While wondering through Best Buy the other day doing that whole Christmas shopping nonsense, a little gem caught my eye that I basically forgot about. Scene It has been a game I’ve been looking forward to since I had first heard about it, but I couldn’t seem to remember the game unless I was staring directly at it. Now, that doesn’t make it a makeshift game or anything, not by any means, it just means that there has been very little “hype” or anyone even talking about this game, which is a shame in my opinion. However, I have quite the love for movies, just as much as my love for video games (and on some days, it may even surpass my love for video games), and I love board games too, so I support any board game to video game “port” (even bad ones like Catan) with a purchase. There was a whole lot of loving in that last sentence, which is basically going to be the whole feel of this review. I will be oogley, lovey dovey, and just plain ol’ smitten with this game.

For $59.99 Scene It gets you the game, four buzzers, batteries for all the buzzers, and the receiver for the buzzers, there isn’t much more you could ask for really, unless you were expecting pieces of a dead hooker to act as packing peanuts.

Screenlife did a great job of not screwing up if you ask me, they didn’t try and add a bunch of bells and whistles and all that garbage that most developers do when they are working with a not so original IP. There isn’t a story mode, there isn’t a fight to the death mode, there is, however: Long Play, Short Play, and Party Mode. Screenlife took an already successful board game and decided to “port” it over to the 360 and they did a fantastic job. Long and short play are basically one in the same, it’s just a longer or shorter game. Now that I’ve pointed out the obvious let me tell you how party play works. Rather than having a beginning, an end, or rounds, the game just picks up and keeps on going until you decide to stop playing. Endless mode probably would have been a better name for Party play, because Long/Short play is more party inducing if you ask me.

The one thing that worried me about Scene It when I first heard about it was: “I’m worried really worried about questions repeating because it’s a scary thing and could really ruin a really good game that could be totally awesome and keep me happy and make me bread.” Yeah, I worry in run-on sentences. Screenlife was ahead of the game though and they took that worry by the horns and shat directly onto it. After every round you play, the game saves the questions you have already answered to your hard drive to minimize the chance of repeating questions. I guess that could be a problem if you’re taking Scene It to a friends house, but if that’s the case and you really think you’ve seen most of the 1,800 questions, bring your hard drive too, dummy.

I’ve played a bunch of Scene It, and I haven’t repeated any of the questions that I’ve come across on my 360 yet and I also don’t think I’ve answered nearly 1,800 questions so there is still tons more Scene it to be played. While on the topic of questions, you may worry about running out of questions eventually which is a valid concern, until I tell you this! Screenlife will be releasing question packs in the future, and when I say “will be”, I mean I hope they do and I am purely speculating.

You have 1,800 questions, you can’t just be answering dull and boring movie trivia, now can you! Nope, you’re not. Scene It has 21 different game types for your playing pleasure. I’m pretty sure even after all the times I’ve played, I still haven’t seen all the game types, but I maybe mistaken. It just seems like every time I start up a game, I get to see a new game type or two. A couple of the game types you’re bound to see are:
The Movie Clip – Where the game plays a short clip from a movie than asks you really random questions about the clip, and sometimes questions that have nothing to do with the clip. This mode can be a little disheartening but you’ll get through it. Oh, right. This mode also serves as the Final Cut, which is the last round in the short/long play mode, the only difference is – you don’t lose points for wrong answers.

Child’s Play is another fun game type. You’re supposed to guess the name of the movie based on a “child’s” sketch that is slowly being filled in as the timer runs down.

There is Quotables , Audio Clips, Anagrams, and many, many more different game types that will definitely keep you interested.

Scene It is 1-4 players, and I’ve played it with 2 people and I’ve played it with 4. I don’t think the game would be very good playing by yourself, unless you are trying to be a scum bag and memorize all the questions before your friends get to play with you. If that’s the case, I hope you die a painful death for stealing my idea.

The game play is pretty straight forward, you answer the questions correctly and you get points, miss the question you lose points. Your points are based off the sliding timer that is at the bottom of the screen. The faster you buzz in, the more points you gain or lose depending on how smart you are. There is a couple ways to answer questions depending on the game type. If you’re playing with a bunch of people, some game types just have you ring in your answer without buzzing in and everyone playing gets to answer. Others require you to buzz in like back in the old game show days, and I believe only one game mode has everyone putting things in order with no buzzing in needed.

At the end of every round bonus points are awarded, these are kinda silly but in a fun way. You get bonus points for basically just playing and being really good, or just being really bad. Some of the things you can get bonus points for are: Slowest Answer, Fastest Answer, Most Questions Answered Right, Most Questions Answered Wrong, yeah ok you get the point.

