Xbox 360 - Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action Review

Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action comes bundled with four buzzer controllers, very similar to the ones Sony uses for the Buzz trivia series. There is still one large buzzer button and four smaller colored buttons, but the major difference is that these are wireless, so there is no mess of cables across the room for everyone to play. The large buzzer buttons on the Scene It? controllers also work as a D-pad, by pressing lightly around the edges.

The game is packed with movie trivia goodness in ways that I never imagined a trivia game could be presented. But then again, I also never played any of the Scene It DVD games.

Lights, Camera, Action offers two game modes, Play Now and Party Play. With Play Now you can pick a short or long game session, play on your own or with friends. Party Play lets the game pick random puzzles for you, and the game stays stuck in this mode until you return to the main menu.

Play Now is where it's at. A long game will take about an hour to finish, while a short one takes about 30 minutes. Each game has three rounds, with each round containing three types of puzzles, and then a last one called Final Cut. Scoring is different for each round, so in round one you don't lose points for wrong answers, but in rounds two and three you will. Final Cut's answers are each worth 2000 points, but as the time ticks, the score goes down. You are awarded the amount of points of when you buzzed in your answer. Wrong answers or not answering at all has no penalty, and you also get bonus multipliers for answering several correct questions in a row.

There are also other bonuses awarded at the end of each round, for example, answering the most questions, not answering any question wrong, getting the most score out of the wrong, being the fastest player to answer, and so on.

As I said earlier, I never thought a trivia game could be presented in such a fun and original way. The puzzles vary in style and difficulty, but they are all interesting and very cool, and the game goes well beyond the text question and multiple choice answers.

"Pictograms" give you a few sentences about a certain actress or actor as clues, and you must find out who it is. "Props" shows you a prop used in a movie you must name. "Now Playing" shows an unfinished poster for you to name the movie, and elements of the poster will come falling in. And then there is an array of quotes to fill in the blanks, credits that roll by as you try to guess what movie they belong to, looking at pictures of famous stars when they were young to guess who they are, listening to sound clips, finding out what's missing in a scene, and much more.

The best part of it all is that once you have seen a particular question or puzzle, the game remembers what it was so that you don't see it again.

If you own an Xbox 360 and are a movie buff, this is definitely for you. And you can always show off to your friends by inviting them over and putting their scores to shame.

I've had a blast with Scene It? even if I haven't won a single game - my husband works at Blockbuster after all, I can't compete with that. But it sure has been a lot of fun trying to beat his score while watching clips from Back to the Future, The Princess Bride or Titanic.

Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text and screenshots at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=sceneit