Largely unchanged

Microsoft successfully brought Scene It? to their XBOX 360 console last year with the release of Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action. Like anything that does moderately well in the sales department it is going to get a sequel: Scene It? Box Office Smash. If you bought last year’s edition with the Big Button pad controller have no fear because Scene It? Box Office Smash uses the same controllers. But if you are looking to get into Scene It? for the first time there is also a bundle with the controllers for purchase. The real question is though… Is the game better than last year’s edition and does it warrant a purchase?

The answer is that Scene It? Box Office Smash is a mixed bag. If you own the previous iteration; do you really want the new questions? The game is largely unchanged from last year, albeit with a couple new additions. But for those that don’t have Lights, Camera, Action, let’s take a look at Box Office Smash.

Modes

Box Office Smash is all about answering movie related questions which you can play in two primary modes, short and long. The short play consists of three rounds of three puzzle types, while the long play consists of three rounds of five puzzle types. The puzzle types are quite varied, ranging from word puzzles to sound cues. While most of the puzzle types return from last year’s edition there are a handful of new types. There is Celebrity Ties for instance, where you get questions based on how actors are linked. And Songs & Slogans, wherein the questions are about famous movie songs or taglines.

Once the three rounds are up the game moves onto the Final Cut. It consists of four questions, each with the same base value but correctly answering questions will increase your score. Multiplayer gives players a chance to rack up some big numbers and possibly rip victory from the hands of defeat. It is a great mode to keep everyone involved all the way through a full game of play. It can seem somewhat unfair when you dominate a game only to lose because you miss a question in the final round.

Online play

Also returning from Lights, Camera, Action is the inclusion of round highlights. Round highlights award points based on things that players do in the previous round. While you will get points for answering the quickest, one may also get points for answering the slowest. In fact it seems that doing poorly results in a variety of different point rewards, ultimately keeping the games close and allowing people who aren’t necessarily movie buffs to stay in the game.

If last year’s edition had one major flaw it was that the game had no online component. Box Office Smash fixes this, allowing people to compete online against friends or complete strangers. While the added functionality of online play is a great bonus it also poses its own problems as a result. The biggest one is that the game ships with roughly 2000 questions. The question amount was never much of a problem with Lights, Camera, Action because unless you always had people over playing the game you probably were not seeing many duplicates. With online play the chance for more duplicates increases due to sheer convenience.

Downloadable content

Another piece that Lights, Camera, Action failed with was the complete lack of downloadable content. Box Office Smash promises to be better which will certainly help prolong the life of the title. Themed downloadable content packs would be greatly appreciated by a lot of players, especially considering the popularity of the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and James Bond add on packs for the board game version.

No one would be expecting Box Office Smash to be a graphical powerhouse but it doesn’t look terrible either. The game is just flashy enough to keep your eyes stimulated but not so much so that you are distracted from the game. It should be noted that Box Office Smash is the first title to take advantage of the New XBOX Experience’s avatars. Although they did seemingly jump the gun on that matter by a few weeks, seeing as how the NXE has yet to be deployed.

2000 Reasons

Scene It? Box Office Smash is, like last year’s edition, not exactly groundbreaking but if you are a fan of movie trivia then this is great fun. The new additions to the game add just enough to make purchasing this worthwhile if you already own Lights, Camera, Action. And if you don’t own it already then there are close to 2000 reasons why this is a decent addition to your game library.