Overall, I think Scene It is a fantastic game and I can’t find too much wrong with it to complain about. Except for a very small buzzer issue. When playing in a pretty compact area, it is easy for people to be in the way of each other and for buzzers not to be directly pointed at the receiver. This is a problem since the buzzers use Infrared, which requires a direct line of sight for the sender to hit the receiver and if this doesn’t happen at all times, cancerous waves of infrared single are shot into the air and infect your brain. So don’t let your friends stand in your way when you’re playing Scene it because you won’t be able to buzz in and you will get cancer.

Other than that, the game is amazing and if you have 2 or more friends, I would definitely pick this game up for when you want to take a break from Rock Band, which I know doesn’t happen a lot right now, but if you had Scene It, I bet it would happen more.

Scene It: Lights, Camera, Action!

Gameslaves Radio

This is from my gamespot blog, but I figured I'd post it to clear up some statements in my "What the hell was his name" blog.

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I can only imagine the backlash if I actually had people reading my blog. The seas would rise, the sun would explode and humanity as we know it, would end. Yet here I am writing what could be one of the first (or few) posts in a manner which would not be pleasing to 2k Boston. Yeah, right.

I have found myself in a rut, torn between story and game play in the fantastic world of Rapture. It literally tears me to pieces every time I load the game knowing that I'm going to have to deal with some of the most annoying features in a game ever, just to learn more and experience the story to it's full effect.

That's right, I cannot f--king stand the game play of Bioshock. Granted, at first it may come off just like any shooter but with the option of adding some extra cool things to make you stronger. However, I find it quite annoying and redundant. Being the kind of player who likes to power through shooters and learn as much about the story as possible (as quickly as possible), it bothers the living **** out of me that I need to make decision about what plasmids to use. In this case, what plasmids I need to use in a level before I even know a god damn thing about the level.

Why not just goto a gene bank and change them out?

Because that's f--king annoying. I don't want to run and find a gene bank every ten minutes just because I've come across a new encounter.

Harvest Little Sisters and buy some more plasmid slots!

No! FU! The little sisters and the big daddies can suck it. I'll talk more about them later.

What it comes down to is, my character feels heavily under powered because of this gene bank nonsense. I don't know which plasmids will be best and the splicers I'm facing seem to take no damage from the ones I choose, ever. So I kinda get screwed in the fact that I need to run to a gene bank or die and start from where I left off, which is equally annoying.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have died, because I've run out of ammo for my awesome guns (which seem to do little-to-no damage to most splicers) and my plasmids suck and do equally crappy damage. Why is this? I don't f'ing know. Could someone tell me why this is? Probably. Do I want to hear it? No. I'm at the point of frustration with this game where as amazing as the story sounds, the gameplay enrages me to no end and I don't even want to play it anymore.

Maybe it's my hectic way of playing the game, but the other awesome thing that I love is the vital chambers... Or whatever the f--k they are called. You know, the stupid things that respawn you when you die, yeah, they're great. They respawn you close to where you died with the enemies still at whatever amount of health you left them at. Amazing. Up until you run out of money, first aid, and eve injectors and you're left with half health and little to no eve to kill the remaining splicers.

Yeah, that's amazing, good job. Probably a feature you should have put on your box so everyone knows how awesome it is.

Big Daddies. I hate you. You make me hate this game so god damn much. Everytime I come across one, I die a little on the inside. I hate having to fight them in order to get atom to spend on upgrading. They are such a pain in my nuts to kill. It seems like no matter what I do (even with the grenade launcher), I die atleast five to seven times trying to defeat one. Then I defeat one and the little demon is nowhere to be found. WHERE THE LIVING SH-T DID SHE GO? So I waste all my money, all my first aid kits, and all my injectors trying to kill a Big Daddy for maybe fifty bucks and a first aid kit. Awesome.

Now what hurts me the most, even though I hate this game with every inch of my body, is the fact that I love the story. From the first seconds I played the game and I saw the banner that read "No Gods. No Kings. Only Man." I knew I was going to love this game. I love stories based around utopia's created by mad men and things go horribly wrong. It's been a long time coming but I just started reading Orwell's 1984 and cannot put it down. Now, I want to know the story, I want to learn more, I want to hear more. But I just cannot bring myself to play this god damn game anymore. So here I am, ranting and raving and no one to agree with me.

I'm sorry people, but the gameplay in Bioshock is just too rediculous for me to give a crap about the game anymore. I'll be looking online to listen to the audio tapes (which I think are highly entertaining and very well done.) and trying to find the ending.

Just writing that last bit made me remember something more, and if you know me, I write in whats known as "stream of conscience" so, if you're new here, you'll notice I'm all over the place and that's fine. By the way, yes. I know stream of conscience is short for "someone who isn't good at writing but tries to anyway."

