Scene It: Lights, Camera, Action

Xbox 360

BY Brendan WillisPublished Dec 18, 2007

There haven’t been many trivia games released for the console market, so Scene It: Lights, Camera, Action doesn’t have a great deal of competition. Thankfully, the game designers didn’t use the lack of opposition as an excuse to slack off, creating a solid trivia title that makes you feel like a game show contestant. Based on the popular DVD board game series, Scene It: LCA dispenses with board game-style play and instead tracks players’ scores by how quickly they answer questions using one of the four unique "big button” wireless control pads included with the game.

Anyone who has played one of the many board game versions of Scene It will be immediately familiar with the game play of Scene It: LCA, though there are a number of new formats unique to the Xbox 360. Some typical types of questions include watching a film clip and then answering a series of questions related to that clip; watching as a movie poster is slowly drawn on screen and being the first to identify what film is advertised; viewing yearbook photos of celebrities and identifying who they are; listening to audio clips of a film and identifying the movie; rearranging anagrams to make a movie title; and watching a list of credits to identify the movie they are from. With about a dozen different question types and over 1,800 actual questions, each round of play tests different aspects of you movie buff brain. In order to keep the game fresh and interesting the Xbox even tracks which questions each user has been asked during previous games, so you won’t often get the same question twice.

In order to give Scene It: LCA a "game show” feel there are four "big button” controllers included with the game. Created specifically for Scene It: LCA, the controllers resemble old-fashioned game show buzzers and are designed to decrease the intimidation factor non-gamers may feel if they had to play using standard Xbox controllers. The controllers are responsive and easy to use, with a big button on top for "first to respond” type questions, and four buttons for multiple choice answers.

There are a few minor issues with the game, such as the bonus multipliers awarded at the end of each round for completing different tasks (such as answering several questions in a row, being the fastest to answer correctly, etc.). These bonus points only serve to further separate the winners from the losers, making it harder to recover from a bad round. The bonus points aren’t necessarily a bad idea, but it would have been nice to be able to turn the option on or off. Also, there is no online play for Scene It: LCA, and since it is very much a multiplayer game, you will need to gather your friends or family together in one room to play, which may limit how often you’ll be able to actually enjoy this game.

Scene It: LCA is as much fun as the original board game it was based on but the lack of online play, single player playability and the fact that you can get a similar experience playing the board game version make this a game suited for trivia fanatics. If you like getting together with friends to play trivia games then this game delivers, but unless you know a few people who share your passion and like to congregate regularly this game will be collecting dust on your shelf.
(Microsoft)

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