Scene It? Box Office Smash
Fingers on Buzz.
It's not just that the questions themselves are repeated, since licensing issues mean that the game's repertoire of clips, images and soundbites is limited by necessity. If you're a fan of films such as Overboard, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Hot Fuzz or Little Miss Sunshine then you'll see plenty from these. I had the same clip from Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid three times, albeit with occasionally different questions, while the same scene from Paper Moon turned up in two successive Xbox Live games. Bearing in mind that this was after ten games, and assuming you're likely to at least play a couple of short games per session, even the most casual player is going to start getting repeated material sooner rather than later.
There are also some very sloppy mistakes, which are just frequent enough to make you wonder whether the game was proofread and fact-checked. Maybe only a tedious movie nerd like me would take umbrage at a question that says Casey Affleck played a cop in Gone Baby Gone (he was a private detective) but most people will be able to spot howling gaffes like "Micheal Douglas" and "Will Farell".
Then there's the question of balance. Bonus points are dished out to the players between rounds, but the game has a weird - and very annoying - habit of rewarding bad players more than good. Numerous times I saw my hard-earned lead chipped away as the game boosted my opponent's score by over 3500 points for achievements like "Slowest Buzzer" and "Most Incorrect Answers". Presumably this is to keep average players in with a fighting chance, but it feels like the wrong way to do it.
The same is true of the climactic Final Cut round, which offers four questions and a score multiplier to increase the odds of a last-minute upset. Get lucky with the choice of clip, or get every question right quickly enough, and you can win an extra 20,000 points, more than enough to completely reverse the game in the last minute. For the player who has led in every single round, and only dropped their multiplier after one simple mistake, losing under these circumstances is more than a little unfair. (Yes, that was me and, yes, it still stings).
Still, when it gets things right, this second slice of Scene It is a compelling quiz game, with questions that show a genuine understanding and appreciation of the subject matter and not just a desire to shovel trivia onto a disc. When it gets things wrong, however, the flaws immediately and irrevocably chip away at the game's longevity. Obviously the problems are amplified binging on the game for a review, but even played at a more casual pace there are enough problems to reduce Box Office Smash to an entertaining short-term prospect at best.