Scene It? Box Office Smash! Reviews

  • elSmitmysterelSmitmyster2,119,757
    17 Dec 2008 11 May 2009
    28 5 7
    Scene It Box Office Smash!
    GS Available: 1000 DLC: 250

    Key information: Unlike the first Scene It game, you are unable to pause questions to look up the answers on IMDB.com. This makes some of the achievements a little more time consuming this time around, but still easily doable within 15 hours.

    Improving on the original Scene It, BOS extends the number of question categories to 21:

    Anagrams
    Challenging at first, this category has you unscrambling letters to reveal the name of an actor or film from 4 possible options.

    Celebrity Ties
    Questions about movie stars who are linked in some way.

    Child's Play
    One of my personal favourites. A sketch is revealed slowly and the first to buzz in with the correct answer gets the points.

    Credit Roll
    HARD. View the credits to a movie to guess guess the title. One catch though: you never get the well-known cast members first. My advice? Wait until near the end to answer.

    Crosswords
    Answer questions to find the missing words in the puzzle on by one. This obviously gets easier to answer the more words that you already have in the puzzle.

    Distorted Reality
    Pictures of movie stars are blurred or distorted in other ways: first to identify who is hidden gets the points.

    Genre X
    Five questions about a specific film genre. Just make sure you get the Westerns correct when you get that category!

    Invisibles
    Another of my favourites. You're given a still picture from a movie with a key part missing: like an easily identifiable landmark, or even the actors' heads!

    Movie Clip
    Watch movie clip; answer questions.

    Now Playing
    Movie posters are slowly revealed like a multi-layered image. Buzz in as soon as you can identify the film title.

    Pictograms
    Several pictures are displayed for you to figure out a film title of actor. For example: A cliff face + football + snake = Rocky Balboa.

    Pixel Flix
    These are great! You get a famous scene animated in retro video graphics. All you have to do is identify the film.

    Props
    An image from a film is displayed on screen. Identify the movie.

    Quotables
    Finish famous movie lines. eg: "I feel the need . . . (the need for speed)"

    Sequentials
    I hated these in the first game, but fortunately in Scene It BOS, you can guess away until you finally put the four movies given in chronological order.

    Sketches
    Similar to Child's Play, this time you have an invisible pencil drawing a sketch for you to figure out a movie title from.

    Songs & Slogans
    All questions relating to film soundtracks or slogans.

    Soundclips
    You're given an audio clip of around thirty seconds to identify the film title from a choice of four.

    Visual Puzzlers
    You're given four stills from a film, one by one as the time runs down - just correctly identify the movie.

    Which Is Which?
    You're given a choice of two pictures from movies and a title - just match the title to the right picture.

    Who Am I?
    Identify the name of an actor from 4 clues. The clues are staggered in difficulty, which more points awarded to those who take the risk of answering after clue number one.

    NEW QUESTION CATEGORY: POP QUIZ (DLC ONLY)
    Only available on downloading the DLC, Pop Quiz gives you 10 quickfire Yes/No questions worth 2000 points each.

    The loading times are generally much faster and the overall presentation has improved. The problem which effected the longevity of Lights, Camera, Action remain: mainly that questions come around gain too soon with repeated play. Whilst useful for the gamerscore addict, the game does become repetitive quite quickly.

    If you can find a game online, the experience is pretty solid and I experienced no problems. Fortunately, if you're kickin' ass and your opponent quits, you still get credit for a win as long as you finish the game.

    Achievements unlock very quickly, although repeated play is required for a couple of category achievements, such as answering 15 Western questions correctly.

    Basically, if you enjoy movie trivia, it's safe to say you'll get a lot from this game. There are a greater variety of questions and it is good fun to play with friends. The inclusion of Avatar support is also a nice touch.

