Tech: Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action

If you ever want to separate the true cinephiles from the wannabe movie buffs, "Scene It?" is your trivia game of choice. I never thought I was that big of a movie fan until I realized my sister and most of her college age friends had never seen movies like "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Some Like It Hot," or even "Citizen Kane." It seems like the younger folks never get around to seeing stuff made before 1970, and this knowledge gap makes it easy for me to win games of "Scene It?."

There are a lot of different game types here, from movie clips followed by straught Q&A sessions to recognizing famous scenes from movies in caricature form. The game comes bundled with 4 "Big Button Pads" and an IR receiver that plugs into a spare USB port on your 360; having a separate buzzer for each player is a nice touch that makes this an easy sell to parties and families. Most of the games are fun (my favorite is a movie quotes contest), and the competition can get quite heated if the participants have comparable knowledge of movie trivia.

There are some frustrating omissions that keep the score lower than it otherwise would be. Downloadable content in the form of extra questions was promised but scrapped, since a sequel to this game is due to be released this fall. This means that the 1,800 questions included on the game disc are all that you're going to get, giving the game a disappointing shelf life. Even worse are the elementary UI/gameplay gripes (I don't think you can form teams, for example). Still, it's entertaining, and I could think of worse ways to spend an evening.

Rating: 70/100