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Shout About Movies: Volume 1
Parker Brothers // Unrated // October 20, 2004
List Price: $19.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
There are no game boards, score cards, or pencils to keep track of with Parker Brothers' DVD-based game Shout About Movies -- everything is entirely contained on the disc. The game begins with players pairing off into teams -- one red, one blue. As you could probably guess from the name of the game, the goal (at least for the most part) is to shout the title of whatever movie is hinted at on-screen before the other team. 
Players have to use the actual title of the movie ("aaagh! No, it had Samuel L. Jackson, and the thing...with the..." doesn't count), and at the end of each round, He Who Wields The Remote tallies up the score. The DVD keeps track of the points from there, and it hopefully goes without saying that the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. A quick rundown of the eight rounds in each game: 
The interface is slick and intuitive, the eight different game types are varied and infectious, and there's no learning curve to suffer through. Like the big, bold text on the cover says: "Insert. Play. Shout!" It's simple, straightforward, and a heckuva lot of fun. The game covers a wide variety of movies, primarily concentrated from the '70s on, and anyone with even a casual interest in film should recognize the vast majority of them. After all, the challenge isn't to identify a movie, it's to identify a movie first, and virtually of the films covered have crept into the collective pop culture consciousness. None of the selections are particularly obscure, but the presentation doesn't make identifying them insultingly easy either, keeping the difficulty hovering right around what I'd consider to be perfect. It might also be worth noting that although quite a few of the movies featured in the game are rated-R, there isn't any nudity, nasty language, or gore splattered around. 
Everyone in the group I played with had a blast with Shout About Movies (I'm in favor of any game that encourages screaming), and we felt compelled to play through the entire DVD in one sitting. If I'd had more than this one volume on hand, we probably would've torn through those too. Although I'm reviewing the first volume of Shout About Movies, there are a total of four discs out now. They're each structured the same way -- three games with eight rounds a piece -- and there are different clips on each DVD.
There's really only one negative thing I could say about Shout About Movies, and it's just an inherent problem with any DVD-based game. Although each volume in the series has three complete games, "Game 2" on volume 1 isn't ever going to change. It's the same clues for the same movies in the same order, and obviously that limits the number of times you can play through this. That makes these games sound like ideal rentals, although the fact that neither Netflix nor Blockbuster seem to carry them doesn't make that look like much of a viable option. Is it worth $19.99 a pop for three bouts of a game you might never play through again? Well, when I played, each of the three games took right at an hour to play. There's no reason why it should take that long (my laggy set-top DVD player and an over-deliberating competing team dragged things out much, much longer than necessary), but still, it took us around three hours to play through this volume of Shout About Movies from start to finish. That's the same dollar-per-hour-o'-entertainment ratio as spending $19.99 on a ninety minute movie and watching it twice, so the sticker price doesn't strike me as excessive. Your mileage may vary. I had a great time with Shout About Movies, and I'd highly recommend giving this DVD-based game a look.
Players have to use the actual title of the movie ("aaagh! No, it had Samuel L. Jackson, and the thing...with the..." doesn't count), and at the end of each round, He Who Wields The Remote tallies up the score. The DVD keeps track of the points from there, and it hopefully goes without saying that the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. A quick rundown of the eight rounds in each game: - Movie Lines: Ten quotes are splashed on-screen along with audio excerpted from the movie.
- Still Crazies: A still image from a movie gradually appears, starting with the background, then filling in props and wardrobe, and finally popping in the faces of the actors involved. The goal is to guess as many of the ten movies as possible before the other team.
- Match Round: This round veers away from the "shout it!" formula. Six facts appear on-screen, ranging from the year a movie was produced to random notes about the cast. Five short clips from various movies follow. The goal is to match a fact with its clip, and one stray fact doesn't relate to any of the movies at all. The game randomly selects a team, and that team has to decide which fact matches a clip. If the team guesses correctly, they get to keep going, but a wrong answer passes the remote to the other team.
- In The Movies: The content varies from game to game, but the category is always something in a movie. Could be the setting, could be a prop, but whatever it is, it's described in detail in a question that appears on-screen. The question starts off almost entirely blurred out, with only the first few words clearly discernable at first. Over the course of a few seconds, more and more of the description is revealed, and the clues get increasingly specific as it goes along. Again, ten movies, ten chances to scream out answers.
- Movie Clips: This round is similar to "Movie Lines", but instead of excerpted dialogue, short clips from various movies are shown.
- Made to Order: Another 'deliberation' round, "Made to Order" rattles off a list of items (the types of things that need to be sorted and the criteria for sorting vary from game to game), and the goal is to correctly sort the list. Placing an item in the right spot keeps the current team in control, and a wrong guess shifts things over to the other team.
- Lightning Round: Five clues for each movie (character names, songs, actors, and plot elements) gradually flash on screen, and the later clues are more and more revealing. The goal is to guess each of the ten movies before the other team.
- Final Bet: The eighth and final round is played Jeopardy!-style. The category of one final question is revealed, and each team secretly chooses how many of their points they want to wager (5, 15, 30, or the whole kit-'n-kaboodle). A multiple choice question appears on-screen -- and it's tougher than anything else up to this point -- and each team is given a chance to select an answer before the final scores are tallied.
The interface is slick and intuitive, the eight different game types are varied and infectious, and there's no learning curve to suffer through. Like the big, bold text on the cover says: "Insert. Play. Shout!" It's simple, straightforward, and a heckuva lot of fun. The game covers a wide variety of movies, primarily concentrated from the '70s on, and anyone with even a casual interest in film should recognize the vast majority of them. After all, the challenge isn't to identify a movie, it's to identify a movie first, and virtually of the films covered have crept into the collective pop culture consciousness. None of the selections are particularly obscure, but the presentation doesn't make identifying them insultingly easy either, keeping the difficulty hovering right around what I'd consider to be perfect. It might also be worth noting that although quite a few of the movies featured in the game are rated-R, there isn't any nudity, nasty language, or gore splattered around. Everyone in the group I played with had a blast with Shout About Movies (I'm in favor of any game that encourages screaming), and we felt compelled to play through the entire DVD in one sitting. If I'd had more than this one volume on hand, we probably would've torn through those too. Although I'm reviewing the first volume of Shout About Movies, there are a total of four discs out now. They're each structured the same way -- three games with eight rounds a piece -- and there are different clips on each DVD. There's really only one negative thing I could say about Shout About Movies, and it's just an inherent problem with any DVD-based game. Although each volume in the series has three complete games, "Game 2" on volume 1 isn't ever going to change. It's the same clues for the same movies in the same order, and obviously that limits the number of times you can play through this. That makes these games sound like ideal rentals, although the fact that neither Netflix nor Blockbuster seem to carry them doesn't make that look like much of a viable option. Is it worth $19.99 a pop for three bouts of a game you might never play through again? Well, when I played, each of the three games took right at an hour to play. There's no reason why it should take that long (my laggy set-top DVD player and an over-deliberating competing team dragged things out much, much longer than necessary), but still, it took us around three hours to play through this volume of Shout About Movies from start to finish. That's the same dollar-per-hour-o'-entertainment ratio as spending $19.99 on a ninety minute movie and watching it twice, so the sticker price doesn't strike me as excessive. Your mileage may vary. I had a great time with Shout About Movies, and I'd highly recommend giving this DVD-based game a look.
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