The Movies review for PC, Take One! Aaaaand…. Action!

"Welcome to Dead Cow Studios," (I chose the name), "you're going to have the privilege of meeting Hollywood's most prolific director, Matt Higgins," (I didn't choose his name, or it would have been drastically worse, like something I couldn't put in this review) "who has been the top runner of the industry for over fifteen years. He's a multi-award winning director and I believe you are the first person to ever be shown around Dead Cow Studios." (There aren't dead cows lying around the place, just so you know)

"On your right you will see the casting office, which is where they rehearse the scripts, and on the left you will see Adam Sweet, who was until recently our most prominent actor." As you drive past he hurls a drunken slur at you vaguely resembling 'are you looking at my wife?' The guide looks at you. "He was never married. He took up the bottle a long, long time ago but it wasn't until recently that the studio manager," (whom you play) "found out he has an abysmally low tolerance to stress and boredom." (and, yes, I fired him - the stupid drunk kept disappearing off the set!)

You arrive at a set that resembles the insides of a suburban American home, a dark haired man looking no older than thirty is slumped in a chair. He turns around and says, "I know where you live, so if you ever become a director I will burn down your house with you in it... No one is stealing my awards!" He looks you up and down, "I earned those awards and the police have nothing on me that connects me to those other murders."

The film crew looks at each other and the man holding the boom stick says, "I don't know why people watch his movies, all he does is talk over the shots and threaten people. I wish they wouldn't sell him alcohol anymore, but no, every take he's drunk again!" Matt stands up, applauds the cast and walks off to the bar to further feeds his alcoholism, doubling the time it takes the movie to shoot (he did this ALL the time!).

Well essentially that's the game. It just needs to be interlaced with badly cast films, ad hoc scripts and endless alcoholism to try and keep your stars remotely above the stress line. This generally only happens when you hit the 3 star movies and your early actors are getting old, when they'll start demanding massive entourages and trailers, and to be paid phenomenal amounts of money for doing nothing. Of course, this aspect of keeping these actors working for you is the hardest. They'll walk off the set in between takes to get hammered, or they'll be sitting in a PR session to promote their most recent film and just walk out halfway through the interview and half an hour later you'll be wondering why they're still 'busy', even though the press release should have finished.

This is where the vengeance can come in; you can make them do anything you want. My choice for my most annoying actress, who wanted everything, and came from another studio, was to turn her into a crew member, lugging around cameras. Needless to say, after the film had finished shooting she was so stressed and depressed that she put in her notice, so I cunningly put her into another movie, knowing full well that I wouldn't have to pay her for the shoot, yet still get a lot of money from it.

Around this point in the game, roughly the Sixties and Seventies, is when I stopped caring about trying to create decent movies. I sold out and went Hollywood (the horror!), churning out senseless movie after senseless movie, just trying to keep my studio out of debt. The casting process went to hell, I had a romance starring two men and the action film I was shooting at the same time had two women. This is probably the time I'm supposed to say that I mixed up the casts and that I intended on making a lesbian romance and a macho romance, but this isn't the case. The mistake came when I had a pot of seven scripts waiting for me and I just stuck them on randomly and filled the positions. The reason I had a gay romance was purely because I didn't have a clue what part was for the romanced character and the woman cast for that part turned out to be one of the male lead's best friend. Now this was just a mistake, one that has occurred many a time.

The first instance was in the late 1930s, when again my romance film was cast with a two males, but this time without a best friend. Rather inexcusable a mistake, but I was going on the characters' genre fit and skill, which told me that the two men were perfect for the parts. Five scenes later and I watched the film, which turned out to be a record breaker. It scraped me 3 awards (best movie, best actor and highest climbing studio) that for a 1930s American audience undoubtedly added more humour to the game than anything scripted could have done.

Whilst on the subject of American and humour, the humour in this game is actually very British, and the radio personalities poke fun at popular American observations. One, for instance, is in the 1940s at the end of World War II, where the personality says, "The war was won today, apparently with the help of some other nations." It confirms my theory that Lionhead is capable of getting humour into any game they make, even into one of the most unscripted games I've played in recent years (this being it).

The music is almost a compilation of standard music sequences from films - the cheesy ones that are used over and over in a dozen different films that has the same kind of music sequence. In a film it would grate on me, but in a game about making movies it's kind of funny to listen to, although you don't hear much of it, as you'll tune in and out of hearing the background sound to listen to the radio broadcasts going on. These broadcasts change every two decades for a new personality, all of them representing the era they are set in.

There aren't many vocals in the game other than the radio, award ceremonies and announcements. For a game this long, you'll tend to have heard everything except the radio after playing through the first few years. The aspect of including your own speech in one of your movies is a cool one, but for most this'll quickly become a Tycoon game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The graphics are very detailed, especially considering that it has such a low demand on your system. It runs like a dream on the highest settings, and by 'like a dream' I mean not a single pause or slow down. The building designers have gone to so much detail that the signposts even have visible writing on them, including parking warnings for illegal parking on the site. Also, the set detail is unfathomable - the amount of time that must have gone into the sets deserves high praise, as they truly don't skimp, even on the smallest of details.

This is no doubt, because the controls allow the smallest of things to be on display. You have your standard controls for your average build 'em up strategy game, except there are two zoom functions. One is a sweeping zoom, which takes you from a very steep isometric view that strategies employ as standard, down to a parallel to the ground view, and the second is a true zoom, like in a camera. The distance the second zoom can cover (which you use shift to activate) is amazing, providing far more detail than in most games and even giving you the ability to see pieces of litter close up (should you be strange enough to want to look at rubbish).

The ability to direct the films is a bit, actually make that very, boring. You can't change anything that you hadn't already set when you make your own scripts, so the easiest way to make a film you want to see is to write the script yourself. Now the script writing ability is great; you essentially storyboard the scenes and you can watch the scene play out how it would happen. While in this mode, you have the ability to add or remove actors and extras from roles at your whim. Of course, you can abuse it and make funny films, like my action film that travelled from a battlefield to a suburban house to a car travelling through space to a spaceship bridge... unsurprisingly it earned me a three star script, ended up being one of my blockbusters and that's the quick guide to making abysmal scripts.

However abysmal your scripting skills are, you can be sure that the script writers you hire, no matter their skill, will create a surreally funny one that, because they have no knowledge of the actor placements, ensures you will be watching a lot of messed up movies. Thankfully you don't have to take care of the bunch of malcontents you hire to write/shoot/research/janitor/build (I think I got them all in there) only your actors, who if you look after them well, are great.

Everything is rated on multiple stats and the actors are the hardest to control for this. Early on you have to keep them physically toned and looking good, which I just let slip. Their addictions need to be kept in check, which I just let slip. They need to be paid well, have a good trailer and an entourage, all of which I just let slip. These become easier to deal with when using research; by the time they're a bunch of drunken louts refusing to work, you can stick them in rehab, then into surgery for a nip-tuck and then after a bit of R&R they'll be ready to star in your next blockbuster.

The Movies is a combination of the Black & White games, The Sims and a Tycoon game (my personal choice would be Space Colony, mainly because it's good and funny, but also because it's not god awful and depressing). It's as playable, entertaining and creative as was expected both from the hype and from the type of game we know that only Lionhead Studios could produce.

Cut! And that's a wrap folks!

Reviewed by Nik Gregory for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).