The Movies review

For the longest time I've looked at the development of The Movies and worried how it would hold together as a game and a piece of software that enables you to create your own movies. Surely it wouldn't hang together, it would be another Lionhead project that reached for impossible goals. Surely it can't work?

And then I look back on the last weekend, when the only time I wasn't playing The Movies was when I was asleep or my girlfriend was playing it. My PC ceased to be an enabler of multiple tasks for the past few days, instead it became a dedicated The Movies station.

It's actually realising how much time I've spent addicted to the game this weekend that's responsible for the final score you see at the bottom of the review. I've ummed, I've aahed, I've worried over the score, because the game does have some problems. But when it comes right down to it, it's more fun than anything I've played on PC for quite a while.

Silent Era

But let's go back to the beginning first and take a look at how the game is structured. If you've played games such as Theme Park or Rollercoaster Tycoon then the actual gameplay will seem surprisingly familiar. You begin in 1920 with nothing but an empty lot, some cash in the bank and ambition.

You begin by constructing various buildings that will enable you to attract talent to your studio. Once built, you'll find a queue of eager young things just itching to get into the new movie business. All the buildings, no matter their purpose, work in a similar way, when you mouse-over them they drop to a cutaway view and offer a different option to each room.

So in the Stage School you can drag prospective stars onto a choice of Create Director, Create Actor, Create Extra or Fire. This works pretty much the same on different buildings you create around the lot, whether creating janitors, builders, research scientists, scriptwriters, film crew and the like.

Theme Studio

It's then up to you to create a smooth running studio, making sure there are janitors to clean up the litter and repair buildings, that there are enough crew to operate cameras and sound equipment, that the writers are always working on a movie.

These basic elements of the gameplay should be familiar to anyone who's played similar Tycoon games. The difference comes when actually making movies. Now at the beginning you have little control over the content of movies, the sets are basic and no-one has much experience.

Making a movie is like passing a baton down a line to the various parts of the studio process. You choose a genre for your scriptwriters, looking to see what's most popular on a chart, the choices are action, comedy, sci-fi, romance and horror. So the writers set to work, and the more writers that are working on the script the quicker it will be finished. Like all the characters in the game, they'll earn experience while they do so, which means their scripts will improve over time.

Casting Couch

A finished script is dragged over to the casting building. Here you can add your director, stars, extras and crew. Once assembled the team takes short time to rehearse the script. A bell sounds when they've finished and you can then drop the script into the box marked Shoot.

It's usually at this point events get more complicated. The cast and crew have to get changed, then make their way to whatever sets used in the script. This is where your skill at laying out the studio comes into play, you need to make sure folks don't have too far to wander as they're likely to get waylaid in the nearest bar.

Finally the crew makes it to the set and films the movie. You can intervene as this point and make slight directorial changes to each scene, sliders will allow you to change the backdrop on set or the emotions of the characters. Otherwise they'll make the movie as written by the scriptwriters.

The Finished Movie

Once it's in the can you can then see what reviewers think, then release the movie. At this point the game will grade the movie and you can see how well your stars got on, what the genre interest was and other way of scoring the picture. It'll then make money for your studio while on release, until at some point it stops being a money spinner and can be archived.

That's not the whole process though. Other elements come into play as the game progresses. Very early on you can build a custom script office. It's at this point you can then alter scripts from your writers or create your own, this brings you into the creative element of the game, but I'll deal with that later.

Later you'll also be able to build a post production office, for tweaking your movie, and a PR department to hype the film before you release it.

Fun for All

So far we've taken a look at the Tycoon element of the game. How well does that hang together? Pretty well actually, it's a lot of fun running the studio thanks to the typically British humour from Lionhead. Though also in typical Lionhead fashion, you'll be doing more micromanagement than you expected, such as making sure the toilets get fixed.

Watching the film crews at work is great fun, over the ages the equipment and sets change, but no matter what era, you can watch camera and sound men, clapperboard operators and directors go about their work.

It's a real delight to watch, for example a crew working on a scene with a moving car, watching a static vehicle on a set as the backdrop zooms by to simulate movement. For folks that love movies the game is a hymn to the creative process and movie magic.

