An Excellent Idea, never tried by any other Game Developer in the past, but boy does Lionhead Pull it off well!
Lionhead’s latest game, ‘The Movies’ has fulfilled its expectation in every way for me. It has a bit of everything mixed into it.
The Story mode of the game begins in 1920, you create your custom studio name and choose from a wide variety of logos or you can be ambitious and create your own logo and save it to the correct directory for use in the game. As the game begins you are guided through the menus and you soon learn the basics of game play.
As the game progresses new sets, props, costumes and studio facilities become available. You can build; make over buildings, script writing facilities and much more.
The 1 thing the game offered that appealed to me was the ability to write your own scripts from scratch, it takes some time but the results can be amazing.
Not forgetting that when your done with your movie and your ready to release it, the movie is reviewed by the in game newspapers and magazines. If you want to go a step further, Lionhead has incorporated an online section to the game. You get 25mb of space to upload your movies to be reviewed by people all over the world from ‘The Movies’ main website. After uploading and receiving a rating, you get online cash which will be used in the up and coming Prop-Shop which will allow you to buy new things to use in the game with your online cash.
Apart from the story mode you can jump strait into the action by starting a sandbox game. This allows you to start with a pre-made studio and you can start at a different date than 1920. You can still upload movies you make in this mode, and the game goes on forever from what I can see, I’m currently in 2060.
After playing the movies I have to say its one of my favourite games of all time, id recommend it to anyone who enjoyed ‘The Sims’ series as you get the same sort of control plus a whole lot more.
Remember to keep your eye on ‘The Movies’ main website, for the up and coming Prop-Shop.