Review: Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen!

While the Wii is home to the casual gaming phenomenon, last year Xbox 360 owners were able to pick up Scene It? Box Office Smash! which was a phenomenal trivia game built up off the popular DVD board game series. It successfully put together single player, with a group or with the fam, and against the online community exceptionally well. One year later and Warner Bros. has taken the reigns from last year’s Microsoft for the publishing work and launched Scene It? Brights Lights! Big Screen! for the Xbox 360 and the first time being seen on the PS3. So the begging question is: Is it just a crate of new questions that could have been DLC to last year’s game? Or is this an updated package worth updating your holiday gaming arsenal for the family this year?

I took the game to my play with my hardcore Scene It? family on Thanksgiving to see how well it tested for a family experience. Well, there are new questions, of course. And a decent variety at that of older movies, recent movies, and even soon-to-be-released movies like James Cameron’s Avatar. Although, I did take issue that we were already seeing a repeat question or two by about our third competition. This led me to really wonder how large the supply of questions really was… What was nice though was that there was definitely a boost in movie clips-related questions — and the questions were actually about the clips for once. If you were around for last year’s game, the amount of movie clips on the disc for the movie clips segment of the game was brutally minimal, and more often than not the questions weren’t even about the clip just presented to you, but instead about what other movies the director has, well, directed. In this years Bright Lights! Big Screen! the questions seemed more on point with the clips presented, which my family seemed to appreciate and take notice of.

There is a new round in game that might pop up which is called Songs and Slogans — I thought this was the best new round in the game! For me, I think the easiest thing to remember from a movie is their slogan or a famous song related to it. For example, “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion is from what famous movie? — Is one of the questions… And you better know that it’s from Titanic! I’ve already disowned one of my cousins for not knowing that! He’s just lucky he’s a boy and everyone else let him slide for it.

Now if you know me, I’m pretty overly optimistic and I dive into things trying to find the good in everything for all of my critiques, but guys, that’s all I’ve got. The worst of the worst of the situation from here is baffling to me, all of the features that made the first game great, have been removed. The game no longer features Xbox avatar support. I loved that feature! That was what got my own mother to make her own Xbox gamertag last year! She wanted to have her own avatar to play with. Previously you could use your own Xbox avatar or use a randomized one, of which there were tons! Now it has been replaced with a not very family friendly character add-in. There are about 5-7 different characters to choose from, and all of the female cartoonish characters have their breasts popping out of their tops to an extreme degree. My cousin felt uncomfortable when her five year-old daughter kept asking why her character’s body was falling out of her shirt and if she would be the same when she was “taller”. It didn’t feel very family friendly, and there is no option to have a character not like that (for the women characters).

The next and worst disastrous mishap? Removing online support… Completely. Unless you want to buy DLC in the future, you can still do that, don’t you worry. The draw to the replayability factor of last year’s Scene It was that besides playing with the family, you could also play on your own against friends or random Xbox Live players and I could find people even at 2am for a good insomniac session or two. This was one of the major features of the game, and to remove it completely just dropped the replay value to once or twice a year on holidays at most for me.

One strange thing is that last year there were bundles that launched with four buzzer controllers to use, which made playing without the Xbox controller a little easier for my family members that don’t play video games regularly, but this year although the compatibility is present, there were no bundles released for the game (it retails alone for $39.99 across all systems) and the on-screen messages are focused towards using the regular Xbox 360 controller, which only led to confuse and slow down the game for players who weren’t familiar with the button placement. My last gripe with the game is the interface itself. It has a lot going on, and fails to make it clear who was first to buzz in, so you might waste a few seconds of your timed turn to answer just trying to figure out if you were the one who even buzzed in.

This year, Scene It on consoles is surely a pass unless you’re in dire need of new questions, in which you can just pick up the latest DVD board game iteration, of which there are countless versions. And hey, a Twilight version was also released for the Wii and the DS if that’s your thing. The very small amount of positive content makes me weary of recommending this, but if you have yet to pick up Scene It? Box Office Smash! from last year, that is a highly recommended game to play with the family, alone, or with just one or two friends.

Doin It RIGHT: - A new slew of movie clips. - Trivia that is (often) about the actual clip for once. - New songs and slogans round is incredibly fun.	Doin It RONG: - The online feature was… removed? - Terrible, confusing interface. Makes it difficult to know who buzzed in. - The host is more annoying than before, and now takes a visual state, Xbox avatar support is now removed, and default characters are not very family friendly.
FINAL SCORE: 4.5 / 10