Problems

It's not without problems though. Most of the games I played I managed to work pretty well, making lots of money and movies for the studio. However I was stuck with the same stars from the 1920s right through to the 1940s. The tutorials state that a successful studio would attract new folks seeking jobs, but I didn't see much of this despite making lots of money and winning awards for some of my movies.

I think this is something easily fixed in a patch, the game just needs to be a little more generous replacing fading stars. There are also issues with managing the stars. We're told that you have to solve problems in movie production with star tantrums and the like. Mostly this boils down to dragging actors and mostly directors back from the bar to the set. There's the option to send them to rehab, but in the end, this gameplay mechanic can get old. Nearly every problem just boils down to having to drag someone away from the bar, or restaurant, back to the set.

The other problem is that at the moment there's a lack of certain genres or at least movie packs. Yes you research more as the game goes on, but considering how important musicals were to cinema history, one would expect them to be better represented. And ninjas there may be, but where are the pirates? I'm hoping the online updates include certain sets I didn't come across, a water tank one would be good for filming boats at sea and making your very own Titanic. Yet on the whole the whole Tycoon element of the game is lots of fun. It's aided by a great interface so you can drag studio staff from their menu position on the screen rather than have to go find them if you want to do anything with them.

Making Movies

Of course if that wasn't enough, there's the whole world of making your own movie projects. You can tackle these in the Tycoon game, but long movies will drag your studio system to a halt, so it's best to create your epics in the sandbox mode. Here you can choose a starting date, lots of money, stars that behave and other options that mean you don't have to worry about studio problems and instead can make the movies of your dreams.

The system is a little cumbersome at first. First you decide on your lead roles, movie name and genre. If you like, you can pick a movie template for the acts of the movie or go freeform. Then it's a case of selecting sets and then scenes played out in the set. There's a search and filter system to help you select the right scene, so for example you might choose conversations and intro, to find some sequences that would work well at the beginning of your scene.

Then you can assign roles in the scene, dress the set with props, choose the lighting, make changes to sliders that alter such things as character interactions, actions and camera angles. If you're happy with your scene you can then go on and add the next one, on the same set or moving to a new one entirely. At any stage of production you can take the movie back to the script stage and make alterations. It's all very flexible. One surprising ommision though is that you can't add speech bubbles to movie characters, which is a shame.

Ready for My Close Up Mr Neary

Post production is where you can tweak your movie even further, adding your own lip-synced dialogue, customs sounds or music, adding subtitles and fades. It all works rather well once you're used to the system.

It's not without its problems, especially with props. I've created a couple of movies to go with this review which you can download via links at the bottom of the text. In one of them, a monster movie set in a graveyard, the lead character carries an axe. There are quite a few scenes with axes on offer, yet I couldn't find one where he uses it with a monster. There's a fight monster scene, but of the many weapons I was offered, the axe wasn't one.

This problem is perhaps something that will be fixed in a patch, but it does cause continuity errors at this stage. All too often there will be 10-15 scenes you know fit your movie really well, but for some reason in four of them your characters can't choose to hold the type of gun, for example, they hold in the other scenes, leading to continuity errors.

Final Rating

I fell in love with The Movies, yet this was a rather tough review to write. You see there are problems, such as lack of staff even when successful, and the issue of lack of props/scenes for certain situations and the clunky scene chooser. But how much did they affect my enjoyment of The Movies?

Not much really, I can see these are problems that should, and most likely will, be fixed in early patches. What we have here is a very ambitious game that tries so hard to lead you from a familiar gaming standpoint to something new and exciting, taking the tycoon game, expanding on it and allowing for your creative freedom.

It really does succeed in that. From the gorgeous detailed graphics, humour, wonderful on-set animation and the entertaining radio news system, The Movies is a landmark game. It's not perfect, but it gets so many things right that it's hard to be too hard when scoring it. Let me put it this way, when the review copy expires in a couple of weeks, I'll be buying my very own copy. And you know how stingy us game journos are. The Movies offers some of the most fun you will have with a game this year and something the family can enjoy together, a rarity these days. We've lost a lot of sleep over this game in my household.

So for those who'd like to see my early efforts with The Movies:

Another Bug Hunt - Sci-fi action horror of the Cameron kind.
Boomtown Reviews the Movies - Graveyard horror and reviewing combine.

As you can see, the The Movies allows you to output your creations in Windows Media Player format, and with a choice of quality/file-size settings.