Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Expansion packs are often mere shadows of the products they seek to expand.  They offer a limited amount of additional content, and often don’t do much to enhance the original product in a tangible fashion.  A few additional levels, perhaps a special hero or two, and usually a bevy of new units that are balanced with each other, but not balanced with regards to the original set of units.  Overall, I usually skip expansion packs unless I see some very positive reviews of the content.  I got my hands on the expansion pack for The Movies, this pack entitled Stunts & Effects.  This pack seeks to add a major missing element of modern cinema – action stunts.

Many great movies have been showcased on Lionhead’s page, but they often lack (forgive the pun) the punch of a Hollywood blockbuster.  This is in no small part due to the limited amount of stunts in the original title.  Even though there is an incredible wealth of options in The Movies, more options for action is simply better.  Let’s take a look at what is new for my star actor, C. Manson and his merry troupe of acting friends.

Since Stunts & Effects is fully integrated into your movie lot, it doesn’t operate in its own sandbox.  This means that the graphical look and style has to match the existing material or it will stick out like a sore thumb.  As a result, when you unlock Stunts & Effects, you’ll get a new office for potential applicants.  These applicants want to jump out of burning buildings, toss themselves through windshields, get hit in the head with logs, and so much more, just to make your movies better.  This means a whole new set of animations and effects.  As a result, all of your movies will improve as you can now pour on heavy rain, add debris such as leaves to your streets, and set fire to a whole host of new areas.  Any time you can set fire to things, it just makes it that much better. 

The Stunts & Effects pack integrates seamlessly into the existing Movies game.  It is as if it was there all along.  As a result, it not only makes for great new content, it also improves your existing movies.  If you want to drop your magnum opus back into the projector to add a little bit of fancy fallguy fun, you can.  The new effects will make it that much better.

There are several new scenes to work into your already-crowded lot, but let me assure you that these are worth it.  There is a new city street set, several miniature cityscape sets, several scrolling sets, a green-screen set, a blue-screen set, a new Sci-Fi bridge set, a jungle landscape set, a set that can simulate falling, a car crash scene,  a scene to do helicopter rappelling, and several more.  You can also add overlays atop any scene to make it look as if you are viewing it from a sniper scope, futuristic goggles, binoculars, and several more.  Just as before, you are absolutely flooded with options that seamlessly integrate into the game as a whole. 

Nothing has really changed in the area of sound, so I’m keeping the same score for the sound section as I did for the original. The same ease of use, and the same limitations apply. I suspect that this is more of a memory usage and licensing issue than anything else, so I can’t slight Lionhead for it.

In addition to the stunt and effect upgrades, we are finally getting a free cam system.  While you can’t fly the camera around like a no-clip mode in a FPS while the scene is running, you can move it around within the scene. You set a start position, and end position, and a behavior for the camera such as a spiral zoom, panning across the scene in a specified fashion, or you can also leave it stationary.  It is also possible to adjust the Field of View to your liking using this interface.  These two things combined have improved on one of the primary complaints with the title.  While you can’t be Spielberg, flying around on the Director’s chair with the boom lift while the camera is running, but you can get pretty close to it by setting things up ahead of time. 

Also within the free-cam interface, you can also adjust some of the general effects such as weather.  You can cause it to rain in the scene, as well as change the intensity to a much higher level.  You can also add wind effects, debris, and fog to your scene in the same screen.   When you’ve set things to your liking, you can preview it on the spot. 

More improvements have come in the way of optimized selection interfaces.  You can now play your scenes in succession while you are still editing.  You can also quickly copy, edit, and delete scenes from within the editing system rather than having to back out to accomplish the same thing.  It is a little thing, but it makes dressing your set and positioning your people that much easier.  It is obvious that the developers at Lionhead read their own boards, and they take your constructive comments very seriously.

All of these improvements, new sets, stunts, and more mean absolutely nothing if they don’t improve the gameplay.  Adding more elements to your movie making experience will certainly improve the look and feel of your movies, but there is another layer of management that is required to make it work correctly. 

Stunts have a difficulty rating of 1 to 5.  This means that you will have to practice using the new stunt trainers to make your stunts look real.  You can have your stars perform their own stunts, just like Jackie Chan, but as failing can physically hurt them, it is a risk.  Not only that, but it can also hurt the rating of the movie as it breaks the believability.  To quantify this, all of your employees get two new stats – Condition and Stunt Skill.  Condition is a representation of the physical fitness of the character.  There are three training facilities used to build up your Stunt Skill.  The first facility is the Spartan Torture training facility. 

