Scene It was a hugely successful board game long before making the leap onto the 360 last year. The title's first videogame outing was a good time, but left some definite room for improvement. The franchise’s sophomore console release adds most of what gamers wanted the first time around, but it is not yet the perfect trivia game. The game makes small tweaks this time around, relying on the same basic formula that made it a success last year. The least effective change is the sound, trading in the charmingly cheesy announcer for a more grating, joyless blathering between two equally unfunny and annoying voices. Thankfully, most of the other alterations fare much better. Couch-versus-couch play over Live remedies the previous iteration's inability to enjoy the game on your own.
The game marks the first retail title to incorporate the newly unveiled avatars, with the persona of each gamertag taking a seat on the in-game couch. Other than some bland post-round celebrations, they do not add much outside of putting an imaginary face with a name. During the rounds, they shrink into floating heads in the four corners of the screen, badly in need of gamertag names beneath them. Live allows for either long or short game modes, giving you a chance to play either 25 or 45-minute contests with up to three other players. Online, the games all feature a draining point meter awarding points based on how fast you answer the questions. It renders the big button useless online, but the ability to keep playing long after your real friends go home makes up for it.
Almost every online game remains tight until the final round, where the growing multiplier can allow someone to run away with a win. The competitive contests are a blast unless you have not seen the movie, leaving you in the dust after you battled so hard leading up to it. The offline mode remains much the same as you remember it, but there are some fantastic additions in terms of games. Celebrity ties is a ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ style game, where you have two actors per question with the second actor becoming the first listed on the following question.
Crossword is perhaps the best opportunity for less movie-knowledgeable gamers to compete, with letters slowly appearing in connecting words related to the movie-title answer. The handful of new games compliments the already solid batch from the original version. The most entertaining of the new modes is pixel flix, where classic scenes are reimagined as 8-bit games. The infusion of new games keeps the game fresh, which the game badly needs.
Duplicates become a serious issue alarmingly early on. Some of the games, like anagrams, lump questions into set blocks, but a fair amount of games keep them separate to prevent an entire block from being a repeat. It is frustrating when you can tell another team has already seen a question; buzzing in with an answer well before any reasonable gamer would know. When you run across an entire block of duplicates, it can allow some a team to get an unfair advantage. Repeat questions are expected, but you should not find duplicates on just your second time playing. Even when questions are not duplicates, you can get tired of seeing the same movies or clips pop up repeatedly. The game’s fascination with Waitress and Wallace & Gromit drain some fun out of the game. You can only watch Gromit get hit in the face with biscuits so many times. At least when you run across a duplicate movie clip, there are several sets of questions balanced between clip and general movie based questions.
The biggest issue with Scene It is also what makes it such a draw for some. The singular focus on films makes it a title that all your friends can certainly play, but can leave non-movie lovers feeling a bit disadvantaged. With the broad scope of franchise-specific Scene It games available in stores for the board game, it would be nice if the questions had a broader scope involving television or topics to get female contestants more involved. The game does an excellent job providing movie fans a battleground against other film lovers, but a wider scope could make it a must-own trivia game for everyone. Scene It? Box Office Smash is a definite upgrade over the first title, but the franchise is already beginning to show its limitations two games in.
