The Movies Review

(Reviewed using a Pentium 4m, 1.6GHz processor with 1 GB RAM, 256MB ARI Radeon Mobility 9600 and 2-channel sound)

The strategy game genre sprouted the management simulation with Railroad Tycoon and later, Capitalism. Management simulations are basically equal parts Sim City-like building games along with RTS-like resource management. The simulations have produced many different flavors and titles of their own, ranging from zoos and theme parks, to airports and even prisons. When done well, management simulations can be wonderfully fun and addictive. When done poorly, they can be amongst the most god-awful pieces of tripe to be lowered upon the gaming market.

So Lionhead, already a studio with a good name for itself, was taking a bit of a risk producing a management simulation. The market is pretty saturated with these types of games--especially poor ones--so any gamer looking for a better alternative could easily look elsewhere--perhaps just a few feet away on the same store shelf. The incredible thing about The Movies' concept is that it hadn't been tried before. Certainly some company must have thought of bringing a movie-studio-tycoon game to market long before Trailer Park Tycoon or Prison Tycoon were in the germination stages, right?

Happily, Lionhead's positive pedigree is intact with the wonderful The Movies. It is witty, addictive, well thought out, and allows the player to expand or reduce his or her control over the operations to suit their individual taste for such things. It isn't completely open-ended, but the options are varied enough to make the factory-like activities not seem too repetitive. Plus, as with any good open-ended game, there are plenty of long-term goals to focus on while you deal with day-to-day emergencies.

The Movies puts you at the helm of a movie studio in 1920, just as filmed entertainment was beginning to bloom. You hire staffers, crew, extras, and actors--later also screenwriters, scientists, assistants, and marketers--and start production. All activities work pretty much in the same manner: you click to grab what you want and you throw it into an appropriate building and room to get it assigned a task. To hire a star, you grab a wannabe actor lined up outside your acting school and drop him or her into the "hire actor" room. That person then undergoes an Evil Genius-like transformation into their new role. Movie production happens basically the same way. You grab a script icon and throw it into the production office. Chuck a couple of stars and a director in and they begin to rehearse. Once rehearsal is complete, they shoot the movie and the completed film cans end up outside your release office. You choose to release the film when you want by dragging it into the "release" room. Instant feedback on the quality of the movie and its popularity comes next, along with several quotes from industry rags on how wonderful your masterpiece (or how putrid your turkey) is. The film then begins to produce revenue that you can use to finance new sets, new stars, and other accoutrements.

You are judged on how well your studio is ranked. Your ranking is determined by the quality of the movies you produce, how popular your stars are, your revenue, and finally how attractive your studio is. Having a tidy, well laid-out, attractive studio helps attract more employees, which in turn help you crank out more stars, janitors, builders, et cetera. It is definitely in the player's best interest to keep the lot looking good--especially a few decades into the game when the stars start getting big heads and demanding assistants. A good lot helps ensure a high studio rating which in turn attracts more workers seeking jobs to your door. A poorly maintained or constructed lot will, most likely, cause the player to run out of enough people to either clean the toilets or be toadies to the stars. This makes either the stars unhappy or causes trash to pile up, thereby causing a snowball effect that will have an impact on the entire operation.

Stars are the lifeblood of The Movies and keeping up with their fatuous demands and bad habits offer most of the challenge to be found in the game. Stars are fickle, oversized, childish brats who eat too much food and drink too much liquor and have a high opinion of themselves. They also make the studio tons and tons of money. The game handles this in a wonderful way, requiring the player to walk a tightrope of too-much too-little when it comes to dealing with the stars. You are not merely faced with the conventional rock-paper-scissors scenario, but must consider several differing issues for each decision. An example: you star is stressed, so you place her in the bar to unwind. She gets drunk, causing her to act poorly in the film you're shooting. The critics pan her poor performance, which adds to her stress level and takes away from her image. She starts drinking again to numb the pain and develops a habit. You put her into rehab, but she is still on the payroll while she's drying out and your replacement star makes Rob Schneider look like Rob DeNiro. This finally causes your studio to pay out more than it's taking in. The game doesn't follow this cause-effect situation to a precise degree, it is up to the player to step in and manage, in this example, the time spent in the bar just enough to improve the star's mood, but not enough to create a problem that will have a ripple effect throughout the production company. By the way, you can easily fire anybody, but as in real life, high-ranking stars pull in serious cash and serious press for their studios, and their loss could be your competitor's gain.

