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Not quite worth the $40 price tag

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Create your own movie studio. The idea sounds really nice...until you purchase this game. I had my thrill of playing it nonstop for about a week before finally tossing it to the side to let it collect dust with many of the other crappy simulation games that I've purchased over time.

The graphics are decent, but the characters are ugly as sin. They all look exactly alike and that's not good with the men looking just like the women. The tutorial doesn't explain a whole lot and it took me 2 days to figure out how to delete some things. In addition to making movies, you must also monitor your stars needs and make sure that they're not too unhappy as well as create chemistry between your studio's stars. This is very time-consuming and doesn't often work out too well. On my first studio, I ran it for 4 decades and most of my original stars never even became friends with one another no matter how much I tried to get to them to interact with one another. Making sure that they're not drinking their sorrows away at the bar or eating like as though they're at a buffet all the time, is time-consuming enough. The combination of having to do both becomes a bit overwhelming.

Despite all of those things, though, this game has it's pros. The advanced movie maker is pretty awesome as it allows you to create your own script and put in the scenes and costumes that you choose. In addition to that, if you have a microphone on your computer, you are able to add in your own voice for the movie. The players also get to name their studio and choose a symbol to represent it.

However, the pros of the game are only minimal and do not distract from the cons. This was a nice idea from the people at Activision and a nice first try, but they should lower the price. This game wasn't worth the $40 I spent for it.

Very Addicting!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I really like the Movies. It is basically about running a movie studio and shooting movies. As I said before, it is extremely addicting. It is also very fun. There are a couple of bad things too:the game can get repetetive(but you'll live with it, the character models are not fantastic, and it can get extremely difficult.(I've done pretty well with my movies and i still haven't won any awards yet) Despite the flaws, The Movies is a wonderful game that everyone can play.

An A+ idea with a B+ delivery...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The movies is one of those games, much like "Fable" and "Black and White", that garnered so much attention before their release that the hype easily outdwarfed the result. The premise to The Movies is terrific fun, and on many fronts, the game delivers. The downside is that it's not as innovative as promised, is full of glitches and suffers from a poor interface.

The GOOD: Great sim-type game, crossed with a "tycoon"-type game. The game really hooks you in, at least for a while, with its premise: to make movies, and ultimately, a lot of money. Some people will dig the movie-maker utility, I personally prefered the sim aspect of the game. Bottom line, this game, in spite of its flaws (below) is fun. There is plenty of humor, a good soundtrack, and the sets/studio are well-rendered.

The BAD: This game quickly devolves into an orgy of micro-management. Instead of making you focus on the task of making movies, you end up wasting 90% of your time keeping your stars happy. These people stress out over anything, get drunk any chance they get, and are generally very unhappy, requiring you to constantly tend to their whims. Also, the addition of toilets, food stands, etc add nothing to the game, and add a layer of tedium instead. The various buildings you can unlock and build are cool at first, but it becomes tedious after a while to "unlock" a PR office when it should really have been there since the start. Also, movies take WAYYYY too long to film: later films can take years and years to film, even when everything goes well. Do you want to hire a new actor? Tough, because you have to wait until the game throws an aspiring actor your way to be able to add someone new. It's ludicrous that a wealthy studio-head can't hire actors/janitors/directors etc whenever they want if they have the cash. Finally, this game suffers from horrible, terrible, borderline infuriating lag as the studio grows in size. I have a top-tier machine and it stutters more than any other game I've played (even F.E.A.R!).

The UGLY: The character models / graphics. The actors and actresses, even those you can draw yourself, are just plain ugly and freaky-looking. The Sims 2 had much better character models, so why not The Movies?

Bottom Line: Fun game, but I hope they make a sequel which addresses this version's shortcomings.

False Advertising: Incomplete and Highly Buggy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: March 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

BEWARE: Save your money and do not buy this game. The advertising is false: you can NOT make your own movies the way you like. There is no free camera movement; you can only select actors' actions from a limited group of pre-made fixed scenes; the developer is actively trying to prevent modding and add-ons from being made by the gaming public. The online community is horrendous; it is flooded with juvenile delinquents and the developer runs the website like a Stalinist work camp. The game itself is highly buggy and will crash to desktop or lock-up frequently. The audio portions of any "movie" cannot be kept in sync with the video and no patches appear planned for these problems.

Great Game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: December 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game and I just got it. So my review might be not as accurate as someone who's played it longer than 12 hours.
This game is fairly easy to learn once you got the basics it's as easy as pie. There's a tutorial to help you edit your movies and one to help you learn the basics. The tutorials are well detailed and step by step for you to be a top movie businuess. So if your'e really confused you shpuld get a brain check.
If you have a high graphics card the graphics the pretty good. Also they have award ceremonys which are really cool. It's so much fun to play and I love it and i know you will too. If your not into movie making do not buy this what so ever. This game has a small resemblence to the sims 2. So have fun and become the greatest studio of all time.

HEllO

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: February 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this game so much. i've been creating sci fi films all week. like all games it has a bad side. It has sexual cntent and even swearing. that is why i only do sandbox mode.

