Quite a few years ago, before it got sent across to the US, Whose Line is it Anyway ended with some of the contestants – all pretty much masters in the improv comedy field – redubbing a video clip to make it far funnier than it would’ve been to begin with. It’s one of those things that a lot of people would’ve watched and thought “what could be difficult about that?”, and for those people we’ve got just the thing: What the Dub.
The idea of What the Dub is to come up with some dialogue to sit over the top of a cheesy low-rent video clip, in the hope that the other players find your attempt the best of the bunch. Players connect to the game via a website and after watching the clip need to type in their best ideas for the missing clip of dialogue. Each clip is then played back with a text-to-speech engine reading out each attempt, and the players vote for their favourite. Imagine Cards Against Humanity but with video clips and free reign as to what you can submit for your answer.
As with any game that’s entirely built around audience participation your mileage here will depend on how funny the people are that you’re playing with. If you’ve got a bunch with a good sense of humour then you’re going to get some incredibly good answers and a lot of laughs, so pick your players carefully. Nobody needs that person who thinks they’re funny but actually just needs a good slap. If you don’t have enough friends to play with locally, there’s still a chance for you – you can share your screen or broadcast on Twitch to let anything up to 12 players join in, and because there’s nothing here that needs split-second timing there’s no disadvantage to those playing across the Internet. I’d issue a word of warning with higher player counts though – seeing the same clip playing out 12 times with slightly different dialogue can get a bit tiresome, so I’d suggest keeping it to 6 or fewer players.
If all this sounds like something that’d be good for a while without filling a whole night, then you’re right. This is great in bursts of an hour or less; anything beyond that and it’ll start feeling a bit samey. But let’s not forget that What the Dub costs less than £6 – even if you play it once for an hour and have a laugh, you’re still getting a decent return from a few quid. There are, however, over 300 video clips included here, so the chances of you running out of new videos to work with are pretty slim. As such you’ll come back to this more than once, especially if you manage to find the right group of players to make this worthwhile.
So while I doubt you’ll fill endless nights with this, What the Dub is a very decent way to spend an hour or so with friends, and something you’ll likely return to in the future as well. If you’re a Twitch streamer looking to bring some additional engagement with your followers then this could be a great idea too, and for the price of an online film rental you’ll get a good amount of entertainment.
Reviewed on PS4 & PS5
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