A great tycoon game, even greter movie sim.
You start the game with only one building in your studio witch is used to make builders and janitors. Once you’ve got you builders and janitors the studio building process begins and in no time you’ll have ready to use studio.
The game starts in the 1920’s with black and white no talkers.
Before long you’ll be in the 1950’s with full colour (if you’ve invented it yet) making some kind of horror movie. The game occasionally evolves at a rushed rate, but most of the time you’ll be able to keep up with the competing studios.
Nothing revolutionary in this department.
Now on to the beef of the game, namely the movie making part. There are basically two ways to make movies, either you just drop one of your scriptwriters into a script office and let them do the work. You basically only get to choose the genre if done this way. If you want to get more involved in the production of the movie you can do this by either rewriting a script made by the scriptwriters or making a brand new script. The latter being the funniest. The game lets you choose from different genres like horror or romance.
You don’t actually write a script; instead you make a movie then release the script. First you’ll get to choose the lead roles, supporting roles etc.
From here on the sky is the limit. You get to choose from an extravagant amount of sets and scenarios. To make sure that each of you movies are unique Lionhead has put in sliders that lets you define for example the mood of the characters, the weather, even how romantic or scary a scene should be.
On top of that you’ll be able to record your own voice in the games movie player. If you think you’re a future director and want here others opinion, you can upload your movies to The Movies home page.
All of this might sound a bit complicated, thankfully its not.
The graphics in the game don’t stride too far away from the “usual” sims look. Though, if you scroll down to pedestrian level some great details are uncovered, you can actually watch the little people making movies.
The sound in the game is great. There’s a radio in the game that tells you stuff going on in the world (if you want to make hot movies you’d better listen what is being said here).
As said before the game does not revolutionize the tycoon genre.
The big attraction of this game is its movie making part.
One thing that should be mentioned is that the game can be played through as a regular tycoon game. You never NEED to make your own script as you just as well drop a scriptwriter into a script office, you might just play an other tycoon game.