We’ve seen games transformed into movies (almost always a disaster). Can a DVD based board game go in the other direction and become a video game?
Scene It? The Movie Trivia Game is an Xbox 360 exclusive title that does just that, and fairly well – dishing up a seemingly endless supply of movie trivia questions.
This isn’t just a text based Jeopardy rip-off; there are many different kinds of activities – movie clips test your memory and film knowledge, rebus puzzles, and more. There are two ways to play - game show mode with four fixed "periods", and a more casual "party" mode where players can see how others have voted before they answer, and allows players to come in and out of the game easily. A priority is placed on answering first; a countdown clock ticks away points. The game does a good job of punishing players who consistantly ring in fast (to block others) by requiring an answer right away wth no chance to "figure it out" after you've chimed in.
Perhaps most surprising about the game are the “big name” films that are represented with film clips and photo clues: Animal House, Some Like It Hot, Sleepless in Seattle, E.T., and Out of Africa just for starters. The questions tend to favor movies from the Eighties and Nineties – so younger players and seniors may be at a disadvantage, but that is probably in keeping with the platform’s demographic.
Making the game more accessible are the four special game controllers that ship with the package. With five buttons (one big button to ring in, and four buttons to choose multiple choice answers with) the game gets more of a TV show feel, making it immediately accessible to people who have never played a video game before.
Unfortunately, everything is not Oscar caliber. The pace of the game feels just a bit slow (especially compared to the You Don’t Know Jack series that set the standard for computerized trivia games). A bigger problem is that the game show host attempt at being acerbically witty often falls flat and just seems nasty. On more than one occasion he criticized the play of one person who had double the score of the other player.
We had more fun playing the party mode which dispenses with the host. Unfortunately, party mode doesn’t know how many people are playing, so even if you both have rung in with an answer you must wait for a certain period of time to elapse before the game will move on.
Everyone who played the game during testing found the format much more fun than the DVD version of the game.
