Game: Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action
Genre: Trivia
Platform: Xbox 360

Microsoft made an effort at E3 2007 to show that they care about the casual gaming market just as much as the other guy (the other guy, of course, being Nintendo). During the show they announced the Scene It? bundle would retail at $59.99 and contain four wireless buzzer controllers.

While a cool idea, I didn’t expect to actually buy it until I happened to stumble upon it at Gamestop. It had fallen off of my radar at first, but now I had an excuse to pick it up: a friend was about to leave for England for the next two years and I was going to be hanging out with him for a few hours that night. I had four players, I had time to kill, I thought it was worth picking up Scene It?

And the money was well spent. As much as it may come as a surprise, Scene It? is actually a worthwhile purchase. The buzzers work and are surprisingly well built for the price paid. They require a receiver that plugs into a USB slot and like most wireless devices (that aren't game controllers) it requires that they point in its general direction to work. For $50.00 you aren’t getting blue tooth power, don't expect it.

Scene It? has nearly two thousand questions to test every ounce of movie trivia that you may have locked inside your head. It goes back into the forties but will not hide from the current day. References to movies as recent as Fred Claus and 300 came as a pleasant surprise. It also tracks the questions asked so it will be a while before repeats become a problem.

The games are a grab bag when it comes to quality. Some test actual movie knowledge by drilling questions about Academy Awards while others simply flash pictures on the screen and let you guess the film. It doesn’t feel like a mini-game compellation because of the pacing and knowledge required, but to say it is far removed is an overstatment.

Visually it doesn’t aim to impress and the movie footage isn’t high definition. This is a disappointment because like most Xbox360 games Scene It? is optimized for widescreen, high definition monitors. Hell, some of the text on the screen suffered from what I like to call "Dead Risingism," being near illegible on a standard tube. The games music isn’t anything to blow down barriers and the announcer is so god awful that you may want to just turn his voice off and make sarcastic comments at eachother to replace it.

For $60 it isn’t a matter of the quality of the game or how well it is put together. It does its job and is just plain fun. A glitch here and there can cause a stand still to the gameplay (one actually made it so images that were supposed to come by in the foreground flashed in the background, making it entirely impossible to accurately guess anything).

There isn’t any downloadable content yet or online play, both bummers since I would love to beat the hell out of people over the Internet in movie trivia and get more questions or specific movie packs. Overall, Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action! isn't the mess some thought it would be and is worth a buy for the novelty alone.