The audio tapes make me angry. Placed in the most random god damn spots, it bothers me like you wouldn't believe. I end up searching every inch of every level trying to find these things. What if I didn't stumble upon the audio tape in the under passage through the broken gate? I could have EASILY skipped that part and ran right past it, but I didn't. Why? By accident. I fell into the grate and was like "oh, it's a passage." God knows how many audio tapes I've missed, which is another big reason for me not caring anymore. It's possible I've missed an important part of the story because the devs thought it would be totally awesome to stick an audio tape up the ass of a splicer that I forgot to hit "search again" on.

I don't care if you think the gameplay is awesome and you enjoy it alot.

I don't care if you think I'm not good at shooters. Let's play something multiplayer on the PC and we'll put that theory to the test.

I don't care if you think I'm impatient, because you're right. I am.

I do care if you have a solution to my character being terrible and everything being impossible to kill. Keep in mind, I play on hard, because I'm a real gamer.

Recently I’ve noticed that more than a few games have left me feeling emotionally detached from the characters, not in a sense where I cry or get angry or anything like that, but in a way where I just don’t care about what happens to them. I feel like I’ve recently taken a turn and just don’t care about the characters anymore and maybe I care more about the game play and being entertained. It’s not a bad thing that I’m starting to focus on the game play more, but at the same time, a good story and having some sort of feelings for the characters I’m portraying would definitely enhance the experience.

As I thought more about it, I relized that it maybe the game play that is pulling me out of the game more than the actual story. Three games came to mind immediately: Saint’s Row, BioShock, and Assassin’s Creed.

BioShock and Assassin’s Creed are one in the same for the reasons I felt pulled out of the game, but Saint’s Row is a different story which I will elaborate on in a bit.

If you’re a reader of my blog, you already know my feelings about BioShock. I was really into the story but the game play is what pulled me out of it and made me hate the game. Spending most of my time searching around for audio tapes is what did me in. That aspect totally pulled me out of the game and just annoyed me to the point where I didn’t even care about what was happening anymore, I just wanted to find the tapes so I could say I completed everything. Ultimately it lead to me not even finishing the game and just not caring about it anymore, because I didn’t care. Searching for these tapes brought me out of the game to the point of feeling detached from the character and how the story progressed.

To me, in a struggle like in BioShock, finding all these audio tapes would be the last of my concern with everything else going on. I understand that the audio tapes brought forth a lot of the back story and all of that, but if I was the main character, I really wouldn’t spend my time looking for all these, I’d be more worried about not dying, because living is better than dying. Dying sucks.

If the tapes were in more easy to find spots, than sure, I could imagine this dude picking it up and gaining a better understanding of what the hell was going on around him. But having to literally search every square foot of every room, was a bit much considering the circumstances. Maybe I’m wrong and just not as curious as some people and in a life of death situation, finding tapes is obviously top priority.

I get it’s a game, and I get they needed to do something other than the main story you’re following, but it was obnoxious to place these tapes randomly on levels. If you disagree with me, that’s fine, but you’re wrong. If you like wondering looking at the ground, while everything around you is falling apart, I’d hate to have you leading me out of a life or death situation.

Assassin’s Creed is in the same boat with me. When it comes to their little side missions (Vigilantes, pick pocketing, view points, etc) they threw in there to waste an hour or so of your time before every assassination, it just makes me want to stop playing. In every level, they are exactly the same with no difference whatsoever. They aren’t hard to do, they aren’t fun to do, they just aren’t anything. It’s all just filler to make the game feel longer, and it does just that, as well as pulling you right out of the game.

They could have made these side missions a lot more fun and different, the game itself isn’t very long when it comes to the main plot. But instead of giving a variety of things to do, they gave you more of the same over and over again. Rather than thinking “Oh my god, what’s next?!” I thought “Oh my god when does this end?” With that feeling of repetitiveness and just not caring about all this crap that needs to be done, I got pulled right out of the game and just didn’t care anymore. I still haven’t finished the game, but I will grind out the last couple kills later this weekend, but I really don’t want to because I have no interest anymore in what’s going on. ANOTHER SEMI INTERACTIVE CUT SCENE THAT I’VE SEEN SIX TIMES BEFORE? I CANNOT WAIT!

Saint’s Row is a different situation for me, rather than the game play making me not care about the game, it’s actually the story. The story was terrible and I think everyone can agree on that, the game itself though, is really fun to play single and multi player. I love the game play and I love playing the game, however I didn’t care about the story because I don’t care about thugs. I didn’t feel anything for the story or the characters, I just wanted to play the game and enjoy all the different things to do. Oh, a main character died? I didn’t even notice because I was too busy dressing my guy up as a pimp.

