As the title suggests, while I think a couple of the games in this pack are a bit meh, there are a couple of great ones I come back to often enough to consider this still a strong pack.
Usual disclaimers: I'm writing this review after having played a lot of Jackbox already. I generally play over Discord stream with a group of 3 (including me). I've got less experience with games that require more people, including one in this pack. My rating will mostly be based on a holistic look at the pack based on individual impressions of the different games contained.
Dictionarium
This I consider one of the weakest games in later Jackbox packs. Your goal is essentially to create a dictionary definition of a word, mostly through each player coming up with a response to various prompts and voting as a group on the best one for each round. First, you are presented with an odd-sounding word, like 'thum,' and are asked to make up a synonym for it. You vote, then each have to come up with the definition for your word. Lastly, you come up with a sentence using your word. At each stage of this process, the group votes, meaning you have to improvise off what was voted on in the last round. All in all, I just didn't think this game really created anything quite so funny as other Jackbox games since you're mostly just building off the initial prompt of a silly-sounding word and the whole game goes off that one word you voted on, so if you ended up not getting good choices for the synonym round, the rest of the game tends to be kind of meh. Even when it works, Dictionarium still falls short of the average bar for a Jackbox game.
Role Models
This game isn't awful, but it's another in the pack that I don't consider too great, unless you're looking for a game to lose friends over. Each round, the group picks a category that will have a few selections, like "The Office characters" and then each person picks which of the players fits which of those characters (ie "who is the 'Dwight' of the group?"). Whichever category you get most put into by the votes (including your own) will grant you a personality trait that will build on as the game goes. Sometimes these choices require saying something at least a little mean about your friends (such as when under "Smash Mouth's 'All Star' lyrics" we had to choose someone for "ain't the sharpest tool in the shed"). There are some twists such as when you have contradictory traits assigned, it will have you answer a question to see which of the traits you should keep. At the end of the game, everyone will be assigned a multipart title to describe their personalities. As may be apparent, this is a game you probably only want to play with good friends who won't get salty and playing it with strangers would be basically pointless. The game can be a little funny and I've enjoyed the few times I've played it, but I don't consider it too great of a game once the novelty of the first few plays wears off.
Push the Button
This is a game I have limited experience with since it requires 4+ players, but I have gotten a few playthroughs in. Push the Button is an Among Us-type game in which your group are all people on a spaceship with the knowledge that one of you is actually a shape-shifting alien in disguise hoping to infiltrate and kill the rest of you. The game proceeds through several rounds of tests in which the player who knows they're the alien—because of a message on their device—will be given different instructions without knowledge of what the human players are responding with. So for instance, everyone being tested will be asked to draw something but the alien will be told to draw something slightly different that may look mostly right and then the group has to vote on which one must've had a different prompt and is thus the alien (which is actually weirdly similar to Bidiots in a way now that I think about it). There are a number of different kinds of tests but multiple times throughout the game, the group can push the button and space one of the shipmates on the assumption that they are the alien. We found the game fairly enjoyable the few times we played this game. It's in a lot of ways similar to Fakin' It, though it doesn't require you to be in-person or on webcam. I wouldn't rate it as a top favorite among the Jackbox library, but it's pretty good, especially if you're into these kinds of "find the imposter" games. It's a wrothy adaptation of that genre.
Joke Boat
This is such a straight-forward enough idea, it's most surprising that it didn't show up until the 6th pack. That said, it works quite well. The start of the game has you all doing a series of "Mad Libs"-type entries: the game asks for a person/place/etc and you make up as many as you can in the time allotted. My only real complaint with the game is that this part is kind of important but the game doesn't give you much time to fill out that many. After that, you have two rounds in which you each make up 2 jokes using your choice of one of the words your group made up and picking from pre-generated joke prompts such as "I like my friends like I like my [A], [B]" with A being one of the Mad Libs-like entries you picked and B being something you type out as a full phrase to provide the punchline. You then present the joke in a match-up against another player and people vote on the best joke. In the final round, you select a joke someone made earlier and using the same set up, try to come up with a better punchline and the other players will vote on who did the setup better. While this is another game I'd recommend playing with people whose sense of humor you're familiar enough with, Joke Boat is a lot of fun and is commonly a go-to on our Jackbox nights.
Trivia Murder Party 2
While this game is great, I don't have a ton to say about it. Most of what's good is that it's a lot like Trivia Murder Party, but touched up. While in some ways I might want to see something more interesting or expansive added to the game for a full sequel, I think since the first one is already great, fine-tuning is probably the best thing to do, in addition to coming up with new trivia in case some players are too familiar with the original. One of the main improvements we noted is that the Fingers killing floor challenge is significantly de-emphasized. That was an entertaining but ultimately frustrating element in the original and while it still comes up in some form in the sequel, it is much less common. We also noted some really good Easter eggs such as choices you make early in the game can come up later such as when one character chose to pick up the killer's mother's wig and he started referring to them as "mother" for the rest of the game. I'm sure we haven't uncovered nearly all of the hidden features like this, which really add something extra to an already great game.
All in all, this is one of the weirder good packs as it's got a couple games that feel lower quality similar to those in the earliest Jackbox Party Packs. But on the other hand it's got a couple great games too that I would consider staples of the Jackbox library. Given the weakness of a couple of the games, I'd probably consider this pack to be on the lower end of the best packs, but still quite good and worth a buy.
My other Jackbox reviews:
Jackbox Party Pack 1 ★★
Jackbox Party Pack 2 ★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 3 ★★★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 4 ★★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 5 ★★★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 7 ★★★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 8 ★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 9 ★★★★★
Jackbox Party Pack 10 ★★★★★
