There is no ending to: SceneIt?
There is no ending to: SceneIt?
There is no plot to spoil for SceneIt, only the questions. The movie selection is varied, with quite a few older Oscar-winning movies. “It won 13 Oscars?!? How have I not heard of it!” There is a nice selection of easy achievements, and a few trickier ones.
Overall, it is a great party game. The buzzer controllers are fun to use and fairly easy to understand. They use a proprietary IR USB hub. This initially meets with a poor reaction, but they did take this as an opportunity to do something good for the consumer. You can use both a regular controller and SceneIt controller at the same time, letting up to 8 people play in teams of 2….
Since the game is movie trivia, your mileage may vary if you hate movies or simply haven’t seen any American movies. If you have the knowledge, the game design is much simpler and accessible than even Mario Party or Rayman Raving Rabbids. Just about everyone knows how a quiz show works, and it is the same mechanics throughout the match: either buzz in and answer, or answer in secret.
The scene transitions, however, quickly get annoying in how long they take to let you play the next sequence. The loading between rounds as it saves the questions you’ve seen and achievements is also a bit longer. This seems like a technical limitation, but it has not detracted too much yet as this is when a majority of the trash talking occurs. The least interesting game type is also the most common, where you are forced to sit and watch a scene from a movie you:
a) Have seen so many times you have it memorized already, but can’t skip it.
b) A movie you have never heard of and wish you didn’t have to wait 4 minutes to contemplate how badly the ‘a)’ people are going to kick your ass, but you can’t skip it.
The questions are usually fun and interesting, it sometimes just takes a little bit too long to get to them. Instead you sit, waiting to get to do something. This isn’t Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid; it’s a trivia game.
If they take a few nods towards You Don’t Know Jack the next time around, it will be one of the better trivia/party games available on any of the systems. That game series had a great sense of humor, and a good pace in question delivery. In fact, why isn’t there a You Don’t Know Jack as an XBLA or PSN game?
Bonus Points if you can name this character. Extra bonus if you can name the actor without imdb:
mattlindh, 
zazzman, and 1 other are discussing.
jayskywalker 4:03 pm on January 11, 2008 Permalink |
Hey that’s short round from indiana jones TOD, and he was the 007 kid in goonies. I can’t say I know his name though haha. I like scene it, and just bought the tv edition. I have the original somewhere and i really only played it once. Anyway, I just posted a new blog if you want to read mine sometime: http://www.blogforheroes.com. Keep posting!
zazzman 5:05 pm on January 11, 2008 Permalink |
I love SceneIt and think it’s a well-done game, but having recently played with non-gamers, I have a couple of critiques. During our first round with non-gamers, it was hard for them to tell whether or not a set of questions were “buzz in” questions or “select the answer questions”. I think this could have been resolved with a simple “The next set of questions require you to buzz in” statement before the section started. This would be more helpful than those cheesy animated segments. Another gripe they had was about the use of colors to identify players. The in-game announcer always says things like, “Way to go green team” or “Come on red team, get with it.” Everyone that was playing would then say, “Who’s green and who’s red”. Yes, I know all the remotes are colored, but people just don’t make that connection. It would have been nicer if you could create a team name and have your accolades appear on the screen or something like that.
Great blog! Keep up the posts and don’t worry about punctuation and stuff like that. As long as you get your thoughts out, I think people will forgive you if you forget an apostrophe here or a period there. Well, everyone except for Jeff will be forgiving. :)
mattlindh 6:14 pm on January 11, 2008 Permalink |
Why did you tag me?
phokal 10:00 pm on January 15, 2008 Permalink |
Zazz:
It has to be easier than the board game equivalent of keeping track of players and buzzing in by pausing the game. They put the icon in the middle of the color. For quick Guests, this isn’t very indicative. But wherever I see Iron-Man, I know who I am. Helps that I always pick Red as well.
It does stem from a board game. I think the issue isn’t remembering the colors, but that the interface does not draw enough attention to player input or buzzing. Too much of the screen is used for the question and fancy presentation, but not enough to show that YOU are the one that managed to buzz in. Subtle icons in the corner are not easily readable for the first-timer.
matt:
wrote your name down to keep track of it….now you are tagged. mwuhahahah.