Not the most polished deckbuilder, but full of great ideas and charm. The basics of positional attacks and turn-based dodging feel great, especially with a controller, where pulling a trigger on one side pulls the ship in that direction.

The more advanced unlockable characters are a bit of a let-down by comparison. A crew of 3 representing 3 distinct card pools stretches things a little too thin compared to, say, Monster Train's 2-clan system, especially when several characters have parasitic mechanics that only interact with that character's own cards (e.g. Drake's overheating mechanic)

Where the 3-person crew shines is in showcasing the characters and their relationships, such as Riggs the excitable possum and Peri the serious business rhino. Rougelick game as literal time loop isn't the most narratively impressive, but the game's ridiculous amount of dynamic dialogue steals the show. The crew not only comments on hits and misses but hits after misses, not only on specific artifacts but on synergistic combinations of artifacts, not only on what happens in combat but on other characters' comments about the combat. With dozens of possible crew combinations it feels like there's always more to see. My favorite part has to be Isaac's drones that attack for you, which he gives random names to as they're sent out, such as Ludwig or Chosen One - there's no mechnical meaning behind tracking a specific drone's name, yet he does keep track of them and laments them by name if they get shot down.

Strong start, meandering middle, crappy conclusion. Return of the Obra Dinn has neat ideas and striking visuals with no follow-through.

The best part is the transition from the early- to the mid-game, when you start seeing cool sea monsters and have enough info to solve a big chunk of the core identity/cause-of-death puzzles. Once those are exhausted, it becomes clear that the game is just throwing all of its designer's ideas at you for the visual appeal, with no rhyme or reason behind their inclusion besides the nautical theme, and no plan for how they all fit together narratively. My working theory went from "this boat has been particularly dickish and the sea is fighting back" to "it's just cursed I guess." The 3 right answers = confirmation mechanic goes from a little bit of leeway for struggling players to mandatory guessing, e.g. for the 4 Chinese guys who are all visually distinct but provide no evidence of which name belongs to which person.

The ending/epilogue is a particular let-down, between the multiple redundant "how sad, the cruelty of Man" vignettes with no puzzle-solving, and the British telegram about what was done with the wages still owed to dead crew members. The latter repeats itself a lot, mostly saying either we tracked down this Brit's family and paid them, or they're a foreigner so we just gave their wages to a British charity. This sleazy practice is presented entirely without commentary, so it fails to be a criticism of easily criticizable Britain, and instead it's just... a depiction.

This pack has the improved version of Fibbage: Enough About You, but it's pretty forgettable otherwise.

Fibbage 4 - A tier - The aesthetic isn't as striking as Fibbage 3, but they made improvements to Enough About You which, now that it exists, is what I'm really here for with Fibbage anyway.
Roomerang - C tier - You know a game has problems when it's carried by the charisma of the host. This one gives roleplaying prompts that make the experience vary wildly depending on the prompt and the player who receives it. The elimination fake-out gag is funny the first time, then leaves you wondering why Jackbox has an elimination game if it can't have eliminations.
Nonsensory - C tier - Gameplay is ok, but I hate that monkey so much.
Junktopia & Quixort - ??? tier - Haven't played these.

Solid entry in the series, some hits some misses. Nothing here is as good as Quiplash nor as bad as Lie Swatter. Better than other Midbox Mid Packs.

Job Job - B tier - Good at generating funny answers, but the process of getting there is a bit lacking. Feels overwhelming yet strategically shallow on repeat plays, as players learn to simply spam all bonus objectives in every answer.
Drawful Animate - A tier - For as much humor+novelty as you get from evolving drawings to 2-frame animations, there are equal downsides in difficulty of use + never having enough time. I kinda wish Drawful 3 was just the original again but with later Party Pack improvements like extended timers and captioning.
Poll Mine - B tier - This is fixed Guesspionage. Now the survey data is a relative ranking determined by the players themselves, and you're being tested on how well you know the preferences of the people next to you.
Weapons Drawn - D tier - The main conceit is hiding a letter within a drawing. Depending on which letter you get, it's a complete crapshoot whether that's remotely viable. There's no reason to play this with a better drawing game in the same pack.
Wheel of Enormous Proportions - D tier - All of the gamifications here leave me with a distinct feeling of "I don't get it." Magic 8-Ball is a dissatisfying third-act conclusion. I'd rather just have a Fibbage or Trivia Murder Party sequel in this slot.

This is the best Jackbox Party Pack, hands down. If you only want one, Pack 7 is the one to get. It not only has Quiplash in it, but also the best drawing game, and no duds.

