Have you SceneIt?

By: Jill Rayburn
04/04/2009

Saturday's Silver Screen, Small Screen, and More...I guess I'm going to cheat just a little bit here with today's subject, but there is a DVD involved. After waiting for the order to arrive at my local comic book shop, I finally have the new Star Trek Scene It? DVD game. The delay was a bit annoying, but the game was worth the wait.

We opted for the deluxe version, which has a collector's tin rather than a standard box (there are two versions of the tin, one with the 5 captains and one with the ships of Trek), and instead of plastic playing tokens, there are 4 metal tokens that are shaped like ships (more on that later). The deluxe version also has more question cards, but that really will not affect gameplay that much in my opinion. The deluxe version is nice, but you can enjoy either version.

I commend the folks at Mattel and ScreenLife for providing both printed instructions and a video walk through on how to play the game. This is a plus for helping everyone learn the game. Both versions of the instructions are easy to understand, and the video instructions are nice visually. As you start to play, that visual theme continues throughout the game, as you are led to different parts of the Enterprise-D bridge for each question. The graphics are outstanding, as is the computer voice, which was provided by Judi Durand, who has provided the voice for many Star Trek video games, and was the voice of the Cardissian computers in DS9 and other computers in Star Trek (while she is not Majel, her voice is similar, and she did a wonderful job). The bridge visuals in the game are done in an LCARS style, so you have the feeling that the computer is running the game, which is a great feature.

Of course, the best feature of this game is the questions that use the DVD. Sure, there are cards with questions, but the real distinction of this game is the DVD aspect. There is a wide variety of video questions. For some questions, you have to identify a distorted picture of a character, an alien race, a planet, a ship, or just about anything from Trek. With “What's Missing”, you see an image and have to guess the missing item or person. There are questions based on scenes, where you watch a clip and then answer questions based on the scene or the episode/movie. For each scene there are multiple questions, so even if you get a scene you have watched before in the game, you may have a new question. The “Captain's Log” questions have you listen to an entry from the Captain's log and then name the episode. Some questions ask you to identify the character or object after reading a list of four clues from the screen. These are just some of the question types in this game. My husband and I played a quick game, and still did not see all the types. There are plenty of questions to keep people playing this game for quite a while. Questions come from all five Trek series, and the first ten movies, and from what I have seen, there is fairly equal representation. Please note that there is nothing from the upcoming movie included with this game.

One great feature of this game is the Party Play feature. If you don't want to play a formal game, or have people coming and going that want to be able to enjoy the game as well, you can select Party Play and the DVD will randomly present questions and give you time to answer. No pressure, just a knowledge check and fun with a large group. From personal experience with this feature from other Scene It? games, this works better at parties than trying to start a formal game and allows for flexibility.

The questions on the cards are excellent. There are three types: United Federation of Planets – about planets, aliens, etc; Stardate – about events; and IDIC – about the pop culture aspects, such as the actors and roles they played in and out of Trek. Of course, with the cards, eventually you will indeed see all the questions, but because the card questions and DVD questions are mixed (dice roll determines what type of question the player must answer), it would still be quite a while before someone saw all of the questions on the 175 cards.

I do have a few negatives I want to mention. There are four player tokens in this game: Enterprise (original), Enterprise-D, Defiant, and Voyager. Personally, I would have liked to see them have a fifth token, that of NX-01. All five series are included in the questions, and they should have been represented here as well. That brings up another aspect that will be negative for some players – if you were not a fan of all five series, some of the questions will be harder to answer. While this is true in any game like this, there are many Trek fans who only truly enjoy one or two of the series and never watched (or even hated) the others. I have already read comments on the internet with fans asking for specialized versions based on the different series. The drawback I see there is being able to come up with enough questions to make such versions viable, but perhaps ScreenLife and Mattel can consider this for the future. Another negative for some is that the look of the game is completely The Next Generation. While I don't know if it could have been done, it would have been nice to perhaps have two “theme” choices, one TNG and one TOS. This would capture MOST of the fans without being too much extra work for the game designers.

My last complaint involves the upcoming movie. With the movie only two months away at the release of this game, I have to wonder about the timing. It would have been nice if they had waited until the movie was released and been able to add questions and clips from XI. With word of work on the next movie already starting, I realize that it would not be possible to truly have an all-inclusive game unless they stop making Trek altogether, but the timing still seems odd. Ideally, I wish this game had come out a few years ago, and then timed with the release of this movie they could have had an update or expansion.

Overall, this is a great game. Hardcore fans and causal fans alike will enjoy it, as the questions have a wide range of difficulty. Nice packaging, great graphics, and fun questions make this game a great addition to any Trek fan's shelf. For basic manufacturer's info on the game, or to purchase the game or see a demo, click here.

Photo:  Boscovs.com, bn.com, ToysRUs.com

Author: Jill Rayburn

Jill Rayburn is a columnist for Roddenberry.com. Her column "Artistic License" is published every Tuesday thru Saturday.
Contact: jrayburn@roddenberry.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Jazdan

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