The Spartan Torture training facility is two spinning red pugel sticks that your star will have to spin, jump, and duck through, to gain stunt skill.  Since success and failure will lower the conditioning of your actor or actress, you’ll have to balance the health impact versus the skill upgrade.  Taking a shot to the back of the head will obviously have more *ahem* impact than just tiring them out, so there is always risk.

The second facility is the Baptism of Fire.  It is essentially a concrete slab with a burning doorway to help teach your people how to literally walk through fire.  Sure, they will wear asbestos fireproof suits, but this medium level training facility can be painful if you make a mistake.  Twirling through the flaming doorway will yield even more skill than the low level facilities, and your fire effect shots will improve as a result.

The third and final facility you’ll unlock is the Danger Dojo.  Suited up in a traditional martial arts Gi, your karateka stunt star will square off against the master to improve their hand-to-hand skills.   When performed correctly, all physical combat stunts will look more like Jet Li and less like Steven Segal.

Eventually your stunt doubles will take enough damage to warrant a little bit of medical attention.  To help keep your pictures moving, you can now build a Hospital facility to help heal your team.  You’ll have to plan accordingly as it takes a set amount of time for your people to heal, regardless of how hurt they are. 

It isn’t all practice that makes a stunt believable.  You also have to match the general look and condition of your stars and the stuntmen and stuntwomen.  Having a fat guy who looks like Wilford Brimley double for your svelte young starlet will have dire consequences on your movie.

When you finally have enough training (or any time before if you feel lucky or sadistic) you can pick up a script writer and put them to work.  When you hover over the genre of movie you’d like to make, you’ll see a motorcycle helmet in the corner of each box.  When placing your script writer over that icon, they will set out to make a movie that uses your existing sets.   They will take into account your stunt actor’s prowess and make a movie that fits their skill level.  They will call for exciting stunts that sometimes use more than one stunt double, so it is important to keep a healthy crop of stuntmen and women at the ready. 

All of these upgrades work in a similar fashion in the custom script office.  When you go into the Advanced Movie-Making screen, you’ll have a small helmet next to your actor.  Simply drag a stunt double into that slot to allow them to step in front of the camera for those Ninja-on-Fire scenes.  To ensure that your Matt Damon character isn’t stunt doubled with Chris Farley, you can click on your actor and compare them with your double.  You’ll get a side-by-side comparison, and you can assign them matching wardrobes.

All of these things, coupled with with new sets, makes for a much-improved movie making experience.  Being able to create outside space shots, destroying cities using miniatures, flying helicopters through the jungle, chasing your actors with bullet squibs in the pavement, rappelling soldiers from a helicopter, and sending Ninjas through the windows of burning buildings just makes all of your movies that much better.  While the micromanagement and some of the shortcomings of the original remain, this expansion goes a long way towards improving on the original formula.  If only more expansion packs integrated as beautifully. 

The Movies: Stunts & Effects adds quite a bit to the original title for only a $29.99 asking price.  Dozens of new costumes, sets, effects, and a freeform camera would have been great, but the addition of all of the stunts, miniatures, and explosion effects just seal the deal.  Since the title so perfectly meshes with the original title, there are all new achievements and awards specifically aimed at the Stunts & Effects industry.  With so many great additions and positive comments, how could this section score an 80 out of 100?  Well, I tried to install this pack on my work computer, my home computer, my mother’s computer, and my Dell XPS laptop.  I’m not sure what new SafeDisk copy protection is used on this disc, but it only worked on my LG DVD-ROM drive.  I could not get it to run on my laptop, my work computer, my mother’s computer, or through my DVD burner.  I was prompted to insert the disc every time.  I performed firmware upgrades on the computers I own to no avail.  Alas, this could be a factor until this is either patched or removed.  Stunts & Effects is a no-brainer for anyone who loved the original. It adds an incredible amount to the original product, and improves every aspect of your movies. While I did run into technical problems, these can be easily patched and corrected. I’m already seeing sales for this title for $24.99 at my local Fry’s, so this purchase makes sense.

Gaming Trend Score

90

1. Graphics: 95
2. Audio: 93
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 92
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:90