I had actually meant to do this review a few months ago when Lionhead Studios was sadly closed down by Microsoft. I know it was fun to poke at Peter Molyneux and his astounding ability to lie through his teeth but, unlike certain other individuals who are forever off my Christmas card list (as if I have one of those), it never seemed like he was going out of his way to save his own ass. Say what you will about Lionhead - mostly that they were a company where reach exceeded grasp - but you can never say that their hearts weren't into everything they were doing. And, as such, here is my tribute to them and all the joy and creativity they've brought us over the years.
Some paragraph smatterings on an internet blog that nobody reads!
The Movies came around in 2006 and was the first Lionhead game I ever played. That's right! Before Fable or its sequels, I actually came across The Movies first, and its a good thing, too. After all, how else would I have had the experience of building a film empire from the ground up without several hundred thousand dollars in start up money? Exactly, I wouldn't have. And neither will you have, unless you put yourself in the chair of a Hollywood movie mogul.
Work from the 1920s and cast your stars, your extras, and get yourself a director. Going through the main game will get you a lengthy tutorial that will explain your options in building up your studio. Starting from a single building where casting of your actors, directors, and extras is done, you get directed to build various sets - and you do have to have a variety thanks to a little thing called novelty value that will bring down the quality of your films if you overuse sets - and other fixtures within your studio lot. Other fixtures including an area where scriptwriters can be tasked to make scripts based on genre (with random titles, often resulting in very humorous combinations), a laboratory where scientists can be hired to develop new technologies for film making, and even a post-production house where you can edit the completed films before releasing them to the general public.
And there is much more than that,. A lot more, in fact, but it would literally take me the length of several reviews to go over everything that you can add to your studio. The basic tips I would give are this - 1) Make sure you keep your director to actor ratio at 1:3, that is one director for every three actors you have. This'll keep you from having too many of either and means that, if you do it right, you won't have anyone not working who doesn't need to be. 2) Make sure you keep an eye on your actors'/directors' stress and boredom levels. Don't over or under work them, or you're going to have a bad time dealing with their quirks of personality.
Yes, like many such games, you have to micromanage your actors and directors based on certain personality issues they have. One might be given to drinking, another might be given to overeating. You'll need to manage these in various ways, as well as deal with them when they occasionally get off the wagon either way. And that's to say nothing of those the game will just throw you who have a bad temperament in general.
Also, tip number three - it never hurts to give your actors a bigger trailer. Never.
When I say I could go on for several reviews about the many facets of this game, it's very true. Lionhead clearly put a lot of work into creating and developing so much to be sure the players had a lot to do, but I could almost argue there's too much to do. By that same token, it's not like you don't have the time in which to try out everything - the same starts in 1920 and goes on into infinity (though the technology stops in the early 2000s) - it's more of a question of space and is one of the few criticisms I can level against this game.
Granted, I'm sure part of the point is that you're only supposed to have so much space and you're supposed to tear down old and put up new buildings as time goes on, but your studio lots only have so much space and placing buildings on a grid can get rather persnickety when you're off by a single square and the entire building is denied. Rather irritating, but it does force you to think about placement and more often than not forces you to make some hard choices about which buildings are more important to you in your desperate struggle to get to the top of the film mogul world and cement your position as a legend. Give it a try if you get the chance. At the time of this writing, you can pick it up on Amazon for about forty bucks, definitely worth the investment.
The Movies is now available for PC and Mac OS from Lionhead Studios and Activision.
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Oh, right...there's also a "Stunts & Effects" expansion pack. It's not really notable beyond a few new stunts and effects, as well as making the camera free moving in certain scenes. That's it.
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