Champ'd Up - S tier - Gauntlet of fighters with a tag-in feature that both keeps things from getting stale and combats recency bias. It's a lot like Tee K.O. but kind of a straight upgrade.
Talking Points - A tier - Improvised slide presentations are consistently hilarious. The only thing keeping this game out of S tier is the poorly thought out scoring system that actively detracts from enjoying the show if you actually try to engage with it.
Quiplash 3 - S tier - Quiplash 2 introduces Safety Quips, Quiplash 3 makes them actually relevant to the prompt. This is the best version of what was already Jack's best game.
Blather 'Round - B tier - So this is basically Jack's take on Taboo, but a lot more functional. Instead of being way too easy with a short list of banned words, it gives you a limited set you can say. Feels a bit antithetical to the chaotic shouting of a typical good Jackbox time, but not enough to ruin the game.
The Devil and the Details - C tier - It's okay. Well implemented, but feels like a remnant from earlier Jackboxes when player expression was less of a priority.

This is the beginning of the Jackbox golden age. All but one game is a banger, and they finally have captions!

Role Models - A tier - Competitive personality quiz! The Final Adjectives are often insults, but sometimes eerily accurate. This game can be hit-or-miss depending on the prompts/categories but it's mostly hits.
Push the Button - B tier - The Jackbox Among Us is unsurprisingly its best hidden role game. My favorite part is getting a different prompt and having to justify your answer.
Joke Boat - B tier - Pretty good, but I'd always rather play Quiplash.
Trivia Murder Party 2 - B tier - They didn't need to change much about Trivia Murder Party, so they didn't. It's still the best Jackbox trivia game other than Fibbage: Enough About You.
Dictionarium - D tier - Making up definitions can be funny, the word itself not as much. So 2 out of 3 rounds are dull.

Where some Party Packs have 1-2 standout games and 3-4 forgettable ones, this Pack is consistently mid.

Split the Room - C tier - Neat variant of the "fill in the blank" game that tests player skill on something other than being funny/wacky. Something's off about the Twilight-Zone-parody framing device, feels like it drags down the atmosphere rather than supporting it.
Patently Stupid - B tier - A lot of these gimmicks just end up with a drawing game more awkward than the basic Drawful. It's better than Weapons Drawn at least.
You Don't Know Jack: Full Stream - C tier - I admittedly have not played this version, only the one in Party Pack 1, but it seems like they got it to support more players and made the Screw mechanic worse.
Mad Verse City & Zeeple Dome - ??? tier - I haven't played these.

A swing and a miss. It's nice that they use the Pack format to experiment, but that means they can't all be bangers. Pack 4's best game is made obsolete by its improved sequel in Pack 9.

Fibbage 3 - A tier - The star of the pack. This version makes numerous improvements to the scoring system and audience feature, but most notably introduces Fibbage: Enough About You, which turns Fibbage into a "2 Truths 1 Lie"-style game about the current players. The 1st round is the ideal version, while the 2nd is a bit too open-ended and winds up encouraging players to spend the 1st thinking of their answers in advance.
Civic Doodle - ??? Tier - This pack's drawing game. I haven't played it.
Survive the Internet - C tier - It's no Quiplash, but it's more fun than you'd expect based on the cringe aesthetic and title.
Bracketeering - F tier - Severely undercooked and barely a game. It seems like there should be a debate phase where you try to win people over to your answer, but there are no game mechanics to support this.
Monster Seeking Monster - D tier - This one stresses me out. I think it's the combination of speed-dating (inherently stressful activity) and the lack of an equivalent "flirt for me" feature like Fibbage and Quiplash have. I could see this being a hit with the right crowd, but to me this game exists to be tried once and never returned to.

This is when Jackbox Gets Good. Instead of 2 good games, 1 mid one and 2 duds, this pack has 3 good ones, 1 mid, and only 1 dud.

Quiplash 2 - S tier - Better than Quiplash 1, worse than Quiplash 3
Trivia Murder Party - B tier - A frenetic trivia game like You Don't Know Jack but spiced up with fun minigames instead of just shouting at you. I could do without the digitally down-pitched host voice.
Guesspionage - C tier - It's Family Feud with a neon hacker aesthetic. Half the time it feels like a skillful game, and half the time they either had a flawed survey or John Q. Public is just insane.
Fakin' It - F tier - Completely non-functional over a stream, and barely functional in-person. For fans of hidden role games, Push the Button does it better.
Tee K.O. - A tier - Drawing games always have great potential, especially when the captions are player-generated too. The gauntlet format was a great idea to give the game a scoring system while maintaining a brisk pace. I have mixed feelings about the offer to print your design on a real life T-shirt at the end of each game. On one hand, it creates a memento of a joyful time that normally just vanishes, and it's a logical conclusion to a game about designing T-shirts. On the other hand, reaching a tendril of capitalism amid delight and laughter is still preying on people's looser wallets at a time of heightened emotion, and I can't find any indication of the physical shirts being ethically sourced; they don't even say the name of their printing partner, basically just "we outsourced, don't worry about it."

