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Do you ever feel compelled to put your vast wealth of general knowledge to the test? Do you think you know your Chinese Zodiac Animals from your London Underground Stations? Could you spot a fake Defunct European Currency from a list of 6?
Well, if you answered yes to all of the above, No Way Jose! might be the game for you!
How Does ‘No Way Jose’ Play?
No Way Jose! is about as straight forward as party games come.
Each player takes one of the colourful tracker boards (each adorned with a stereotypical ‘Mexican’ moustache on the back for that perfect photo-op) and a set of 6 double-sided tokens. Players then take it in turns to be ‘Jose’, while the others try to expose his nonsense.
‘Jose’ takes a card from the stack and reads out the title, then the 6 answers.
Each time an answer is read the other players take one of their double sided tokens and lay it in the corresponding circle on their board. If they think the answer is True they play the green side face up, emblazoned with a smiling donkey. If they think the answer is False, they flip the token and play the red side face up, which features the donkey’s ass (although the instructions describe it as a ‘donkey kick’.)
Once everyone has played all 6 tokens, ‘Jose’ reveals the correct answers and the player or players with the most correct score a point.
This continues until all players have taken a turn being Jose, and that concludes a round.
How many rounds constitutes a game is left up to the whim of the players, and how much time they have!
What’s in the Box?
No Way Jose’s long, tall box contains 200 question cards, 6 game boards and 200 double-sided tokens.
The game boards and tokens are made from a very sturdy card, similar to the discs and boards included in Skull. Aside from spilling a drink on them, it’s unlikely they will come to much harm when being used in a normal game setting.
The cards are functional, albeit a little on the thin side in comparison to other party games, but they also aren’t handled as much as components in other games of a similar nature so it can be forgiven.
Here’s One to Try
So here’s an example of how a turn would play out…
‘Jose’ takes a card and declares that the category is ‘One Word British Towns’. They then read out the following options:
1. Giggleswick
2. Cheese
3. Beer
4. Settle
5. Crapstone
6. Duck
Nick has a green token on spots 1,3,5 and 6 and red on 2 and 4, while Yvonne has Green tokens on 1, 3 and 4, and red on 2, 5 and 6.
‘Jose’ reveals that Giggleswick, Beer, Settle and Crapstone ARE British towns, while Cheese and Duck are not.
Nick scores 4 while Yvonne scores 5 and takes the point.
Juan After Another
No Way Jose has a lot of plus points going for it; it’s quick to set up, even quicker to teach and games don’t outstay their welcome, especially as players can agree on how many rounds they want to play before starting, or decide to play until someone accrues xx amount of points.
The components are, for the most part, very well made and sturdy, and the colourful box makes the game stand out on the shelf.
However, these sturdy components also mean that the game is quite bulky and while this would be a great game to grab and take to the pub, the size of the box makes that prohibitive. You could leave the boards at home and just bag up some question cards and tokens, if you really did want to take it with you though.
No Way Jose suffers from one of the main gripes for party games of this ilk; replayability.
Sooner or later people are going to start remembering the answers, and there aren’t THAT many of them.
200 cards sounds like a lot, but if there are 4 players playing 5 rounds, that’s 1/10th of the cards played already.
Expansions would go some way to resolving this problem, and there’s nothing stopping you making some of your own cards with topics that may fit your gaming group better.
It’s also worth noting that No Way Jose is made by Tactic, a US based company. Therefore some of the questions (such as one about British Desserts) may be devilishly difficult for Americans, but are incredibly easy for players in the UK.
The Bottom Line
No Way Jose is a family friendly, quick to start game that fits in nicely alongside the likes of Colour Brain, Linkee, Tension and other General Knowledge Party Games.
Unfortunately it also suffers from the same problems when it comes to replayability, and players looking for more of a challenge may opt to knock out ‘Jose’ and try Cheatwell’s ‘No Way’ instead, which puts more emphasis on bluffing and trickery.
Ultimately, you can have a lot of fun playing No Way Jose, so long as you are prepared to accept you’re there for a good time, not a long time.
