I'm not usually a big fan of quiz games, but as an avid film goer, I couldn't help but fire up Scene It? What's cool about this particular quiz game is its unique approach to questions and more than relevant answers. Sure you're going to have to answer your fair share of Happy Feet, Sleepless In Seattle or Legally Blonde questions, but among these are awesome movies such as Aliens, Tremors and even Hot Fuzz. The point is, Microsoft and Krome Studios have crafted a game that really caters, cleverly, to everyone in the household, and the variations in answer inputs will keep the competitive element constantly at the forefront of your particular group of contestants, to prove once and for all who the biggest film buff is.



It took around six Long Games before I came across a repeat question, and it was only one amidst a host of questions we'd never heard before. In fact the only thing that stands out as annoying in Scene It? Is the voice-overs, which get very old, very quickly.

Beyond that, however, most of the humour and presentation throughout Scene It? is actually really very good (especially in the old-school videogame inspired Pixel Flix section), and you can tell the product has been designed with some passionate filmophiles at its helm.

The game cones with four wireless 'buzzers' which have four face buttons and one large buzzer button (which doubles as the d-pad for menus), and an IR receiver. Basically set up the receiver as you would the Wii receiver, and sit around the TV buzzing in to answer your questions with up to three other players.

Unfortunately game customisation is a little on the light side, and there are really only three game options: Short Game, Long Game and Solo Game, with each being blatantly reflective of their title.

You can choose to alter the points scoring system (so answering wrong deducts points from your overall score), but points throughout the game seem a little on the silly side. Basically at the end of each round you can earn bonus points for quickest answer, most consistently correct answers and the like, but it's kind of pointless when the person who lost the last round also scores a bonus for that very reason.

The aim is to clearly keep everyone on a reasonably even keel so as to not have a clear winner, but its vexing when you're destroying your friends with your uber-movie knowledge and their chasing your tail until the bitter end.

More customisation then would have been the answer. An option to filter the questions to a specific genre, actor, direct etc would have been a more-then-welcome addition and it really does seem odd something as cool an option like this would have been overlooked (especially because of a lot of the film pedigrees found throughout).

Questions come in the form of multiple-choice for the most part, but there are rounds which require you to be fastest on the buzzer, and the game is set up in such a way all of you can answer the question correctly, however, a timer bar counts down based on how long it takes you to make your answer decision, so answering fastest will net you a higher score than someone who chooses the same answer, but does so slower.

Rounds include watching the aforementioned "Pixel Flix", along with whole clips from movies (where you'll be asked a series of questions about the clip), working out what movie a child-like drawing is eluding to, listening to audio clips, and tying various films stills together to name the movie (or related answer). The variations in question style work really well, and helps with the overall pacing, especially with a full manifest of friends by your side attempting to trump you as much as you are them.

Scene It? Box Office Smash! is definitely heaps of fun with enough friends - especially for those of us who think we know movies, but it really is still a bit on the Lite side of things when it comes to customisation or the like. There's a huge market for this type of game, and with a Star trek and Seinfeld edition in the works, it's likely we'll see themed versions popping up, which I think is pretty cheap and unfair, but that's the price you pay for successful platforms (just look at Rock Band and Guitar Hero).

Still, I can't deny how much fun I had with this, so if you have enough people around you, I recommend checking the game out, just don't go expecting to be able to avoid the annoying questions about movies and genres you couldn't care less about.