You Don't Know Jack

Once you've played a quiz game, you've pretty much played them all. It's not easy to put a fresh twist on the question and answer format, which makes You Don't Know Jack evade the mundanity other quiz games frequently suffer from. Rather than indulging in bloated bonus rounds or thousands of questions, You Don't Know Jack puts all its chips on an extremely idiosyncratic sense of style and humor.

This begins with the surreal scene of an all-singing, all-dancing number introducing the question, quite often laced with inneundo and double entendres. To give you a flavor of this, a simple question like "What is America's 2nd most common surname?" becomes "If Aerosmith's Steven Tyler starts a new band using the SECOND most common surname it America, what would it be called?" You've got four answers to choose from with a twenty second time limit, earning or burning more money depending on the speed of your answer.

The questions run the gamut from satire to pop culture and everything in between, and although it takes a certain person to appreciate the humor, they're crafted fantastically. And the contribution of Cookie Masterson, the sarky quiz master, can't be underestimated. His enthusiastic delivery genuinely provides some laugh-out-loud moments, and each line of dialogue is relevant to the question and answer you pick. When you answer incorrectly Cookie will chastise you while referring to your answer, more often than not resulting in a great line.

Unfortunately, the targeted dialogue means there isn't a huge amount of questions here. The app comes with twenty episodes that contain ten questions plus a bonus round each, so if you play an episode a second time, you'll get the same questions. There isn't any multiplayer either, which is a bit of a blow if you're looking for longevity. There are some updates on the way that promise to add new episodes though, and if you're considering You Don't Know Jack in the first place, it's probably for the kooky style and humour. On that basis, it's definitely worth the price of admission.