Scene-It Movie Night: Mega Movies Pack Review (XBLA/PSN)
Posted by Sean Garmer on 12.10.2011
More trivia from Scene-It this time it's downloadable and about big movies!
Game: Scene-It Movie Night: Mega Movies Pack Developer: Sarbakan Publisher: Screenlife LLC Genre: Trivia Game No. of Players: 1-4 Local Versus Play Only Rating: E for Everyone Price: 9.99
Scene-It for years now has been cranking out board game trivia for everything from movies, music, to Disney and even Twilight. With the Xbox 360 the Scene-It franchise jumped onto the gaming console and was one of the first exclusives Microsoft had for it's system. The first game introduced buzzer controllers and gave everyone a taste of the board game. Scene-It had three more main releases after that and each one attempted to approve on the last one. This is Screenlife's first foray into the downloadable arena and although it takes a few things away from the full version of the game, for the most part it is still the same movie trivia you've come to know and love.
Scene-It Movie Night is supposed to be a series of downloadable packs that will be released in the coming months. The first of these is the Mega Movies pack that focuses mainly on trivia from it's namesake, big name movies. It is probably the best choice as this way it appeals to almost anybody with a passing knowledge of big movie releases from 2010 until about the 1970's.
The game allows for up to four people to play locally and tests your movie trivia knowledge in a variety of categories. Each game won't last more than 20 minutes at the most and is split up into seven sections. Two of those sections are always answering questions after a movie clip. The final round is a quick fire round where questions are more focused and is the only section in the game where you can actually lose points for answering incorrectly. It is mainly done this way so it's possible for everyone to still have an advantage at the end of the game. Anyone only familiar with the board games will probably welcome the easier transition to every question being multiple choice. (Whether you like it or not, it's really the only way you could do it on a console. As replicating the board game completely in video game form would probably not amount to many purchases of the product because the game would be too hard.) While you ponder which of the face buttons contains the correct answer, the game will judge your score by how quickly you push the button and which color the arrow was in when you pressed it. The bar goes from green to yellow to red as time progresses during the question. You can score 1,000 points if you have a quick trigger finger or even a lowly point if you took too long to decide. The only way to stop the timer is by buzz-in, where the buzzed-in player gets a small time window to answer the question on their own. However, if you answer the question incorrectly it will penalize the player by taking away points.
The categories are as follows and appear at random in each game, section 1 & 6 are always movie clips, while 7 is always the Quick Fire. 2-5 are one of the other 12 categories available: (many of these have appeared in the board games, while there are others that have only appeared in the video game versions)
Movie Clips: Answer four questions following a short film clip (usually happens twice in every game played) Fill In the Blank: There will be a quote from a film and you have to guess the word that's missing from the quote Child Drawing: Name Movie made from child's drawing Who Am I? Name actor, actress or character from these clues Invisibles: The characters are cut out from the scene, name movie or actor Quick Pitch: Last round of every game where something from a movie is put up and you have to guess which movie it's from Credit Roll: Name movie based off it's credits it starts from hard to easy like from the Key Grip to the Main Actor in the Film Visual Puzzles: There are four images, name the movie based on those Sequentials: Put these films in the order of their release starting with the earliest Distorted Reality: Name Actor or Actress from this distorted picture (sometimes this takes too long to become clear) Role Call: Clues are put up based on Roles this certain actor or actress played in, guess the person Pixel Flix: Name the Movie based on this 8-bit scene that's played out Strike A Match: Clues are on the left and category is on the right, match them up Now Playing: Name movie based off it's poster
Most of the categories are a blast to play, I enjoyed the pixel flix, Now Playing, and Who Am I the most. It's really cool to see Movie Clips from films as recent as "The Social Network" to the 1970's with "The Godfather," and every big film you can imagine in between those two timeframes. The most annoying categories to me were probably the Credit Roll and Sequentials (the latter has been there since the board games, of which my family has like every genre.) These were pretty hard and require some damn good movie knowledge. Plain and simple this is movie trivia. You either find this sort of game fun or you don't. Even if you don't know much about movies, this is the one trivia game those with a general knowledge of movies can play. Even the announcer doesn't do any harm at all, he basically just encourages you as the player moves through each section.
The graphics aren't much to speak of, as most of the time you are reading the text on the screen to answer questions. The backgrounds and little slow moving transitions do their job, no one should expect anything spiffy here as they are just trying to get you to play the board game on a console. The sound is nothing more than sound effects for correct answers and wrong answers, crowd noise, and sound effects you get from the screen transitions.
The only knock on this game is that it doesn't have online play and since it's a downloadable title, that can be forgiven a bit. As they probably wouldn't have been able to charge 10 bucks for the game if they included online play. Some of the other Scene-It titles did have online play though. I just wish I could have been able to find other like minded indviduals to play the game with me. My family gets together about once a month and all my friends live pretty far away too. So those looking to make a party online with the game and have a trivia fest, sadly you can't do that. I do think they could have also added a long play version too, but again this is a downloadable game.
Pros:
+ The game delivers on it's name sake it focuses on big movies
+ Doesn't try to be flashy with graphics or too many video clips, you basically get the board game with multiple choice questions
+ The categories provide great variety with the trivia
+ Four Player individual play makes it more fun
+ Each game is no longer than 20 minutes so you could probably get people to play a best 2 out of 3 before quitting
+ More DLC genre specific packs are expected to roll out in months to come
Cons:
- The game only has the main trivia mode
- No Online Play severly limits the longevity of the title to basically only a local party game
The 411: Anyone that enjoys playing trivia games and has a crowd to play them with should give this one a look. The game gives you the best of the board game and makes it easy for anyone to start answering questions. The lack of online play means solo players that were hoping to hook-up with friends online are isolated and no online may keep many from picking this up. Really it's simple, if you like Scene-It but maybe feel like the board game is too hard, this is something for you. If you aren't a trivia game person this is probably the most accessible way to get into one, but you probably still won't like it. At least there will be more packs to play and I'll be eagerly awaiting the next one to drop.
Graphics
7.0
Pretty Average stuff here, most of the time you are gonna be looking at text with some clips thrown in there
Gameplay
8.5
The game is fun, especially with friends. Anyone that loves movies and trivia should look at this
Sound
7.5
There is an announcer to encourage you along but other than buzzer sounds, sound from clips, and generic stuff that's it
Lasting Appeal
6.5
This another great party game to add to the Scene-It franchise but with no online play there isn't much for solo players to do.
Fun Factor
9.0
There is lots of fun to be had if you love trivia. The movies are well known and can appeal to almost anyone, the games are also short too which is a plus.