Maybe it’s a little contradictory, but I did enjoy doing the thug things, but the thug story did nothing for me and I didn’t care about it. I just wanted the game to end so I could sand box around and enjoy the game play aspects.

I could talk about the contrary and talk about games that really brought me in and kept me wanting more, but I’m not going to because no one cares. Well, maybe someone does, but I’m more interested in what games pulled you out and made you not care about the characters and why.

So you should tell me, so I can avoid the games if I haven’t already.

We're recording episode 32 of Gameslaves Radio tomorrow and maybe we'll talk about this stuff!

ninja edit - i proof read good. and I'll post my blog about bioshock at another point in time since it was on my other blog.

If you’re looking for a game that is fantastically mediocre, Kane and Lynch: Dead Men is definitely the way to go. I can honestly say that I haven’t played a game that has not left some kind of impression on me in awhile. I just kind of feel like it’s there and it passed six hours of my life that I normally would have just spent sleeping, so I can’t say I missed out on anything playing this game or I’m angry about losing that six hours of my life. But if you have shit to do, I wouldn’t recommend putting that aside for Kane or Lynch.

As far as the game play goes, it’s just your every day third person shooter. I can’t say they did anything cool, hip or groovy because they really didn’t. You can shoot from the hip or you can hold right trigger for a smaller crosshair for more accuracy. Duck and cover, blind firing, everything you’d expect in any other shooter is there as well, the problem is, they forgot to put that something in the game that sets it apart from every other shooter. Playing on the normal game setting, there was some really annoying parts of the game as far as breaching enemy strong points goes, but other than a select few scenes where there’s a ton of baddies, everything else was sort of a breeze. At first it may take you awhile to figure out how to get passed some enemies or how to approach the beginning of a mission, but after that it’s just a shoot’em up fest. Thinking back on it, when you first start playing, it seems like they really wanted to add an element to the game where they make you do certain things and be inconspicuous about it, but as the game goes on it’s like they just said “fuck it” and turned it into an action shooter with no other real elements. If you were like me and expected something along the lines of Hitman, in a setting up a bank heist, taking things slowly and than just mowing down everyone to escape, it’s just not there.

The visuals are alright, I guess. While playing it doesn’t look very different from Hitman: Blood Money but it’s obvious that it isn’t polished as well. Sure, at first glance you’re like “at least the graphics are as good as Hitman’s!” but as you play a little further, it becomes apparent that they aren’t. It seems like they really tried to give it the old Hitman look but nope, didn’t happen. It’s a little more gritty and not in the good way. I wouldn’t say there is graphic issues or anything, I didn’t notice a lot of model popping or tearing or anything like that, it’s just not as clean and solid looking as Blood Money. When it comes to the cinematics, the few that there are, it’s in the same boat. They look good, good enough to hold your attention, but they still are not as well done as other games.

Speaking of cinematics! The story of the game is pretty boring and doesn’t make you feel anything. Aside from our foul mouthed anti-heroes constant abuse of the word “fuck.” I can’t say I remember too much about what was going on. A lot of things were left unexplained, most of the story was just done in narratives over the loading screens with no cut scene or images at all. Just the voice actors talking to each other. When there was a cut scene though, it was mildly fun and entertaining to watch but nothing special. Nothing really awesome at any point ever happen, but the direction the game takes you makes you think sooner or later it will. I personally thought the awesomeness would ensue once the game was beaten, but boy was I mistaken. There is two endings to the game and the one I got sucked hard, and after reading about the other one, it sucks too.

I noticed that Lynch didn’t freak out and go all crazy as much as I hoped he would. I was expecting him to be a complete lunatic, but it really wasn’t that bad and for the most part it didn’t effect the game what so ever. When he did manage to forget to take his pills and lose it a little, it was normally doing a cut scene and you couldn’t do much with it, I’m not actually sure why it’s even in the game or was mentioned during the hyping process. It’s a story element, not a game play element that has any bearing on anything.

I played the game on co-op with my good buddy Pete, and it wasn’t too bad. The game worked well in a co-op setting, but any shooter works well on co-op. I haven’t tried any of the multiplayer Fragile Alliance game modes but I surely will not either. The game didn’t hold my attention long enough for me to go back and play it again, I really have no will or desire to. If you’re looking for something different than your average deathmatch or whatever, just pick up Saint’s Row which has really good and innovative multiplayer.

Overall, I don’t think I would have played Kane and Lynch by myself. Honestly, I’m glad I waited to hang out with Pete to play it on co-op. Without question I would have ended up never finishing the game because it just isn’t there, but if you and your friends have a couple hours to kill, definitely rent it and enjoy the foul mouthed antics of Kane and Lynch.