Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action Review

The worlds of film and video games don't always mix particularly well. In fact the vast majority are adaptations, one way or the other, which can, at best, be described as quite bad (if we're being generous). Scene It, or Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action to give it its full and unnecessarily long title, however, treads somewhat safer ground in being a video game about films. And like the board game series that shares the same name, it is a quiz game, one that aimed at testing your knowledge of Hollywood and the world of film.

One button to push them all

In the box, alongside a copy of the game, you'll also find four 'Big Button' pads, allowing you (or your team) to take on up to three others. Each pad has A, B, X and Y buttons (arranged in a vertical line) for selecting one of the four multiple-choice answers that accompany each question, as well as featuring big button at the top (which also rocks, doubling as a D-pad for menu navigation) and little Xbox guide, Start and Back buttons at the bottom.

Rather than using the wireless technology that powers the standard Xbox controllers, these pads work with infrared. Whilst this has the drawback that the included IR receiver must be plugged into one of the 360's USB slots and positioned so that everyone has line of sight, it appears a lot easier going on the included batteries.

I've found that included hardware, certainly in cheaper games, can often feel quite cheap and nasty (The Buzz pads are a good example), but thankfully that's not the case with the Big Button pads. It has to be said that the pads are a real pleasure to use; they feel responsive, pleasantly weighty in the hands and perfectly comfortable to use for extended periods of time, so hats off to them for that.

Would you like to play a game?

Every quiz needs questions and Scene It has 1,800 of them (according to the box). In order to start answering them you'll have to pick your game mode, either 'Short Play', 'Long Play' or 'Party Play'. Short and Long play are identical, except that there's more questions in the latter (well dur, right). Party Play is a bit different in that it removes anything that might slow down play for more instant access to the game, which is useful when there's a big group of you, or perhaps at parties (it takes all sorts I guess). Party Play also shows what answers everyone has selected as they choose it, which can lead to a bit of copying once people catch on and the knowledgeable movie geeks are the group are identified.

As for the questions themselves, they range from fairly simple to bastard hard, and there's a nice bit of variety in how the questions are delivered; puzzle set styles covering things like standard question and answer form, anagrams, pictograms, audio and picture based puzzles, and clue-based challenges. Questions typically come in sets of about five and each has a timer that ticks down from 2,000 points, so that the faster you answer the more points you score.

However, quick answers become dangerous in the latter rounds of the Short and Long Play games where incorrect guesses see you losing points. This can lead to some huge, and potentially amusing, shifts in fortunes as the game progresses. Though it can all still change in the last set of questions, dubbed the 'Final Cut', which builds up a multiplier for each consecutive correct answer, such that the last question can potentially net you 20,000 points (again, this only features in the Short and Long play games).

Each of the puzzle sets fall into one of two answering styles: either everyone answers or buzz-in, where the quickest to hit the big button gets to guess first. The buzz-in rounds are nice in theory, but fall down in practise, to the point of becoming rather irksome. The multiple-choice answers remain hidden until the button is pressed and unfortunately the answer quite often becomes clear, or at least easy to guess, once they are revealed. The amount of time you get to guess (about five seconds) is enough that you can deliberate a little before answering, so rather than buzzing in because you know the answer (or, at least, think you know it), the best practise becomes buzzing in and then just taking a guess. As a number have games have proven they quickly descend into who can mash the button the fastest, which can become rather annoying, especially when you genuinely know the answer but someone else beats you and then has a lucky guess.

These buzz-in rounds don't feature in the Party Play mode and show themselves to work much better as 'everyone guesses' style play, which makes it even more annoying, especially since there's no option to turn off the buzz-in style rounds in the Short and Long Play game modes.

The options? You can't handle the options

Speaking of options, don't go expecting much in the way of choice; the barebones menu offers access to the standard game (Short and Long Play), Party Play, achievements viewing and the very small number of options available. Unfortunately none of the available options allows you to turn off the host in the standard game. And believe me, you'll want to turn him off after a while.

For some reason quiz video games seem to have adopted an unwritten rule that the host of the game must be incredibly annoying; anyone who has played one of the Buzz games will know exactly what I'm talking about. Whilst Scene It's host never makes a physical appearance on screen his voice alone is more than enough to drive you completely nuts, especially after a number of games and when his 'really not that funny first time' comments have been repeated more often than you'd like. Thankfully he doesn't say quite enough to detract too much from the game, but it does start to grate after a while.

Scene It, we have a problem

I also have a little bit of concern over the number of questions in the game. 1,800 sounds like a lot, but after a number of play-throughs I have already seen repeats of the odd few crop up here and there, which is somewhat disappointing (though there is the potential for expansion packs via downloadable content). Another possible issue is that movie trivia is perhaps weighted a bit more towards those who really do know their films, which could be off-putting for the average Joe movie-goer. Personally I like the level of difficultly, but then I think it'd be fair to say that I represent someone who's more into their films than Mr and Mrs Joe.

The slim options in the game modes is also something of a disappointment as neither the standard or party mode feels quite right. The party mode lacks a lot of the irritating aspects that feature in the standard game mode, but suffers from revealing answers as well as lacking any real structure or options. For example, there's no way of setting the length of game to play in Party Play, and from playing a few games it seems to last a random length of time with some games feeling much longer than others. And for those who care, the Party Play also lacks any contribution to the game's achievements, which typically involve answering whole puzzle sets correctly, or X number of variously-themed questions, and the such like.

Are you not entertained?

Ultimately these issues are relatively minor detractors from the overall fun of the game, provided you like movies and quizzes to begin with that is. It's certainly not without its flaws, but lurking beyond the irritating American voice there's a rather enjoyable quiz game to be had.

How ya doing, buddy?