    7/10
    elSmitmyster

    (edited and improved May 11th 2009)
    3.0
    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    elSmitmysterNo they're not, but the achievements which are linked to the pop quiz are. Pop quiz basically gives you the name of an actor and then 10 questions with film titles - you've just gotta guess if they were in the film or not. Sometimes you'll get a list of movies and you'll need to guess if they won an oscar or not.
    Posted by elSmitmyster on 25 Oct 09 at 01:24
    elSmitmysterJust gotta keep playing. 20 questions about the 60's takes a while as they don't come up very often. Sorry I don't think there's a quick way of doing this.
    Posted by elSmitmyster on 05 Feb 10 at 20:27
    UlteriorDesertWhy would anyone buy this when you can buy the board game cheaper and still use it on xbox?
    Posted by UlteriorDesert on 11 Sep 10 at 22:52
  • JoeCool7835JoeCool7835407,422
    11 Sep 2010
    11 2 2
    Trivia games have always been my favorite genre. Unfortunately, they tend to wear out their welcome due to repeat questions popping up. Scene It: Box Office Smash was the second game to show up bearing the Scene It name. The first game laid a strong foundation that the second didn't mess with. In fact, BOS even improved on the formula (though the improvements didn't show up in the third game). It's not perfect, but it is the best trivia game on the 360, bar none.

    The formula is simple. You and up to 3 friends play three rounds of varying lengths followed by a final round at the end. The faster you answer the questions, the more points you get (or lose). Each of the three main rounds gives you an assortment of questions from 21 possible categories, and these categories vary widely in style and content. One puzzle block may have you answering questions after watching a short clip of a famous movie. Another may have you identifying a famous actor from four "Who Am I" style clues. Still another may have you putting a group of four films in the order of their theatrical release. There are well over a thousand questions in the game, more if you get the DLC. I played about 30 long games before I encountered a single repeat. The repeat movie clips are bigger offenders than repeat questions, but, fortunately, there are about fifteen different questions to go with each clip. Still, if I have to see that clip from Trading Places again, I'll probably scream!

    Graphically, it doesn't do anything spectacular, but each of the puzzle block areas have a style of their own. Each of the major film genres have a locale created to go with a puzzle block, and they are more creative than the first game. I give extra brownie points for including Avatar support. The movie clips are the weakest part of the game aesthetically. All the clips are in standard definition, and there are sound mixing issues. The audio in the movie clips is too soft; I had to turn my speakers up to maximum several times in order to hear the dialog. The announcers can get annoying as well.

    Racking up the Achievements is just a matter of time. The hardest part, I think, is finding an online game at this point, but isn't that one of the great things about this site?smile

    Scene It: Box Office Smash isn't perfect, but it is the best trivia game on the Xbox 360. It's one of those games that's worth pulling out even when you have all 1250 GamerPoints.

    toast
    5.0
  • NamcoPlayerNamcoPlayer#9871188,655
    18 Dec 2022
    1 0 0
    Scene It? Box Office Smash! is a movie trivia game and the second installement in the Scene It? video game series to be released on the Xbox 360. The game supports up to 4 players, local or online play and those Big Button USB controllers that you plug into your console were heavily recommended to use with this game, along with its' previous game also released on the 360. It's a huge improvement over the other game. Here is why.

    GOOD QUALITIES:
    Box Office Smash! still has the regular puzzle blocks with the movie clips, props, movie posters, but improves with the movie selection. For example, there are more questions about movies released in the 2000's such as Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and Shrek and less questions on black and white films.

    If you have some local people (family and/or friends) visiting or living, you can play this game with them, even if they hate video games. This game also supports online multiplayer, if you want to invite your Xbox friends to play this game and have no one to play with you locally.

    By default, the game won't penalize you for incorrect answers, and instead leaves you with no points earned or lost.

    BAD QUALITIES:
    Some of the puzzle blocks (Crosswords, Anagrams, and Child's Play) still suck ass and would require you to have only small points rewarded in order to get them correct unless you start guessing and by some random miracle you got one question right from Child's Play which rewarded you 2000 points. The Audio Clips puzzle block has the audio way lower than the game's sound effects, so every time I need to do the Audio Clips puzzle, I would have to turn up the audio on my TV. And why can't I stop saying the word "audio"?

    OVERALL:
    Overall, Scene It? BOS is a huge improvement over the first Scene It game on the 360, but it still has some flaws.
    3.5
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