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The rarely updated blog of Joel Dixon
Monday, January 28, 2008
Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 28/01/2008 10:46:27Updated by Joel Dixon at 02/02/2008 09:05:54
The last PlayStation 2 game we bought was Buzz! The Music Quiz, the first game in the somewhat popular Buzz! video game series. We had played it at my parents house and found it enjoyable enough to purchase our own copy. Belinda is pretty good with music trivia, especially newer music, and we were pretty evenly matched which made the game fun even after playing it repetitively.
The Buzz! series continued with The Big Quiz and The Sports Quiz - but I was hoping they would come out with a movie trivia game. Since then I bought an Xbox 360 and the DVD-based game Scene It? was adapted into a video game. Fun for everyone.
Scene It? is a Xbox 360 exclusive title
The four "big button pads" that come with the game are designed quite well. Firstly, they're wireless and come with an infrared receiver that you place on top of the television. It takes a little bit to remember that you need to point the buzzer at the TV - but it's much better than using wired controllers. They have a proper guide button and all the other buttons of a regular controller except for the triggers. The big button also doubled as a directional pad, which makes navigating the Dashboard screen much easier. And, batteries were included - bargain.
That's not a big button pad, is a big button pad
The narrative of the game is tedious at best, but basically involves three rounds of games, with 3 or 4 games each round depending on whether you're playing a short or long game. After the three rounds is "The Final Cut" which will potentially award a lot of points. There is a "Movie Clip" game each round in which a short movie clip is proceeded by five questions. The game does remember which questions you have seen and tries not to show you those questions again - but as there are only 40 or so different movie clips and they start repeating quickly.
The 20 other game types is where I found the most fun. These games include guessing the movie title from it's poster as the elements are slowly added to the canvas, or guessing the movie that a sound byte has been taken from. The game types are creative and a lot of fun, but unfortunately there's no way to select which game types you will playing. I feel the "Sequentials" game pops up far too often (you are presented with four similar movie titles, and you need to order them according to release date).
The Pictogram game type - see it and say it
The game types are generally fun, and the mechanics of awarding extra points for early answers is good to see - but with only 1,500 questions in the game it starts repeating far too quickly. When I started playing the game 60,000 points was a pretty good for me - but it didn't take long at all until 90 to 100k was coming easily. I didn't find Buzz to be as bad in this regard at all as they have a pool of 1,000 music clips to choose from (and 5,000 questions). I guess it's easier for Buzz! as they use cover bands - you can't really have a movie clips or screen shots with cover actors.
This is where the Scene It? should be using the power of downloadable content to prolong the lifespan of their game, and make use of the inventive game designs by providing downloadable question sets. I believe this is their plan, there's already a "Downloads" menu items that sends the user into the Marketplace area for this game - but there's currently nothing to download there. I would assume there are more questions coming - probably in different theme packs like we've already seen with the DVD game (like the Disney, James Bond or Marvel Comics editions). I'll certainly be downloading any theme packs that are released.
Speaking of Live integration - initially I felt it was a little disappointing that there is no online multiplayer game mode - but it didn't take me too long to realise that multi-player wouldn't work with the limited question set. For example, in most of the game types I can answer all of the questions immediately just by looking at the four available answers - and it's not like I've been studying the game at great length. Eventually most good multiplayers would be competing very close to the maximum score allowed each game.
The achievements were handed out very quickly, but again, I think this was a result of the limited question set more than any design flaw. The 30 and 60 questions correct without an incorrect answer were tricky and time-consuming - but all of the others were pretty straight forward to achieve, the first 600 points coming in the first three games. Then again - any trivia game that allows you to pause after a question has been asked is going to have most people getting all achievements when combined with IMDb.
In summary, a fun game - great for small gatherings - and something that will hopefully have downloadable content! 3.5 out of 5
# Posted in the Gaming section and tagged as: Xbox 360
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