Pretty good but not the best.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Hello everybody! If you have a dream of becoming a movie maker, this game won't teach you anything about that subject. Running your studio is the best part of the game. Everyone in the game looks like they have braces on, and your movies will always look like a Richard Simmons video, always! There are a few minor slow-downs in the game but they don't hurrt anything. The game can be very frustrating! But it is good for a first attempt at a movie making video game. Researching new costumes and other items takes much too long! If you wait too long to make your movies, the other studios will get better ratings than your studio. Overall this game is entertaining, and award shows are fun. I'll give this game a 4, out of 5.

Educational and Fun, but serious copy protection issues

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game works best with the accompanying expansion pack Stunts and Effects. It will make ones life far easier in creating their own custom movies as it includes " free camera movement" which can take one "scene" and do many creative things with it. I'm not sure how many people are playing the game, but if the message board at LionHead are any indication, a fair number got the game primarily for "sandbox" mode that is creating films.

The game includes a fair amount of canned scenes sets and costumes and its not that hard to come up with something western, science fiction, modern or something else entirely. The canned scenes, that is two actors conversing or a guy in a chair smoking or two people whaling the living daylights out of each other plus maybe some 50 more can be combined together with voiceovers, subtitles and music to form very interesting stories. Head over to Lionhead and one can see how marvelous and inventive some of these moviemakers actually are.

There are limits and some users complain endlessly about them: the actors in the stock scenes cannot be moved around on the stage and only follow preset paths, for example. But fortunately the " freecam mode" allows a variety of shots to be created from that one scene to be strung together in a variety of creative ways that allows deviation from the preset view to make that scene fresh and exciting. One should also invest in a three button scroll mouse to get the most out of the freecam, it can be "emulated " via the keyboard, but in my opinion, a "poor" emulation.

I started the game in 1920, then switched to sandbox but was overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of choices and decided to go back into the tycoon game and edit the scripts that the game produced for the movie shoots. These movies tend to be small, 3 scenes or so and once the custom script facility is obtained, provide fertile ground to manipulate and learn the basics of filmmaking THE MOVIES style without being flooded by too many choices at once.

Finished films can be uploaded to LionHead's site for viewing by others or shared on other websites as they can be readily viewed in Microsoft's Media Player.

Mods, that is, user added content can be also included to complement the stock art---a low end modder can take a picture, scanned it in and placed as a backdrop for a stage to set up a different location, maybe Paris or London. An artist might seize upon this to place their artwork in the game and use it as a commercial for an upcoming art show or explain their piece, for example. High end modders have gone so far as to create entire sets from retextures or scratch and added additional props and costumes to the game available for download.

I've had problems with the copy protection scheme of the game, and unfortunately, this did not go away with the expansion Stunts and Effects. When I tried to run the game, I got the perennial message that read something like"DVD emulation software in use. Please disable any DVD emulation software before proceeding" Unwilling to take up any of the typical tech suggestions offered for this sort of a problem -reinstall video drivers, cd Rom drivers, directx, Windows, get bios updates replace CD drive, processor, motherboard computer etc, I got a no cd file for the game from one of the no CD sites and the game ran fine without further problems. If it weren't for these sites, I could not play the game.

5 stars minus- 1 for the showstopping copy protection issues (I'd give it 0 stars if it weren't for the no cd sites)

This game is utterly amazing...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: May 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a savvy and snobby pc game connoisseur and I received this game as an X-mess present in 2005. It is almost 6 months later and it is still playable and enjoyable, which if you know anything about my personality is an excellent indication of how good and FUN this game actually is. As you may know, this game is played under the premise of being a studio exec. You actually get to build your studio lot and have every hand in producing, hiring actors, movie content, publicity of a movie. An expansion pack is going to be released soon. Not soon enough.

"The movies"

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: June 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After saving up 3 weeks of babysitting cash, i broke the piggyban and treked to the store. Orininally is was going to purchase "Zoo tycoon 2" but a bright blue box caught my eyes. I'm really into the whole Hollywood thing, so I saw the cover and was hooked.
Although it was a bit pricey, I figured it was worth it.

It was 20 minutes of installation on the newest DELL model computer. Though slow to install, when it finally loaded I was pleased with a surprise.

The game comes with "Starmaker 1.0" where you get to design custom stars, from nostril size to eyebrow angle. Once designing a hefty bunch of actors and actresses, I opened the game.

The tutorial was useless, it just pointed out the obvious. So I x'd the tutorial and went to the game. Now, the controls are easy if you are used to sims or tycoons, but if you are not, i suggest you try to figure it out on your own. that would help more then the tutorial.

The game was sort of catchy. I designed a few movies and added subtitles and music. You can record your own music and add sound effects in post production. You hire stars to fill the roles and boost their mood to heighten their preformance.

The only bad thing is there is no distinction between women and men. I don't think a woman would really need the option "facial hair" and men "eve makeup" and "lipstick"

The onlt thing i can say for this game is: BRAVO!

Happy Shopping.

----Nessie, who's 12 now--------

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