If you love movies, try your hand at making one. The team at Lionhead Studios has come up with one of the best simulation games ever — The Movies. The core ideas are unique and create an experience that is vastly different from any average game. For players who appreciate different aspects of creative gaming, The Movies is worth a dekko.

You start off with an empty studio where you are required to construct buildings, hire the crew, appoint directors and stars to work in the film. You’ll be given a huge sum of money and you have the freedom to move at your own pace. But hidden beneath this glitz and glamour is a powerful system for creating some fairly complex movies. The system is easy to work with, even if it takes some time to get things right.

You can play the same game in different ways. That is sure to appeal to a number of gamers, but then all the extra sets and props can only be unlocked in the course of playing the main game. Once unlocked, each item can be used in a sandbox mode, which allows you to reduce the level of difficulty. But if you wish to unlock the secrets of good cinema, you’ll have to play through the various decades of technological knowledge.

The only feature that creates problems are the artificial limitations that Lionhead has imposed. The biggest of these is the limited number of employees you can hire. That places an unwanted focus on work management. So when your studio gets big enough, buildings acquire a dilapidated look due to lack of maintenance, movies don’t have enough extras or crew, and the trash doesn’t get cleared.

Of course, your biggest and most important employees are your stars. They’ll need to be suitably fashionable, always in the limelight, and as happy as can be, in order to give their best performance.

This game within the game means that you’ll have to chalk out a strategy to make the best use of your stars and care for them. This can be fun but only when there are few of them. If you have too many of them to deal with, keeping all of them happy can pose a problem. The level of detail in the sets and buildings is mind-boggling. The sound effects are also pleasant. So creating a wonderful studio can be fun provided you plan it out well.

The Movies is based on some terrific ideas. Lionhead could very well have struck gold with this title considering the amount of detail involved which provides the gamer with an ideal opportunity to hone his creative skill.

The movie-making tools are enough to recommend the game to creative players, but those looking for a hard-core tycoon game or a great management game should probably look elsewhere. But if making movies is your dream, look no further. The Movies will translate it into a virtual reality.

Minimum system requirements: Operating System: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, processor: 800 MHz or higher, RAM: 256 MB or higher, free hard disk space: 2.4 GB or higher, video card: 32 MB or higher, 2x DVD-ROM drive.