More can be done with your stars, from updating their wardrobe as the times change, to giving them surgical (ahem) enhancements. These become available as your scientists research upgrades to your movie studio. You also can generally throw photographers at your stars (provided they're doing something newsworthy) and their star rating will increase (although their mood level may not. It will improve if they're photographed having lunch with a high-powered director, but decline if they're photographed while in the toilet).

Every five years the academy holds an awards show. This is well done and builds tension as your studio is nominated, but you have to wait a moment for the game to reveal the winner. It's interesting to watch, and for a status report, it was consistently entertaining. The award show isn't merely just to watch, as the winners receive serious gameplay-related prizes that give that studio a leg-up on its competition (one prize, for instance, pays all actors half-salary for the next year with no ill effects, something that really allows a war chest to be built).

Finally, there are the movies within The Movies. The player can control as much or as little of each production as he or she sees fit. You can just let the film shoot as-is, and release it with no interference, or you can "punch-up" the script with customization that will allow you to detail every single scene as you see fit. You can also take any path in between the two. Finally, you can take the film to post-production where you can change minor details such as the length and style of the credits and other particulars. Most of the gameplay is affected by changes in the script room, however, as this is where you can change scenes to incorporate any brand-new sets you've just built. (If you keep producing movies using the same tired Wild West Saloon set, audiences will get bored and stop going to your movies.) After production, The Movies allows you to see a microcosm of your film, which--along with the reviews that follow--is frequently very funny.

All building activities are handled through a Sims-like interface, and you have very few options on what to build. This isn't limiting, however; it is streamlined. Buildings and sets become available as your research and time marches on. These buildings can be selected from the build icon and their footprint placed on your lot. Placing ornamentals--which is vital to your studio's prestige rating--can be tedious, however; especially as repetition of too many of the same thing will actually penalize you--no more Sim-City-like pasting a square of twenty-five "small parks" to get an overall positive effect.

As with most all other Lionhead games, The Movies is lighthearted, funny, intuitive, and it somehow feels like it has a soul. This is clearly a labor of love for those involved and it shows in the finished product. The Movies can be at times just fun to sit back and watch, as each person has a life and a set of interactions of their own (plus there are hundreds of little jokes here and there--like black and white movies filmed in patented "monotone"). The Movies feels alive and is usually a lot of fun.

Graphically, The Movies is bright, colorful, and fully three-dimensional. The framerates and textures are wonderful, even on a modest machine. This is somewhat due to the fact that all you really ever see is your studio lot--a somewhat small-sized world. The game comes with hundreds and hundreds of place-able objects and buildings, allowing for some great variety.   The buildings all look nice, and a fully-landscaped, developed studio looks like it jumped off of a postcard. At times it can be difficult to tell the difference between workers (who's a janitor, who's a builder?) but for the most part the pretty graphics fit well within the interface.

In a similar fashion to Evil Genius, you can zoom full-in on a character and follow him or her around. It is a great look at the game world, and allows you to see just how detailed all the characters and environments are.

Sound is well done--especially during the awards ceremony where the kettle drum builds up to a rousing crescendo just as the winner is announced. Each period of time comes with appropriate theme music, and the music and sound in your movies is also reflective of the time period.

Replay value is about on par with other good games in this genre. The Movies comes complete with a game mode and a sandbox mode--where you just build your studio and make your movies. As a plus, you can export your movies and post them online at various The Movies community sites. This may be novel at first, but the feature may bear little fruit when it comes to replayability through time.

The Movies is an all-around first-class effort. It is easy to learn, fun and addictive to play. Typical of Lionhead, it has an off-kilter sweetness and lightheartedness that makes it irresistible. It is never mean-spirited, even when your stars are photographed cavorting in a trailer, and always maintains a certain level of charm. The range of micromanagement options, from controlling everything to auto-piloting your movie production, allows The Movies to appeal to the entire range of strategy gamers. In other words, it can go all the way from beer-and-pretzels, to a full-blown down-to-the-brass-tacks game. It is humorous and a lot of fun to play.

The Good:

Runs well on slower machines

Nice graphics

Addictive gameplay

Very fun and humorous

Adjustable micromanagement levels

The Bad:

Can be a little narrow in scope

Can get a touch repetitive