StridentUK

Considering the prominence given to the big button controller, in Microsoft’s E3 2007 presentation, it’s pretty sad that the second retail outing for the family friendly peripheral is a sequel to the launch title, Scene It? Lights Camera Action!

Box Office Smash is basically the same game, with a little more polish and a chunk of new questions. However, as this batch of movie trivia weighs in at a bargain basement price (if you already have the controllers) it’s still well worth checking out.

Dropping the film studio setting of the original, your Xbox avatars are whisked off on a flying couch to various movie-inspired locations. Up to four individual players (or teams) battle through three rounds of questions with a bonus final clip section that gives everyone the opportunity to catch up and steal the game. The hosts of the quiz vary, depending on your Xbox region, and thankfully the UK voice actors seem less annoying than their US counterparts.

You can choose to play either a long or short game of Scene It. The quickest mode takes about fifteen minutes to complete. You can tweak the settings to introduce features such as penalties for incorrect answers (which helps dissuade random guessing) or set up a continuous stream of questions. There’s also the option to play through the game on your own, trying to beat your personal best score.

Playing online is almost identical to playing locally and it works well. Unlike in other titles, if your opponent quits you’ll continue playing the game and will receive the appropriate credit for beating him.

At the end of the day Scene It, like so many other console quizzes, is just a collection of multiple choice questions. The strength of the game, over its competitors , lies in the diversity of the rounds as well as the inclusion of media (photographs, animations, movie samples and sound clips).

Fans of the original Scene It will find most of their favourite puzzles present in the sequel, such as child’s play (where you guess the film from an infant-style drawing), the movie posters round, film props, missing objects and famous quotes. Some of the sections have been tweaked to remove minor annoyances. For example, you now get multiple attempts in the puzzle where you’re required to place the movies in chronological order. There are also a handful of new rounds, the most notable involves amusing 8-bit style recreations of famous movie scenes.

Achievements once again spill out like coins from a broken slot machine. You’re rewarded for correctly answering every question in a puzzle round, reaching certain score milestones, competing online and there are also cumulative accomplishments for answering questions about each genre and decade of film.

One of the best features of the original game was the way it kept tabs on which questions each player had already answered . The sequel doesn’t seem to do quite as good a job when dealing with multiple accounts but you’ll still get a lot more variation than if you were playing the DVD version of the game. Play Scene It regularly, however, and it won’t be long before you’ve exhausted the supply of questions on the disk. The movie clips, in particular, quickly repeat although you’ll usually get a different quiz about the film each time.

The original console version of Scene It was a great game. This title is just as good, if not better. It’s cheap and cheerful and a must buy for movie buffs. However, just like the first instalment, the longevity of this game will be determined by how well Microsoft support it with downloadable question packs.

Tags: Scene It?

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