approach. A score bar, divided into green, yellow, and red sections, indicates how many points you'll score, with the green section's always giving you the maximum score. Only during the game's final lightning roun??d mini-game, Quick Pitch, will you actu??ally lose points by selecting an incorrect answer, provided you didn't enable the "Buzz In" option. With "Buzz In" enabled, only the person who buzzed in stands to lose points throughout the game (half the amount they buzzed in for), so you had better be sure you know the answer before buzzing.

Despite being a downloadable title, Movie Night doesn't feel that different from the regular Scene It? games. The compression on the movie clips results in some artifacts if you sit too close to the scren, but otherwise it's the same game, just tailored for quicker sessions with seemingly less trivia questions. The Mega Movies pack focuses on big hit movies, and while it's debatable whether or not some of the choices belong in here, it's on par with the type of movies in the other games. From Ghost and Road to Perdition to more contemporary movies like The Social Network and X-Men: First Class, these are all movies that the general public at least has heard of. The range of movies included seems to focus on the 1970-2010 decades of blockbusters, so you shouldn't expect any trivia about what Fritz Lang's character's name was in Contempt or anything like that.

That doesn't mean you'll stand a chance against veteran movie trivia players if you don't know much about movie details, though. Some trivia mini-games that require you to order movies by their year of release or to choose actors based on names of characters they've played can be very hard to guess correctly unless you wait for all the hints to gradually reveal themselves. The "Quick Pitch" final round does even out the odds somewhat, with generally ??easier questions and higher scores that allow any casual movie fan to quickly ramp up their scores and catch up, which in turn increases the play??time you'll get out of this title before your friends will never want to play with you ever again.

As a platform, Scene It? Movie Night is a safe and inexpensive option for those who don't want to pay full price for the console games, although the older Scene It? games can probably be found for cheap by now. The concept of different DLC packs for different genres is interesting -- a science fiction pack is promised to be on the way -- and will hopefully end up letting you tailor the game for the kinds of movies you and your friends enjoy the most (i.e., if you don't expect them to know Twilight is set in the town of Forks). Just like the platform itself, the included Mega Movies p??a??ck is a safe bet meant for everyone and unlikely to offend anyone.

However, and this might be a deal-breaker for some, Scene It? Movie Night offers local multiplayer only. If you were planning on setting up an Xbox Live party and jumping into a game to trash-talk about movie trivia with your friends, that's just not going to happen with this game. This is a bit disappointing since online multiplayer would've made it that much easier to play with your online movie buff friends, even if it's unsurprising given the lack of online play in the past Scene It? games.? Still, this is a party game at heart, so if you don't have any local friends that?? are around your level of movie trivia expertise, you might want to give it a pass as solo play won't stay interesting for long.

Scene It? Movie Night and the Mega Movies pack provide a fun movie trivia party experience that keeps the Scene It? gameplay intact in a downloadable slice. It might just be that cheap little game to keep the family occupied over the holidays, but? you had better have some local fr??iends to play it with.

The post Review: Scene It? Movie Night – Mega Movies appeared first on Destructoid.