Shoot the Movies! Be the Director! Make the Stars! The Movies is a grand example of a great Tycoon game.
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The Movies is one of the better management games that I've seen in a long time, and certainly deserves the time I've been spending on it. According to my Xfire profile, I've been playing it for 13 hours over the past seven days.
But how does it play?
As the name suggests, you are in charge of a new movie studio in the heart of Hollywood (so we're told) and the lack of a stats-filled interface is refreshing, although it takes getting used to. Information is mainly received by right clicking any character or building on in your studio and finding the required information, however eventually it does get cluttered with bubbles after a frantic right-clicking frenzy to find someone.
Other controls is handled by a simnple drag and drop system, for example, to to rlease a movie, you have to drag it from the sidebar and drop it into Release in the Production Office. Although it's very hadny in the beginning, once your studio becomes huge, you will get slightly riled that you can't find the damn building. Although you do get little sparlky streams suggesting where to go, if you have a weak system, dragging will make you go way too far off the mark.
The main gimmick with this game however, is to shoot your own movies. Usuing the same drag and drop system you can quickly make a short movie about anything really, and if you want, you can release them to the public viw the community website - http://www.themoviesgame.com/community - where if it's good enough, you can download extra gubbins for your studio.
The sounds in this game are fairly annoying after a while. Your actors, like in The SIms, speak no recognisable speech, so your movies will benefit from the lip-synching and recording technologies bundled with the game. The main gripe with the sounds are the radio presenters. A lot of the voices you'll want to walk to their studio and strangle them for being so damned annoying. The humour of this game is also sadly lacking. This may not matter to you, but the British always expect British developers to inject a little humour into it, and sadly, it is evident that the game is targeted for American audiences. Ah well, that's where the money is nowadays
Don't let this little niggle stop you from buying the game. If you turn off the DJs in the sound options, you have a fantastic game to start your dreams of becoming the next Speilberg
Possibly