Games

The Movies

Publisher: Activision
Price: £26.99
Platform: PC
Buy it now from Amazon.co.uk

Peter Molyneux helped to popularise the previously staid management simulation genre by overseeing such hits as Theme Park and Theme Hospital, which wrapped up the stuffy business decisions in fun and frantic situations that players could actually relate to.

So its fitting that Molyneux is once again the big cheese behind this long-awaited title, a game that promises to let you run your own movie studio from the 1920s and into the future. Movie studio sims aren't a new genre - there are several low budget or shareware games that tackle the same theme. What makes The Movies stand out is that it's the first game to actually let you flex your creative muscles as well as your strategic muscles. Yes, you can actually control the content of your films - choosing genres, actors, scenes and even adding your own music, dialogue and sound effects.

It should be a dream come true for games-playing movie buffs, and for the first few hours it is. The game holds your hand for the first few decades of the game (though the help can be switched off) and introduces you to the elements you need to juggle to run a successful studio. A casting office allows you to turn hopeful wannabes into stars of tomorrow, or groom the next Steven Spielberg. The script office lets you put writers to work churning out the scripts you'll need to transform into blockbusters. And, of course, you need movie sets. The more you play, the more locations you'll be able to build and the more varied and exciting your films will become.

As the game progresses, more resources come into play. Makeover departments can help keep your stars at the cutting edge of fashion, and eventually you can even use plastic surgery to keep them looking their best. Restaurants and bars help stressed celebs unwind and socialise, and a rehab clinic can be built to help them out if they get carried away. Your stars will also make increasingly selfish demands in order to keep them happy. Keep them busy, keep them pampered and they'll help make your movies a success.

Controlling all this mayhem is easy - everything is handled in real time from the main screen, and is very intuitive. Clicking on a person, a script or a finished movie picks them up and you then simply drag them to where you need them. The right mouse button brings up all the info you need about any item.

However, after a few hours play the shortcomings of The Movies start to become apparent. Trying to accurately simulate a business which operates on such subjective criteria as Hollywood is never a simple task, and it doesn't take long for the formula for success to reveal itself. Happy stars plus new sets and costumes, in conjunction with audience expectations, maximises your box office. There's no room for sleeper hits or blockbuster flops. Every movie you release seems to do pretty well, though the game curiously loses interest in your products once they leave your hands. There's no attempt to follow their success or failure, no emphasis on opening weekends or driving viewers to your flicks.

As a result, by the time you've played up to the 1960s chances are you won't even be watching the movies you create. You just churn them out, and eventually they might as well be boxes of widgets. To start with you can only create 1-star scripts. Build the next level of script office, and you can start to work on 2-star scripts. Everything develops in a predictable and linear fashion - there's no room for the random creativity of the real thing. New scriptwriters never turn out a 5-star smash. New actors never leap straight into the A-list. The ability to direct your own miniature movies helps to stave off the inevitable, but even this feature can be a frustrating one.

You basically assemble your film by stringing together existing scenes, from simple shots of people entering a room to epic battles, and filling them with your actors. You can choose the locations, the costumes and the number of people in each scene but, crucially, you can't choose how and where they're placed. This means that creating a coherent film, without characters leaping from one position to another, is a painstaking process.

The game pauses while you tweak and polish your movie template, but there's then the small matter of shooting the thing. Shooting just twenty scenes can take almost four years in game-time, which can put a huge dent in your productivity and keeping stars and directors relaxed and happy over such an epic shoot is almost impossible. While it's a fun toy to tinker with, you soon realise that success comes much easier if you just let the game handle that side of things.

So what you end up with is a fun and frothy simulation that wears thin rather too soon. Challenges soon become chores, and the constant need to tend to your stars Sims-style requirements distracts from the meat of the game. You're up against rival studios, but as there's no way of finding out what they're working on, or what their films are like, you feel as if you're playing in a vacuum. Regardless of what you do, the other studios routinely trounce you at the regular awards ceremonies, and you're left with another section of the game that you start to skip past.

You'll never be bored, but too much of the game slips into joyless routine as the hours tick past. The amusing graphical touches and novelty of watching your films go before the cameras boost the enjoyment factor but the experience is ultimately - and disappointingly - not that far removed from the decade-old Theme Park. Fun for a quick dabble, or as a limited moviemaking tool, but as an actual game The Movies falls sadly short of delivering on the glamour of its premise.