Scene It? Movie Night: Mega Movies

(I wrote this review for Gamingblend.com - http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Scene-It-Movie-Night-Mega-Movies-Review-Reel-Blast-37626.html)

After saving the world from terrorists and dragons I had worked up a thirst for something a little different. Maybe something that made me challenge my friends and family as opposed to deranged AI. Scene It? Movie Night: Mega Movies rose from the ashes of my assassin’s guild to pit me and three of my friends against one another in a no holds barred winner takes all movie trivia challenge, and it was a blast.

The goal of Scene It? Movie Night: Mega Movies is simple: gain the most points at the end of seven rounds of movie trivia. There are no extra modes at this time so it does seem a little limited. A customization option for setting up your game would be nice, but Scene It? is still a successful party game.

Through the seven rounds you will play different randomly generated game types, from the classic “watch this clip and answer a set of questions” to guessing the movie based on its poster as it’s slowly revealed. All of the game types are fun and they are definitely varied enough to keep things energetic. My favorite round was always the very last one where you have to quickly guess the movie based on the clues provided and a wrong answer costs you points. It is a frantic end to the game that usually caused the people playing to immediately start a new game as soon as they were through.

The clip and movie content is fairly expansive. For a time I did not see any repeated clips, but even when Scene It? started replaying old clips it followed it up with brand new questions. And after two hours straight of playing I was never asked the same question twice. Sometimes it would focus on genre of movies too much or pull questions from the same movie several times. The movie Red Dawncame up about five or six times (though I didn’t mind because I got to yell “WOLVERINES!”).

There is an interesting “buzz-in” feature that creates a level of risk vs. reward by giving more points for a correct answer and actually penalizing you if you get it wrong. Some rounds even made you answer in four seconds if you buzzed-in. It gave Scene It? just a slightly more stressful vibe that I appreciated. It made us cuss almost as much as losing did.

The whole game is narrated by an incredibly annoying announcer, which everyone at my party agreed was the worst. Thankfully he can be turned off in the sound menu. Unfortunately, playing without the announcer turned on created awkward gaps of silence. Even though we hated him we eventual turned him back on to fill in those awkward moments. If his writing was just a little bit better I would have had no issue leaving him on at all times. Also, I am pretty sure he knew which I player I was, even after switching controllers, and sucked up to me.

Another issue is that the game can only be played by four people. I understand the hardware issues but it would have been nice to be able to include more people per game. Each game is about fifteen minutes long so no one seemed to mind passing the controllers back and forth.

I asked the people who played it with me what they thought of the game and they all agreed that is was a great time. I had two people who had very little experience with video games say that their unfamiliarity with the controller hurt them, but I think they were lying to protect their pride after I beat them by 5000 points. The rest of the group said they would love to play again, which if you think about it, is the only important question for a game of this type. If your friends have fun with movie trivia then you will definitely want to pick up Scene It? Movie Night: Mega Movies. Making fun of your friend’s knowledge of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is just as rewarding as repelling an alien invasion.