Everyone’s got a game that they remember as their own personal seminal gaming experience. For me, it was Theme Park. When I was but a mere snip of a lad I can remember looking at screenshots in magazines for hours on end waiting for the days to count down until my birthday came and I was finally able to get my hands on it for real. When the day came the game was as good if not better than I’d expected and pretty much the next few years were spent in this glorious digital world.
Unfortunately, that was a long time ago, and it’s taken this long for me to feel the same about a game. Perhaps, rather unsurprisingly it’s another Molyneux game that’s renewed my faith in our rather wonderful past time and it’s no exaggeration to say that The Movies is the best game I’ve played in perhaps five years. And, yes, I include Half-Life 2 in that.
Funnily enough, the game is all about making movies. D’ya see what they did with the title there? Initially, this sees you building up your studio, hiring and firing actors and choosing which films they work on for you. It’s pure ‘tycoon’ style fun – only done a million times better than most other similar games.
As for the actual movie-making well this comes in three distinct flavours for you. The first, and easiest, is simply to hire some screenwriters and choose the genre of film you want them to write. Then you can choose who you want to star and direct it and you’ll be given a rather generic stab at a movie.
Sounds simple, but as usual with these things there’s a lot of factors that you need to take into consideration. You need to ensure that the genre of movie you choose is in fashion at that particular time. To help you with this there are handy little hints that tell you about the major events in the world at that particular time and thus makes your job a little easier.
However, you’ll soon want to progress and thankfully the second method gives you a more hands on approach to your movie making. Now, you’ll be able to have a say over how each scene turns out. This is done through a rather intuitive set of sliders, which affect everything from the lighting to the tone the actors take with their dialogue.
Thus, you certainly feel as though you have more control over proceedings and to a degree you do. Indeed, most games would probably leave it at this. However, The Movies really comes into its own when you get hold of the custom scriptwriting office…
Once you get to this stage the only thing that will be holding you back will be yourself. You literally can produce and direct your own unique movies. You choose a scene from a huge selection provided with the game that you can then use and tweak to your heart’s content.
Now when we say a huge selection of scenes we really mean it. Lionhead have really gone to town and you’ve got everything from the most sedate of opening sequences, establishing shots, and character driven dialogue scenes, to wide and varied action scenes. You’re then free to play around with each scene and the order in which you cut them into the finished article. Fancy a couple of extra props in you’re opening scene? Go for it. Hmm, maybe your action sequence could do with a few more stuntmen? Fine. Do it. Each scene feels unique, and more importantly it’s a joy to do.
This is all before you take into consideration the various options available to you in postproduction. If you really want to take it to extremes you can even record your own dialogue and have it lip-synched into the game. In many ways it’s as though you get two separate games with the tycoon style simulator, and the advanced movie making options. Thankfully, both sections are of an equally high quality.
You can spend hours with the movie making tools and totally forget that you have a studio to run as well. It’s standard stuff but done with such care and attention that it’s as painfully addictive as Theme Park was all those years back.
You’re also going to have to pay a fair bit of attention to your overpaid actors and actresses. Each individual will have different personality traits that you need to cater for to ensure that they’re happy otherwise you could find yourself ending up with a studio full of washed up alcoholics – a little like our office, some might say.
Fear not. You’re given methods ranging from a rehab centre to cosmetic surgery to enable you to pamper your stars as much as possible. Indeed should you need to, you can also have words with the press to ensure that the stars are portrayed in a positive light.
Of course the only reason you’re lavishing so much attention on them is so that you can put them to work in your next blockbuster. It would have been so easy for the movie-making area of the game to be too clunky and boring to make it a worthwhile experience but as it is it’s turned out to be on the most satisfying experiences you can have on your PC.
There’s also a budding online community, which is just perfect for this type of game. You log on and can share your films with like-minded people, and users can even judge your efforts. You get rewards in the form of credits, which you can then use in the game to buy exclusive items.
It sounds cheesy but there really isn’t much wrong with the game at all. It might be nice to have had a bit more options when it comes to cutting your film together in the editing room, but this really is nit picking.
The bottom line is that this is quite simply one of the best gaming experiences you can have. It’s guaranteed to provide you with hours of fun and invention and for the movie fans amongst us it’s nigh on a gift from the Gods.
It’s definitely going to be my nomination for game of the year and whilst there have been some top quality titles released this year, nothing has come close to recreating that magical feeling you get when you find a game which you quite simply love.
96%
The Spielberg of gaming
