You wanna know what my all-time favorite TV show in the whole wide world is?  It’s Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Man I love that show!  In it, a guy and two robot puppets are sent out in a space station by two mad scientists, and are forced to watch bad movies and make fun of them.  You might’ve seen this show and not even realized it, because most of it is just the old movie with a silhouette of theater seats and the characters at the bottom talking all throughout the movie.  It hasn’t been on TV in a long time, but you can still catch it in syndication and on Netflix.  Some of the show’s creators and stars have gone on to do similar works, like Rifftrax, which are great, too.  But MST3K is still my favorite.  Since I like video games a lot, I always thought it would be neat if they made an MST3K video game.  But until they do, What the Dub?! may be the closest thing to that.  It’s a party game where you watch clips of old movies, type in missing dialogue in your phone, and vote on the funniest submissions.  It’s available for nearly all current game consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

When you start the game, they’ll prompt you to go to a web site on your phone and type in a room code.  It’s VERY similar to how Jackbox games work.  You’ll use your phone to type in answers and vote on others.  You can even add in pre-recorded sound effects like farts, always good for a cheap laugh.  In each round they’ll play a movie clip with some missing dialogue.  You must fill in the blanks with something funny, and then the game will play the clip again with each person’s submission read by a computer voice.  Then you vote on the best answer and whoever has the most votes gets more points.  Whoever has the most points at the end of a set number of rounds, wins.  In the options menu you can toggle things like how many rounds there are, how much time you get to type in answers and vote, and filter out bad words if you wish.

This game is so much fun and great for parties and I even like it better than most, if not all, of the Jackbox games.  It’s just a lot easier to understand.  The only problem I had with the game is that you MUST have four people to play.  That’s why it took me so long to write this review is because it was hard to get that many people in the house.  It’s a shame they couldn’t work out a way to play it with less people, especially with COVID restrictions still running rampant.  But if you can get past that, this is a must have game for parties and get togethers.

Kid Factor:

What The Dub?! is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Violence.  I didn’t notice any of that in the movie clips, but they are all that campy B-movie content.  Really the game is only as dirty as you make it.  You can filter out bad words and such, so that may help.  If you are OK with your kids watching stuff like Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, they’ll probably be OK with the game, too.

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children, Television