Everyone's favorite movie trivia game has made the leap from your coffee table to your 360. The million-dollar question is, even if you are one of the few that does not have a regular version, why bother with a console version that is going to run you an extra $20? Believe it or not, the goofy-looking big button controller is the answer.
Those familiar with the board-game version will instantly realize that there is something missing from the 360 version - the board. There is no board, inside the box or on the screen, and no dice to roll you through the game. Instead, the game is all about answering questions both quickly and accurately. Each question has a base value of 2,000 points. The bottom of the screen has a constantly running timer, rapidly dropping the value of correct answers. Jumping on a question quickly and worry about whether you are right or not works well for the first round of puzzles, but the second round begins docking incorrect players points for each wrong answer; for a solid risk-reward point system.
The game has only three gameplay modes, but that is all you really need, aside from a few friends to challenge you. Though it looks the most inviting, Party Play is probably the least appealing. Selecting it from the main menu will thrust you instantly into a puzzle room, with all four controllers active; regardless of how many you really have ready. Aside from the limitation of needing four players to really enjoy the mode (since the question will only end once it receives four responses or the timer drains completely), it is a continuous loop shifting you from one puzzle to the next until you quit to the menu.
Much more rewarding are the Long and Short Play modes, which actually award a winner at the end of four rounds and allow you to play with as many or few gamers as you wish; well, up to the game's limit of four. Each mode shifts you randomly from one puzzle room to the next, with Short offering three puzzles in a round and Long offering five. Neither mode takes a serious time commitment, with Short lasting just under a half hour and Long lasting around forty-five minutes.
At the end of each round, the game rewards each player for various feats they performed when answering questions, such as a bonus 2,000 points for getting the fastest correct answer, or 2,500 points for 'stealing' a question after another player got the question wrong. Each version features three rounds of puzzles, followed by a 'Final Cut' round, where players earn a multiplier with each correct answer; which can eventually reach 10xs for a correct answer, and make up for large deficits in a hurry.
The game has a wealth of puzzle options, with twenty-one unique puzzles to play. From anagrams, asking gamers to unscramble the movie's title, to distorted reality, where a scrambled picture from a film slowly comes into focus and gamers must guess the actor's name, the game keeps you on your toes. Even in the movie clip puzzles, the game mixes in random movie trivia about items not revealed in the clip (like where was Steve Martin's character trying to get in Planes, Trains, And Automobiles), to odd obsessive-compulsive items like asking how many women in a scene from Steel Magnolias were wearing pearl necklaces.
The mix of pop culture movie trivia rewarding movie buffs and scene specific oddities makes Scene It a game that everyone can enjoy, even if they have never even heard of the film the clip is showing. The game has a good blend of questions only one player can answer, by buzzing in with the large button atop the controller, and those each player gets a shot at with points determined by how quickly they answer. This keeps everyone involved from start to finish, rather than having friends drift off for a bathroom break when it is not their turn.
