The Movies
Review
There's no doubt in our minds; this is an instant classic
by Sergio Brinkhuis
reviewed on PC
Speechless
Nope, I haven't forgotten about the actual movies. There have been several attempts at creating good Hollywood tycoon games in the past. Some were passable but not a single one actually featured a full fledged movie creator. This does. I had a hard time believing reports that came our before the game was released that said that the game let you actually direct your own movie. Even the movies that were released and were said to have been created by the game didn't really drive home the brilliance of The Movies. And then I started playing and realized it was all real. You really can create your own movie, into minute detail and when it finally sank in what the game was letting me do, I was speechless.
The engine that Lionhead created to make movies can best be described as a storyboard creation tool in which you can select characters, set, items and actions. There are so many options that almost everything you would want to do is possible. If you take the time to check out the official site, you'll see thousands of movies that players have created and among them, there are some truly amazing creations. Tinkering with this movie creator alone convinced me that this is a truly amazing game. It also made me realize that most people will likely play around with it, but not so much as part of the game. It's a fantastic tool but it is also very time consuming and the urgency to play on, make my studio -Hooked Movies- grow, was stronger than the pull to make a perfect movie. That doesn't make it useless however. I'm sure many players will still be making movies about their friends, families, adventures or wishes long after they have stopped playing the game itself. The long term attraction of this game is... nothing short of endless.
Not just hands-on
For those who, like me, want to focus on creating the most successful movie studio, there is always the Script Office. I'm sure that with enough practice you can make better scripts by hand than having the script office generate them automatically. Initially you won't be able to do much with them other than selecting cast and crew and shoot the movie, but later on you can also edit these automatically rendered scripts. Either way, the end result can be hilarious to watch. Sometimes you will see odd things like World War 2-like action movies in which one side is shooting with alien rifles but most of the time the results actually make some sense. It's truly something seeing the movie come to live, even if you haven't scripted it yourself. Once the movie is finished it's time to release it and depending on the quality of the movie, you will see the fame of your actors and your studio rise or barely react at all.
Every five years an award ceremony will be held and your achievements compared to other studios. Depending on what awards you've been given, you will receive special bonuses that for instance will decrease salary costs, speed up research or make every movie your top director works on turn into pure gold. It's a great feeling if you come out on top during the ceremony and, especially when your stars get awarded, you'll feel loyalty towards the people that have helped you get there. Odd how that even seems to work in a game eh?
Anything wrong?
So far a rave review eh? Well, it should be, the game deserved it. It's good putting some of the less stellar qualities of the game on 'paper' though. I own a better than average gaming rig and easily comply to the minimum requirements. Yet after the 1970's or so, the game starts to become choppy. Tech support asks you to do all the basic stuff that any gamer will have tried a hundred times over, but nothing solves it. There is no word of a patch at this time so apparently we'll have to live with this for a while longer. I've also encountered a few minor bugs but no show stopppers.
Interface wise there are some minor points that would benefit from some extra attention. Lionhead has tried to make it easy to see which of your stars are actors and which are directors by making the directors look sideways. It might have seemed a good idea but it's not very clear when you're quickly glancing over them. Then the star portraits start folding when you get up to 10 or so. As soon as they fold, your oversight is down the drain. It would help a lot if directors would be placed on the right side of the screen for instance, creating two extra spaces for portraits before it starts folding.
Another annoyance is that upgrading trailers is a real drag. You'll need to destroy or move them before building a new one on the same spot and when you do so, the owner of the trailer will become unhappy. Why not create an upgrade button that takes away that hassle? Last but not least, unless you're extremely conscious of what you're doing, you'll run out of employees in a hurry. In the three games I have played so far, I never felt I was realizing my full potential because there seems to be a cap on the overall amount of people you can hire. I'm sure I'd enjoy the game a lot more if the game was a little more lenient in this area.
.:: The End ::.
It's hard, if not impossible, to not be amazed by this game. Everything is right. The setting, the cartoonish look and feel, the newscaster that makes fun of just about every major event of the last 85 years, the music that never seems to become boring.
No matter how you look at it, Lionhead has created a masterpiece. This blend between The Sims and the Tycoon genre works remarkably well and you've got to wonder why Maxis/Electronic Arts hasn't come up with something along the lines of The Sims: Movies yet. After seeing this game though, I hope for them they don't bother as The Movies will be a hard nut to crack.
9.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
