The Movies: Stunts and Effects : Games : Web Wombat

Hello everyone, I’m the Jackal and I’m back from my holiday to bring you the latest and greatest in games. The Movies: Stunts and Effects is an add-on for the novel game, The Movies. For the record, The Movies was a
great game to review because it had so many features and tasks that other developers had not explored.

As the title suggest, The Movies is a game where you can simulate a real movie production lot and create movies which suit your style. If you loved Kung Fu Hustle, why not create a chop sui movie, or if you like dramas you do a Beaches-style 'wind beneath my wings' kind of production.

This game is indeed large with plenty of scope (dialogue, action sequences - it's all there). One of the big features about The Movies is that you can enter your home made movies into world wide competitions and allow other people to watch, review and judge your movies online.

Of course, as a game gets older, the interest in the game drops and you’re left with only a few people hardcore movie nerds still interested. Well, that's where this add-on comes in, to spice up this semi-forgotten game, and is without telling a lie, I reckon it's just the thing to get old players back into the action.

In the original game, you weren’t exactly limited in what kind of movies you could produce, but there was a certain point where you couldn’t progress in the way which you wanted, such as not being able to flip a car, bomb a car, fill a car with licorice and then send it to the depths of the ocean. Furthermore, you also couldn't destroy a street or be attacked by dogs.

This is where the new add on, Stunts and Effects comes in.

The package has many inclusions, such as the stunts mentioned above (minus the licorice), but also includes many other things. Some of the stunts included in the game feature bombings, shootings, being chased and jumping out of a plane, so you make movies like Face Off, Swordfish or Snakes on a Plane. Also, these stunts aren’t done by your normal movie actors, no, they’re done by stunt men and women who are specially trained to be a stunt double. Remember Space Balls where they accidentally capture the stunt doubles? Now they're the stars!

So you now have to hire a stunt man/woman (don’t want to be sexist to all our lady readers, if there are any) to do the job. This means building a stunt school, stunt training facilities, hospitals (they always need morphine) and treating the stunt actor exactly like a normal star, which is quite a bit more work.

Do the Die Hard thing: kick
through walls, windows
and the bad guys. There's
not much you can't do,
besides resurrecting Demi
Moore's acting career....

Here is specifically, what to expect:

New buildings
A lot more scenes
Special stunt actors
Some new music
New backgrounds
New costumes
New movie sets

An example of what you can do with this new pack is hereafter thusly represented in words: you can create a kung-foo scene with two people wearing kung-foo outfits, fighting each other. And they really do smash each other senseless. And then, once the two combatants are sparring, you could have a SWAT unit in a helicopter hovering in the air above, waiting to drop down and reign fiery death and all and sundry.

Next, a kid might walk in amongst the bloodshed and slip on a banana peel down a long hallway and slide along while flailing his arms in a comedic moment to balance out the violence. With the new expansion pack, you can make your movies so much better and more realistic than with the original game. If you decide to get The Movies, then I would suggest you pick up this game as well, as it makes the title a much more involving.

There isn’t really anything I don’t like about this new package because there is just so much useful stuff that players can use to put a new lease of life into the already great game. I think Lionhead have done really well with this new package and it’s a must have for all people who liked the original. I think this inclusion is absolutely great!

Game: The Movies: Stunts and Effects
System: PC
Players: 1
Online: Yes
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 90%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

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