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Xbox 360 Party Game Roundup

Author Stuart Andrews
Published 21st Dec 2008
Xbox 360 Party Game Roundup
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On top of this, Scene It? has now gone online, and while it doesn't have Buzz's question and quiz building facilities, it still offers a decent game with up to three other players (though at the time of writing finding three other players to pit yourself against is a bit of a challenge).


All in all, this feels like a solid and well-executed upgrade, that should be worth buying if you already have the Big Button controllers or not. You should be aware that Box Office Smash seems more reliant on knowledge of recent films than Lights, Camera, Action!, and it's also worth mentioning that the last round, which boosts the score through the roof with multipliers, has a tendency to distort the scores so that losers become last-minute winners (and visa-versa), but this is damn close to being the perfect movie quiz game.

So why isn't it? Repetition, that’s why! Just two games in we got two or three questions we'd already seen in game one. Four games in and a whole round was repeated, practically intact. Five games in and we had our first repeated video clip. The more you play, the more repetition becomes an issue, and I can't say whether it's because there just isn't as much content overall or whether the question watching engine that's supposed to manage this sort of thing is broken. In either case, it's enough to make me dock several points from the overall score, for the simple reason that if you bought this for Christmas, you'd be fed up with it by the time New Year's Eve rolls around.


Microsoft can and might fix this major issue; a patch could work wonders, and DLC question packs are apparently on their way. For now, however, this repetition makes Box Office Smash a bit of a risk, and one I wouldn't be too inclined to take until it’s sorted.

Verdict

A great quiz game let down by too much repetition of questions and content. If Microsoft could fix this it would have a real winner on its hands.

 

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Latest 4 of 5 Comments

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comment StuAndrews said on 22nd December 2008

It's not so much that they're mediocre, more that they're all promising but have at least one disastrous flaw. I quite like all three products, but I just can't... more

comment Wilfried said on 22nd December 2008

I'll have to disagree with ilovethemonkeyhead, sorry. Most families cannot afford either a PS3 or a 360, let alone a PS3 and a Wii or a 360 and a Wii. The reason they head str... more

comment mr dog said on 23rd December 2008

my experience is that i bought the wii first on the strength of excellent release titles like mario galaxy and zelda, but found too few must-have single player games to make it wor... more

comment Wilfried said on 24th December 2008

I'm the same as you mr dog. My colleagues, most of whom have kids, have pretty much all gone for a Wii. One of my regular game supplier also mentioned that the Wii was his big... more

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