Last night in the chilly Queen West area of Toronto, Xbox and Zune community members gathered at The Oasi Lounge and Wine Bar. We were greeted by very friendly staff and superb finger foods. The overall vibe and feel to the Oasi was very modern and trendy; the perfect place for casual gamers to gather and try out some of this year’s casual holiday offerings from Microsoft. There were 3 games on for us to play as well as a Zune station.

The first game I played was Scene It Box Office Smash. I had a blast playing against fellow community members okaybuddy, DarthAlbert III and mstehflakes. I have to say I did very well until we had the final cut and I finished in 4th place. Check out our full review of Scene it BOS Here
[tehflakes would have done a lot worse if mstehflakes wasn’t sitting right beside him – ed.]

Next up was Lips. While I didn’t play, I did watch several fellow gamers take turns belting their favourite tunes in this karaoke game. Lips comes with motion control microphones as well as the game for $69.99. I personally think this price point is a little high for a casual game but others argue that with 2 microphones and the game it’s a good value. What separates Lips from other karaoke style video games is the ability to use select portable music players to play your own DRM free songs (without lyrics unfortunately).

Finally we were able to see In the Movies. This game utilizes the Xbox vision camera and places you in the game where you can compete against up to 3 of your friends. The Xbox Vision Camera captures your actions via green screen technology. You and your friends compete in fun mini-games, earning points based mostly on enthusiasm. Once all the filming is complete, the game takes your mini-game actions and constructs a film trailer using actual footage of you playing. It’s quite hysterical.

This holiday season promises to be one of the best holiday seasons in video game history. From the vast array of Triple A games, for the hardcore gamer, to a fantastic selection of casual games for the family like Scene It, Lips, and In the Movies, there’s sure to be a game for everyone’s stocking this year.
Photos courtesy of okaybuddy. More available here and special thanks to Justin Amirkhani for a photo.

There are 22 different puzzles or challenges, if you will; including a few new types of questions such as, Pixel Fix which requires you to name the movie based on an 8 bit video of the movie. Celebrity Ties is a series of clues in which you must link the two actors to a movie. Personally, I really enjoyed the filling in the quotes puzzle. They gave you a quote with a series of blanks on it and provide you with 4 possible solutions to the answer. Also, there is Which is Which, where they give you a series of four still photos and you have to link two of them to the name of the movie. There are hundreds of questions however they tend to repeat after awhile. The movies in this game range from the 60’s to 2008.
Some other highlights were the overall pacing/feel to the game – it felt quicker but, needless to say, sneaking a game in before dinner was still completely doable.

One of my biggest issues with the original Scene It was simply that the game wasn’t fun playing by your lonesome as compared to with another person or a group of people. This problem has been averted! They have fixed it in this edition by adding a feature which allows you to play on Xbox Live. Furthermore, they are promising downloadable content. Hopefully this comes sooner then later and the pricing isn’t overbearing.

I didn’t pick up the big button controllers. I don’t think there was much difference from the originals. The fact that I couldn’t pause the game to get a refill on my beverage was quite a nuisance. Also, the multipliers in the Final Cut were bothersome. It allows the player to earn multipliers based on the number of questions correctly answered in a row. It went from 1x to 2x to 5x. It can either make things really close or you can get blown out of the water. It can be a huge “cut” if you aren’t familiar with the movie clip shown.

Overall, this is a great addition to the causal line up for the 360 and should have families playing it over the holidays. However, with the repeat questions already appearing, I really hope the DLC comes quickly and is reasonably priced.