What the Dub? is a good party game. Playing with friends and family to dub over B-Movie film clips is short stints of amusement that you can come back to when you tire of the Jack Box experience. It’s cheap enough to justify and funny enough to enjoy.
Over the last year, my family has dealt with and pushed forward through the harsh realities of the pandemic thanks in part to Jack Box 1-7. Coming together with some wacky comedy via a party game is the new board game for us and has pushed us through some hard times dealing with the world’s hard facts, while also garnishing more than a smile along the way. Party games are needed now more than ever and help bring a sense of togetherness that most times we didn’t know we needed. It also keeps us laughing, when in all honesty we should be stressed out and crying. Kudos to party games for their efforts.
Related, Wide Right Interactive has changed the course of party games in a simplified and pretty cool manner by getting people together to fill in the blanks of bad movie audio with What the Dub?. While the game doesn’t offer up as much range of games as a Jack Box package, in fact, it only offers one game, it stays the course with focused intent on gamers dubbing over bad movie scenes. And these scenes aren’t just bad movies from MST3K, these are bad movies with top-tier talent like Jack Nicholson and Vincent Price. Okay, Price is a stretch. He knew he was making mostly bad films, but at least he was loving it. Let’s get right into it.
Dubbing through Texting
What the Dub? is a game that does exactly what it says it will do and nothing more. The game puts you through five rounds of scenes, which are streamed from Wide Right Interactive’s servers, and asks you to simply type text into your mobile device that replaces the missing audio. For example, if Vincent Price shows up on the screen with a gun and points it at someone and says, “Now, I’ve got you!”, then the game will leave the next line open for the player to fill in the blank, which you could reply “You’re a Clearing House winner!”. You have about 25 seconds to fill it in, hit submit, wait for all the other players to get done, then you get to hear what everyone typed via a computer voice that does its best to deliver the finest quality audio available. The latter part of that equation is a cheap way to do things on the developer side of the tracks, but it works when it comes to filling in the blanks of the game and getting people laughing.
Once you hear everyone’s dubbed line, you vote on the best, scores are given and tallied, and the game progresses to the next round following the same pattern with a top scorer at the end. There is nothing extra really beyond that gaming structure. It’s just pure fun that involves creative people that can laugh together through a simple party game. It’s everything that I thought it would be.
Will this type of gameplay last for hours? Lord, no, but it will at least keep you occupied for about an hour. Before you gripe at that statement, keep in mind that you’re purchasing a $7.99 title on the PlayStation store for small amounts of fun. The game was developed by two people and they turned a simple concept that I couldn’t fathom immediately working well (imagine the licensing hell they went through) into something that I have witnessed my kids and wife laughing their butts off at for an hour or so. It’s totally worth that price tag and the time spent playing, if not only for the laughs. Laughing creates some good positivity and is always welcomed.
The game does allow for players to use curse words. I tried that out thinking it wouldn’t and my wife was quite surprised (maybe a kid or two as well — oops). Thankfully, the game does allow you to turn off curse words, and adjust other options to customize your gaming experience (lower the time for responses for maximum creative fun). It’s simplified in structure and it doesn’t go beyond what it promised, which I can dig.
Is it perfect? It does have a hiccup now and then. The movie clips are running from Wide Right Interactive’s servers. Once in a blue moon, their servers will buffer, where you hear the audio in the load screen and then the video quickly catches up. That issue happens now and then, but not too often where it gets frustrating and the problem is fixable.
Anyway, that’s the only problem I’ve seen in this game, otherwise, it’s a pretty fun game.
Conclusion
What the Dub? is a good party game. Playing with friends and family to dub over B-Movie film clips is short stints of amusement that you can come back to when you tire of the Jack Box experience. It’s cheap enough to justify and funny enough to enjoy.
