The Movies: Stunts & Effects

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The Movies: Stunts and Effects
Image:Stunts-and-effects.jpg
Developer(s) Lionhead Studios
Publisher(s) Activision
Designer(s) Peter Molyneux
Engine RenderWare
Release date(s) June 6th , 2006 (US)
Genre(s) Simulation
Mode(s) Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s) ESRB: Teen (13+)
Platform(s) Windows
Media CD (3), DVD (1)
System requirements PC: Windows 98SE or later
800MHz CPU
256MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound and video card.

The Movies: Stunts and Effects is an expansion pack for the PC simulation game The Movies. The expansion pack is developed by Lionhead Studios. It was released on June 6, 2006 in North America and was released on June 16 in the UK.

[edit] New features

The expansion pack adds stunts, stunt men, new props, effects, sets and costumes to the game. New features allow players to add stunt doubles to replace their actors to prevent injuries. Helicopters, planes and other fast moving land, sea and airborn objects will be available. The new expansion pack will introduce the 'Free-Cam' feature that will allow players to move and position the camera as they like in any scenes. The player will be able to buy sets like Wild West Bedroom. There will be changes to The Movies Online with the release of the game. Some of the new sets include: Blue and Green Screens and Miniature Cities for giant creatures of your choosing.

Sets:

  • SFX: Miniature City
  • SFX: Devastated Miniature City
  • Wild West: Travelling Automobile (Wild West Carriage)
  • SFX: Blue Screen
  • SFX: Green Screen
  • Sci-Fi: Bridge 4
  • Sci-Fi: Corridor 5
  • Sci-Fi: Corridor 4
  • Urban: Municipal Reception
  • Suburban: Bathroom 2
  • Wild West: Bedroom
  • War: Barracks
  • Rural: Jungle
  • Urban: Commercial City Street

Note: Not all of the sets are unlocked at the time of installation (you need to unlock them in story mode first)

[edit] Criticism

Though the expansion was very well received by the vast majority of the online community, when the novelty had died down, many players began requesting additional sets, scenes and props. Many players say that the problem that beset the original game continues with the Expansion, being that certain film genres are neglected in favour of others. Western has several sets dedicated to it, while horror only has a few.

Science Fiction is another genre players feel has been neglected, with only two new sets being added and following the classic "Corridor, Bridge" formula, with no sets to provide additional areas of a spaceship. Many feel that while the addition of actual spaceship models in the game was a vast improvement, but the vehicles for this genre are not as numerous or as varied as those in other genres.

Many mods are in place to combat these issues but as of August 2006, no official plans from Lionhead have been made to create additional sets, scenes and props either in a new expansion or via electronic download.

A lot of criticism was also launched against the fact that many of the new sets had to be unlocked by playing through the story mode on the game. This led some players to devise a program which allowed all sets to be unlocked at the start of the game.

Another criticism was that Stunts and Effects only was released in English and German. People who don't speak one of those languages will have difficulty using Stunts and Effects.

[edit] External links

In other languages