So, we're back for take two with The Movies' new expansion, Stunts & Effects, which has managed to evade my sheer loathing for expansion packs. However, I think this one deserved to get past my expansion pack point defences - oh how I love the destruction of plastic encased data in a fiery hell storm to start my gaming day. Unfortunately, the game actually has fiery hell storms, which is undoubtedly why it got past!

Stunts & Effects kicks in from the very beginning of the game, giving you a few extra sets and animations to use in your films. This is the place you should start in order to get a good grip on the movie market; it's also the best place to get experienced actors so that your studio isn't going to end up in ruins for running out of capital.

However, you can jump in right when Stunts & Effects takes over in the 1960s with the quick start feature, which places you in the time where you can build the facilities needed to hire and maintain your stuntmen and thus slowly build up your studio's reputation. Maintain is definitely the right word to use, too - expect to have your stuntmen in hospital a lot for maintenance - mine were in there so often it was just an airport luggage conveyer belt; you can see your belongings but you'll be damned if you know how to get them out of there.

In between the patch and fix, regular oil changes and the occasional clamp on the head to realign the stunt performers' fractured skulls, you get to train them, which then leads back to the clamp on the head. My personal favourite training arena is the Danger Dojo, simply because what else has such a cool name? Perhaps Danger High Voltage, but that was mean to me the last time I tried to play with it... although your stuntmen are disposable, so feel free to use them with either Danger Dojo or Danger High Voltage; either way they're going to be in the hospital, so it's really just down to personal preference and your own sadistic tendencies!

Your stuntmen are much less demanding than your actors, although they demand much more attention than your extras do - they demand your attention for training and without training them you're going to end up with lousy movies or hospitalised stuntmen, both of which means you're not going to be making the money you rightly deserve.

Another concern is their use in movies, as they can make it considerably more hectic for getting your production to go well, as it gives you another group to worry about and this can double the amount of people you have to manage in a movie. Not only that, but to make efficient use of stuntmen, you have to use ones that fit the bill; you can't exactly have a petite blonde girl playing the stunt double of a big burley black guy, because despite what people say, the viewing public isn't that stupid. It also knocks your star rating down, making it hard to get five stars, which in turn means that you're going to plummet down the rankings to the no man's land at the bottom.

While I recommend starting from the beginning, this presents its own problems in that your star studded cast will be, well, like that last piece of meat on a barbeque; crinkled, rubbery, old and unwanted. However, the boon of this approach is that you can forgo hiring stuntmen and train your actors up to do stunts, or hire stuntmen as actors and then train them to act; either way, you get the same effect in that your movies get higher rankings by the actors performing their own stunts. However, my morbid preference would just be to thrust your newbie actors in at the deep end and have them perform death (no defying) stunts.

With Stunts & Effects you get a whole load of everything; new costumes, props, backdrops, vehicles and even aircraft to be used in your movies. This ultimately means that you get even more variety in your movies, which gives you the chance to add in more stunts using all these items, and then you get even more variety. It also gives you hours more play time, as you can run through from the start with all the new items, and in total I've spent around thirty hours playing through this from the start, which is actually longer than I spent playing through The Movies.

You also get free reign over the camera control, which often ended up with my cameras facing anywhere but the actors until I figured it out... sorry stuntmen who ended up in hospital without ever getting on film, my mistake. There are also blue-screens and miniature cities, so now you can feel like Manzilla as your actors stomp through suburban districts with sheer disregard for the little plastic men within, or perhaps you might dangle a wok with no handle with cool little LEDs on its side over the city on a fishing line. The possibilities are almost endless!

The Movies: Stunts & Effects is an essential expansion to all those who loved The Movies; it seamlessly adds another dimension to the gameplay while piling even more ingredients into the blender. The addition of explosions and helicopter stunts give yet more hours of enjoyment too, for anyone who's daredevil enough to pick it up.

Cut! So, what's next, Take Three or Scene Two?

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