Action! These are the words you’ll hear from your director in the newest release from Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios, The Movies. The Movies has been a much anticipated release that puts the gamer in the director’s chair where they can run their own movie studio, complete with being able to make your own movies.

The Movies is half sim, half creative direction. Starting in the career mode of the game you will be put in place as the newest movie studio on the block in Hollywood in the 1930’s, back when movies were just starting to be made. Back then there was not nearly as much technology in movies as what we have now; therefore, you are limited to having silent movies with no color.

In making your studio you start off by being able to pick your studio’s name as well as your logo. You are then given a nearly empty studio lot, a small wad of cash, and start off by hiring some workers. In the game you can hire lot maintenance, builders, movie crew, writers, scientists and of course actors, directors and extras. You can even hire assistants for your actors to keep them happy and watch them run around the studio with your actor, sucking up to them all day.

All of your workers begin with pretty much no experience. Some of your actors might have small amounts of experience in different genres. With this, expect your first few movies to be pretty bad. You will get reviews mentioning how your crew was inexperienced, but don’t worry. They will all get better over time. You can also have your actors train in certain genres by just dropping them on sets so they will not be so horrible when they appear in your movie.

When you start building your studio, it seems at first that you have a large amount of space to work with. That is until you find out how many buildings and sets you will be able to make. Most sets take up a very large amount of space and you quickly find that you are just placing things anywhere you can fit them, but at the same time, making sure that you keep your buildings connected with everything. If you do not, your studio will lose prestige. Other ways your lot can lose prestige is by not having trash cans, janitors to clean up litter, or have grass and not water it. In general, studio lot upkeep. You can improve your prestige by adding props around like plants or statues.

Writers need to build experience as well. At the beginning, they will create the most god awful movies ever created. You may end up with a movie of a guy looking at something off frame and then just walk up the stairs. It is nice that you have a choice of what movie to make, including comedy, horror, action, romance and sci-fi. The game will tell you want genre is popular at that time to help you choose what type of movie you should make. You can start by making your own movie scripts by using the Custom Scriptwriting Office. Grab a blank script and use the Advanced Moving-Maker to start making the movies of your dreams. At the beginning of the game in career mode, you won’t start off with many sets. You will have to research them using your scientists. But even when you do start getting sets that you can make a basic decent movie in, you will soon find many limitations. Every set you receive will have different scenes that you can choose from, things like – Critical Talk, Walk with Gun, and Monster Surprise. First of all, if you are hoping that you will be able to have your actors do whatever you want them to do; it is not going to happen, sorry. Granted, that would make the game a lot more complex, but I soon found that I was not able to make the movie I wanted to create.