A Step Backwards for the Series

User Rating: 4 | Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! X360
The latest Scene It is a major step backwards in the otherwise great movie trivia party game series. From the lack of avatar support, grating announcer, frequent video clip repeats, and unpolished presentation, this game isn't anywhere as good as Scene It Box Office Smash. While the other games didn't exactly tax the X360 to it's technical limits, this latest game appears like it would run fine on a PS1 or a handheld.

We noticed a large tendency for the game to offer questions about late 2008 and 2009 movies, so if you haven't been to many movies this year, you won't be getting many questions correct. The Star system for risking point multipliers seems more of a "vindictive punishment" system. In past games, it was a pleasant tendency for bonus points to be awarded for buzzing in faster or other minor accomplishments, making each round feel much closer for every player as well as keeping losing players in the game without becoming unfair. Now, with the Star system, when you are losing, you're really losing, and this turned off several players in my gaming group, because one great player was able to easily rout the others.

I noticed my Big Button controllers were lagged a bit with this game for some unknown reason, which is a real shame because for the first time, my gaming group was looking at their controllers in frustration instead of the questions. The Big Button controllers were easily .5 second off, usually when there's some animation or graphic component playing on screen (taxing the system apparently), which furthers my suspicion that this game just isn't put together very well.

I would avoid this game and pick up Box Office Smash instead and hope that they do a better job with next year's release.