Look at this guy:
He takes the category of “techno-lumberjack” to a whole new level. His homeless appearance aside, this is Peter Jackson and he makes movies. None of that teenage wizard stuff, oh no, he does man aged wizard stuff. Putting aside the fact that he has created some of the greatest movies of our time, I think doing what he does would be pretty cool. I like the idea of movie making. From conception and script to editing and printing, the whole process is really cool. The bonus is that at the end of it all you have hopefully made some real swank art.
Let’s look at another photo:
It’s James Cameron! I don’t like or respect his product as much as Peter Jackson’s, but I use him for two reasons. One, look at that hair. Seriously impressive off-middle part for 2010. Second, Cameron makes a lot of money doing a really cool job, just like Jackson.
One last picture:
George Lucas. I hate him. But again, crazy hair. Pretty neat job.
Considering my male pattern baldness, I am not able to throw my whole being into movie making. It just can’t be done. I perhaps could do music, like Moby:
But I have no musical talent and lack sweet goggles. So I am left with the career I can do – teaching. While often fun and always challenging, it isn’t movie making. Alas, I must resort to virtual reality to live the vicarious lives I am either incapable of living or lack the follicle ability to engage in.
After a somewhat lengthy intro, I present you my review of The Movies: Superstar Edition!
The Movies is brought to us by Lionhead Studios, creators of Black & White, via the porting team at Feral. It runs on old Macs (PowerPC) and new Macs (Intel), it will even run on your MacBook with integrated graphics. That’s pretty impressive! Then again, the game was first released in 2005! But hey, we don’t judge age around here, prune juice drinking game or not. We are fair and balanced, just like Fox news.
Despite its age, The Movies still plays well today. Built around the same core concepts of the Sim City/simulation genre, the game is solid and unique. You are tasked with starting a movie studio in the early days of cinema and growing it into a burgeoning multi box office busting studio of the modern day. Like all sim games, it starts off slow enough but soon turns into a zoo of tasks and management.
The Movies doesn’t stray far from the sim formula. You must create required buildings for your studio to move through the phases of a movie. You will create a script office, where you will then hire script writers to crank out a genre script of your choice. You then need a Casting Office to hire directors, stars, extras, and crews. From there you will shoot the script on stages you have built. Once shooting is complete you will send the movie off to the Production Office for it to be printed and sent out for distribution. Rinse and repeat. In between these basic steps, you manage the moods of the people you have hired, ensuring they have basketball courts to play on, snacks to eat, and bathrooms to read in. Hiring and firing the right people is just as important as selecting the genres of movies to produce that are popular at the the time. Putting the right people to work on the right project will dictate the success or failure of your movies.
When a movie is created you are rewarded with a “viewing” of the result. This may be one of the few parts of The Movies that has not aged well. The movies it creates are not exciting to watch. In fact they are unbelievably boring. I ended up just skipping these parts more often than not. The Movies allows you to further edit the movie you create in a separate editor outside of the actual simulation, which you can then publish to YouTube. Like one of those plastic looking ladies from the Real Housewives of Orange County, looks good from far, but far from good. It doesn’t detract from the game, but it certainly does not add to it.
As you progress you will be given access to more buildings, new technologies to research, costuming, sets, other stuff, and so on. It gets really deep, much like Hollywood vanity and very much unlike George Lucas’ characters. The Movies delivers content and depth of play in spades. Like most sims, you can choose to dive in, or just float on the surface.
Depending on your background and particular tastes, you will either really dig the micro management aspects or despise them with all your heart. When I play RailRoad Tycoon, I appreciate that I can individually pick each car that my engine will pull. As for picking the exact placement of a toilet in The Movies, I could do with out it. This also goes with the planting of shrubbery. I just don’t care where/if the palm trees are planted. It felt a little too much like The Sims for me (couch placement, rotation, and colour). With that said, I fully expect many people do enjoy this intricacy. In fact the placement of said palm trees may make for a deeper buy-in as the “hovering creator” of the movie studio, just as picking coal cars instead of mail cars in RailRoad Tycoon did for me.
At times The Movies more closely resembles Tropico in its management of people and their feelings. At other times it was just like The Sims. A couple screens later it felt more like Rollercoaster Tycoon. The experience of building a studio and moving through these different aspects of the game were fluid and well implemented. The goal of making me feel as if I was creating and then running a movie studio was thoroughly met.
With that said, often I was going through the motions of making a movie and was doing so solely to move onto unlocking new items and growing bank account. That might seem like the purpose of the game, but I wasn’t enjoying the process nor did I care for the steps I was completing. At some point the game became a nag to the end goal and I just wanted to hurry it up. Low and behold, as with other sim games, you are given that very power. You can speed up time to move through the more mundane tasks or periods of waiting. It is nice addition for that stage in the game where you are simply trying to reach the end. It is at that very point in almost all sim games I have played that my interest starts to wane. Sim City was fun until the city was mostly built and I was simply waited for money to accumulate. Civilization (note: I realize that it is not a true sim in the sense I have been referring to) was great until the entire map was explored. RailRoad Tycoon was engaging while I built the railways. After that, fast forward was used to reach the objective. The Movies proved to follow the same contour. It was fun starting out and creating the studio, but as time moved on, so did my interest. All this was reset when I started a new game. I suppose that is the beauty of the sim genre. What I found to be weaknesses, others find to be the best part of a simulation.
I have played a vast range of the available sim styled games, from Railroad Tycoon (a personal favourite. Please make a new one!) to Sim City, Roller-coaster Tycoon to Sim Tower (remember that?). If it simulated something I have probably given it a whirl [Ed - even this?]. For the most part I usually enjoy the style and type of play provided by these games. The Movies is no different. At the end of the day it offers a unique experience. Old or not, it may be fresh to you. For me, it provided a little extra character because of my affinity for film. If you like a good sim game, the money is well spent here. Hours and hours of game can be had for $50.
If you prefer to grab a casual coffee before you wine and dine a game, you can download a demo of the game here.