RIFFTRAX: THE GAME Is Great For Fans Of MST3K
If you have ever watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 and thought you could write jokes that are that funny, then I have a great game for you to try. From the creators of What The Dub?!, Rifftrax: The Game puts you in the riffer’s seat. In the game, you are shown a scene from a terrible movie or educational film. You are then tasked with creating a funny comment or riff of the scene either by writing it yourself or choosing it from a list of riffs. Overall, I really enjoyed the game, but there were a few issues too.
I’ll start with the few drawbacks of the game. The main problem I had was that the computer riffbot is way too good at the game. In the game mode where you choose from a list of riffs, it’s a bit like playing Cards Against Humanity, sometimes you have something really fitting and sometimes you have a whole lot of nothing. And that’s fine when it’s just human players, but the riffbot will always have a riff specifically for that scene. It can be really frustrating to try to win against and in games of two or less human players you have to have that riffbot. I would recommend having it turned off since a team of people writing jokes for a scene will almost always be funnier than an individual picking lines off a list. It is frustrating, but it does have some funny lines, so it really depends on what you want out of your game. Your list of riffs to choose from also remains the same from turn to turn with the ability to get a new set once per game. I didn’t find this to be a problem, but some of the people I played with really didn’t like it. So it really depends on how you feel about that for if you will like this mode. I enjoyed it when I didn’t feel like I could come up with funny commentary for whatever reason.
My other main issue is that film clips tend to repeat more than they should. Between two evenings of playing, there were already movie clips repeating. For a game that boasts over 250 movie clips, I found it really weird to have repeats happen so soon. I have had repeat clips on What The Dub?!, but it is less frequent and I have played that game far more before repeats happen which is why I was surprised by the repeats.
Onto the good things now because I really do enjoy this game. One detail I really like is they included the name of the movie the clip was from. It’s a small thing, but every so often you see one of these and just go, “I need to know what is happening in the movie to produce this scene”. I also appreciated just having two modes of game play so that you can change things up as needed. One of the features that is great is the ability to change settings mid game, so if the volume turns out to be too low you can turn it up without quitting your game for example. There are also settings that carried over from What The Dub?! that are nice such as being able to have a scene repeat before writing a riff for it. I also really enjoyed hearing the cast from Rifftrax read out the lines when they were pre written, it’s always nice to get the inflections that a robot just can’t always get right. It was just a nice touch to hear the various professional riffers, even the narrator for the game instructions was a member of the team.
As a big fan of MST3K and Rifftrax and watching bad movies myself, I really liked this game. It’s simple, but has so much potential for some really funny game nights. Though there were a few flaws, I personally found them easy to overlook for how much fun I had with it. I give the game a 9/10. You can pick up a copy for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, or on Steam now.