While the Jackbox series is great, this is one of the weaker entries. I rarely see anyone boot it up, and haven't played half the games on it, and I feel like there are good reasons for that. You might as well just get the standalone Quiplash instead of this pack, as nothing else on it comes close.

Quiplash XL - S tier - Quiplash is awesome from the get-go. It's what fans of Cards Against Humanity think that game is like, except all submissions are a blank space to write in, so the jokes aren't already written for you, and don't always revolve around trying to be offensive. Quiplash stands out as highly repeatable in a sea of once-a-day novelties. One shortcoming of this sub-series is it feels like they never know what to do with round 3, and never give it enough time, even with extended timers.
Fibbage 2 - B tier - Trivia with social trickery via fake answers. It's Fibbage, but 2er. This sub-series doesn't get meaningfully iterated until Fibbage 3.
Bidiots - C tier - A drawing game themed around money and auctioning. As the follow-up to Drawful in the 1st pack, this feels like a straight downgrade. Bad name too.
Bomb Corp - ??? tier - Haven't played it, so it's hard for me to say how well it works.
Earwax - ??? tier - Haven't played it, though with the premise being "Quiplash but the jokes are written for you and they're all sound effects" I think I can make an educated guess that this is a D or F.

A landmark that transformed the party game scene, rendered retroactively pointless by the best games getting sequels & spiritual successors with better mechanics, visuals, and accessibility options.

You Don't Know Jack - C tier - The standout of the pack in terms of visual style and constantly throwing loud novelties at the player. Stay with this one long enough and eventually you realize it's a lot of flashing lights to distract from shallow game mechanics. It's a trivia game where the real challenge is to parse confusing questions with limited time, that's about it. Wrong Answer and Jack Attack are neat concepts with poor implementation, and the latter means that final scores always give the W to whoever has the fastest reflexes and lowest device ping.
Fibbage XL - B tier - The best of this pack's 3 trivia games. You Don't Know Jack has more style but Fibbage stands the test of time with better game mechanics. Player-submitted trick answers allow an actually social game, rather than trivia devolving into parallel single-player. Not as good as Fibbage 3/4 or Trivia Murder Party.
Drawful - A tier - For my money drawing games are usually the best in the pack, including this one. Drawful uses the same trick-answer mechanic as Fibbage while enabling even more player expression through drawing instead of listening to trivia. Better than Weapons Drawn, worse than Tee K.O. and Champ'd Up, about the same as Drawful 2 & Drawful Animate.
Word Spud - D tier - The biggest gameplay standout that hasn't really been replaced by any newer Jackbox game. I can see why they never returned to it though: It's barely a game and more like a word association stim toy. Can be fun if getting high doesn't impede your reading & typing abilities.
Lie Swatter - F tier - The least interesting trivia game in a pack of 3 trivia games. There is no freeform player input, only answer true/false. It's barely a game and more like a tech demo, testing the server's ability to handle a massive number of players, what would later be better implemented as the audience feature.

How do you make a sequel to the Stanley Parable a decade past the specific marketing trend it originally parodied? You lampoon the concept of making a sequel to the Stanley Parable

It's impressive how much they were able to accomplish on what was clearly a shoe-string budget, both in terms of literal money and especially development time. The game is super short and definitely not polished, but there's a solid combat system in there, with a surprising number of animations showing off different throws/finishers/etc for each individual bending style. It's a shame Activision/Nickelodeon decided to let this become abandonware. Worth a try if you can get your hands on it, especially if you like Avatar and 3D beat 'em ups (particularly the original God of War), and can forgive some awkward camera movements and blatant palette-swap enemy recycling. One thing I can't defend is the Naga Temple Run segments.

2022

Starts unassuming, but give it an hour to show its hand and you'll find yourself in a Legend of Zelda that's also an Outer Wilds, full of breathtaking epiphanies in both game mechanics and lore. Also can't overstate how ridiculous the boss design is, the worst Tunic boss is better than the best Dark Souls boss.

Ahistorical white supremacist garbage