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Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! Nintendo Wii

Format:
Nintendo Wii

Genre:
Minigames

Style:
Competitive

Buy/Support:
Support Simon, click to buy via us...

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Other GamePeople columnists have reviewed this from their perspective - huh?:
Family Guide Gamer (Wii)
Family Gamer (Wii)
Frugal Gamer (360)

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The technical feat of moving from the 360 to multi-platform is traversed well by Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen!. This sequel is released simultaneously on Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. Although not without tough technical challenges, Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! intelligently keeps the focus squarely on the quality of clips and questions.

2,800 film clip base questions stand at the centre of the Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! experience. These range from straight clips to more novel edited segments where a key character or object has been masked out. Each segment then leads into a series of questions that first focus on the clip itself before broadening out into more general trivia about the characters, locations and directors involved.

The switch from one system to many is a technical challenge that many games attempt and not many achieve well. Although a hard pill to swallow for fans of the original, Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! has made some sensible decisions that in the main ensure game play continues to shine.

Gone is the 360 avatar and Xbox Live support in favour of something that can be used across platforms. Although this is an initial disappointment to us more technical focus gamers, its a move that enables the developers to invest more time in the game play itself - and here that means well written and designed questions. In this way Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! continues to be known for the attention to detail that goes into creating each set piece clip and subsequent trivias.

It was great to see that even the most geeky of my film loving friends scratching their heads at some of the questions here. It was soon evident that some real film knowledge has been applied here, rather than someone simply trawling Internet Movie Database. The balance and pace of the questions also seems better than the first outing. Here the difficulty is a little bit more predictable, although playing in teams seems the best way to minimise those big gaps in knowledge that are inevitable for all but the most stalwart of film buff..

I also appreciate other little tweaks and improvements that had been made along the way - most likely unnoticed to other players but important to me. The scoring is a good example here. Along with the awards for doing well in the previous round players can earns stars. These are then used to purchase the chance to win a multiplayer for the next round. This made the game really competitive as our quiz evenings progressed. Players would all start to be more tactical about when they used their stars - not to late so as to waste them, but also not too soon when the next round was not their favourite topic.

Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! is a franchise that has a lot to compete with. Buzz on the PlayStation 3 and PSP, as well as Disney's Think Fast on Wii and PS2 - not to mention the plethora of TV quiz themed offerings on from Family Fortunes, 1 vs 100, Deal or no Deal to Who wants to be a Millionaire. Rather than clinging to novelty and technical features it is pleasing to see a game that does it's best to get the questions right first. While many will bemoan the loss of 360 features and lack of Mii's and the like, this is to miss the achievement here of one hell of a quality Film Clip quiz game.

Written by Simon Arquette

You can support Simon by buying Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen!



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Simon Arquette writes the Tech Gamer column.

"Gaming technology and techniques fascinate me, always have and always will do. They've driven me to a gaming degree, and aspirations to a whole lot more. Here though, I'll be reviewing games for how they put their technology to work to deliver a compelling experience."

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