Scene It? Box Office Smash

"Not Exactly the Red Carpet Roll Out I Had Been Hoping For"

Recently, Scene It? games have really started to branch out. Although arising from humble origins as a board game and focusing on movies as a whole for subject matter, there seems to be a Scene It? game for every subject, and games range from TV Scene It?, to Friends Scene It? to the very popular Antique Roadhouse Scene It?. Apparently running out of esoteric subject matter to base the games on, the designers thought of bringing the game to home consoles to keep things fresh, releasing a Scene It? game for the X-Box 360. Based off of the success of that game, Scene It? Box Office Smash was recently released for the 360, to the thrill of board game enthusiasts everywhere that love the original concept for Scene It? but would thought they weren't paying enough for the experience. BOS features many returning categories from the original Scene It? games and is still a good party game to play every once in a while, but ultimately the paucity of movies featured in this game combined with the rapid rate with which scenes and questions repeat themselves will cause BOS to leave a sour taste in the mouth of even the most avid movie aficionado.

Like previous Scene It? iterations, the focus of BOS is to crush your opponents with your superior film knowledge, amassing more points in a variety of categories and (hopefully) scoring higher than any of the other people playing the game. There are a fairly impressive variety of categories in BOS, and most of them should be familiar to anyone who played this first Scene It? game on the 360 (or many of the board games). There are a couple of new categories, which include my personal favorite of Pixel Flix, where some notable film is made to look like an NES game and you must deduce the film from the video that unfolds. Not only is this just a cool concept that manages to work in a lot of great films humorously, it also fulfilled my lifelong dream of seeing a Jamaican bobsled team pixilated. There are a couple of other good categories, including one where you must determine the film by its movie poster (which becomes more filled in over time), one where you must identify the film by the credit roll (starting with some bit player and getting to progressively more recognizable characters), and one where you must identify the film based on some lines of spoken dialogue in the film. Unfortunately, some of the other categories aren't nearly as enjoyable. Nearly everyone who has played a Scene It? game before should be familiar with the movie clip category, where a clip of some movie is played and you answer questions concerning the scene after its completion. These types of questions vary from simple facts concerning the movie (i.e. what is the name of this movie?), to questions about the scene itself (i.e. how many men were wearing hats in this scene?), to random esoteric facts only tangentially related to the clip (i.e. the actor in this scene has a twelve year old son. How far can he throw a football?). The last type of question is somewhat more rare than the aforementioned two (and aren't so esoteric that you can't at least muster a good guess), and the majority of questions tend to be about the clip itself. Unfortunately, not only does it appear that the creators of the game are really scraping the bottom of the barrel for movie clips, but it appears as if too few clips were included, as you end up seeing the same ten or so over and over (and over) again. While having to sit through a clip of a film like The Ladies Man or The Comebacks is cruel enough, making me sit through two in a row was just sadistic. Like a lot of the categories in the game, there is a shortage of questions and by your third or fourth playthrough questions will begin reappearing. This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of content, because there is a decent amount and after fifteen or twenty playthroughs I was still seeing entirely new questions in several of the categories. However, it seems that like some of the categories only have twenty or thirty questions in total, and the fact that there were so few questions that some started reappearing only a couple of times after playing through a game indicates that this game would have been better used as downloadable content for the first game, and really isn't worth the price they are charging for it.

The overall format and concept of the game isn't necessarily a bad one. The flow and pacing of the game is really good for a trivia game, and players aren't forced to take turns. Each question of the game is open for everyone to answer, and players aren't forced to take turns. The answers are either displayed on screen, and the players must pick the correct one, or you must buzz in and then select the answer from a group of choices. In addition to the expected split screen multiplayer modes, BOS also features an online multiplayer mode where you can go online and showcase your movie knowledge skills. This is a good addition for the online fanatic (or the desperately lonely) and represents the only true improvement over the first game. However, BOS suffers from the same problem of the last 360 Scene It? game, in that the format of a trivia game like this actually words better as a board game. In the board game version, if you don't know an answer it becomes difficult to just guess your way to victory. However, in BOS you are almost always given a choice of four answers to choose from, and even if you don't know the correct answer, it is often really easy to guess and get it correctly. While this format actually fits really well with some of the categories (anagrams would be nearly impossible without the clues), most are made far too easy and rather than trying to recall information or think through a question, you can usually just try and fit with what works best out of the four. Not only could a monkey get a fourth of the questions correct, but sometimes the wrong answers are so ridiculously wrong that you can eliminate one or two immediately. Unfortunately, there really is no better way of doing this, as typing out an answer would take forever and disrupt the flow of the game. As such, any difficulty drops off substantially, and making matters worse is the fact that the default mode of the game eliminates penalties for wrong answers. While this does make the game more laid back and less competitive, it also takes away a lot of the fun from the original Scene It? games. Rather than frantically trying to blurt out the answer that's on the tip of your tongue while your opponent does the same, much of the game becomes being quicker on the buzzer and being a better guesser than your competition. Fortunately, you can put in point deductions for wrong answers to help make it a little more challenging, but with online mode you are sort of stuck with the defaults.

The in game graphics aren't really impressive, but obvious that really isn't the focus of a movie trivia game. You can use your avatar, which is nice, and seeing my X-Box 360 representation bust out a mashed potato dance move to celebrate his first place status almost made up for all of The Ladies Man clips I was forced to sit through (almost). Far more annoying are the two announcers in the game that can't ever shut their mouths. After every category they have something to interject, and each time it made me want to bludgeon them a little more. They have all sorts of “humorous” quips that they like to throw in, or at least comments that I believe were supposed to be humorous. It was a little hard to tell as most of them just made me sad.

BOS is by no means a bad trivia game. However, it never really becomes anything more than an average port of a successful board game. In fact, due to the somewhat limited nature of the content in BOS, it really would have served better as downloadable content for the first game. It would have been nice to have some new questions and categories for Lights, Camera, Action, and a price of around twenty dollars would have been far more reasonable for this game. As mentioned before, those that are quick on the buzzer and better guessers are as likely to win as experienced movie buffs. At the end of each round, bonus points are given out preferentially to those doing the worst (an extra couple thousand points for answering the most questions wrong? Sounds reasonable to me!), further lowering the gap between the hardcore movie fan and the casual player. Those that are looking for a serious movie trivia game should look elsewhere, as BOS doesn't really have the chops to compete. In fact, a Scene It? board game is far better suited as it has more questions, higher difficulty, and is about half the price of this game. Those that are looking for a casual play experience (and never seem to be able to win at the board game) might actually want to take a glance at BOS. There is some fun to be had for a couple playthroughs, and some of the categories are well designed and well stocked with questions. Just don't expect to get too much for your buck and you shouldn't be disappointed.

Box Office Smash (THE GOOD):
+Decent party game that features some good questions
+A couple of the categories are new to Scene It?
+Some of the categories are actually a lot of fun and well suited to the format
+Pacing is great and there aren't any slow periods
+Online mode is a good addition to the series

Box Office Bust (THE BAD):
-Unsatisfying format; Scene It? works much better as a board game
-Too many categories feature so few questions that you will get repeats after the first couple games
-Quality of questions makes game too easy considering the multiple choice options
-Price far too high, and paucity of content would serve better as a download for the first game.
-Announcers inability to shut their mouth is sure to create more exasperated sighs than laughs

Straight to Video (THE UGLY): Getting too excited and pressing the wrong answer on your controller. Time to watch in horror as your opponents thing that you cannot tell the difference between Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Bridget Jone's Diary.

THE VERDICT: 6.00/10.00

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/09

Game Release: Scene It? Box Office Smash (Bundle) (US, 10/28/08)