windows games The Movies

The Movies is three games in one, or more accurately, two games and an editing program. It's a tycoon-style strategy game that puts you in charge of a movie studio, and a Sims-style people simulator that forces you to satisfy the needs and egos of your stars to keep them sober and producing quality films. The moviemaker is pretty much its own thing, only required to make the highest-rated movies but it has little effect on either of the other two parts of the game.

The Movies is purely a sandbox game. There's little structure, or any missions or scenarios. You can set some starting parameters, year, amount of cash, whether you want a pre-built studio or not so you can just focus on making movies but you're always trying to maintain your studio and make money.

Unsurprisingly, you make money producing movies. Though the structure of constructing a script, rehearsing, assigning directors and actors, and sending them off to shoot the film is similar to a little-known gem called Hollywood Mogul, Lionhead deserves a lot of credit for developing a unique interface. You spend a lot of time dragging people (with a funny thwack sound) to and from locations to drop them on objects to perform actions. Once writers create a script, you drag it to production. It's harder to describe than it is to actually utilize; this is one simple, polished, sophisticated, and terrific interface.