Blockbuster Returns Review

The Return Of The King

For those of you who enjoyed Blockbuster the game from Big Potato games, Blockbuster Returns is the sequel with 100 new movies, 30 new head-to-head cards and 4 brand new film categories to guess for. And for those of you who have never played it before it is a complete stand alone game in its’ own right (although you do have to download the buzzer on to your phone, but more of that later!) This all comes in new eco-friendly packaging that’s handily, travel friendly - the size of an old VHS video cartridge, natch! All at a pocket-friendly price, what’s not to like?

The Empire Strikes Back

Blockbuster, the original got a 90% ZATU review rating and a Value For Money sticker with its’ 200 main movies, 60 head-to-head cards and 8 different movie categories but even with that cornucopia of cards and categories there was some grumbling that you would run out when you’ve done them all and also some of the films were getting a bit dated. Well no more, because Blockbuster Returns adds a load of new cards with newer releases and four new categories to collect: Not For Kids; From Another World; Remakes and Reboots; Heartwarmers.

In this version after the Head-to-Head round of naming as many films with a given theme against your opponent and a 15-second timer you play the main round to get your team to guess the films from your One Word clues, Quotes or Charades. The game is won when your team has 2 movie cards from each of the 4 genre categories.

2 Fast 2 Furious

One of the key elements of the original was the plastic buzzer that worked 2 ways to give you a 15 second resettable timer for the head-to head round and a 30 second straight timer for the main charades round. This is no more and has been replaced by the Big Potato, free-to-download, Buzzer App.

There’s two ways of looking at this, as either a cost saver for Big Potato, or a planet saver from plastic for everyone. Either way the app works very well and I’ll probably use it not only for this but also other games, like Top of the Pops Party Game, that need similar timers. The app also has a 60-second timer for use with Blockbuster and Chill or anything else for that matter!

For A Few Dollars More

Blockbuster Returns fits into Big Potato’s category of games that can be used as expansion packs to existing games, in this case, obviously, Blockbuster. If you’ve got the original (and enjoyed it) this gives you more films and more up-to date films. There’s also the 4 extra categories that you can play on their own, add to the original 8 for a mega game or mix and match.

If you haven’t got the original, Blockbuster Returns stands up well on its own, comes in a small enough package to be a travel game and you can feel good about yourself as it comes in an eco-friendly, non-plastic form.

Judgement Day

So should you buy Blockbuster Returns?

Well it’s complicated so I’ll do a little decision tree (ikr!) :-