Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 04/Sep 00:01

Blockbuster Inc. – Review

Tycoon games are still booming lately, though a small niche that hasn’t been entirely filled is the one for movie studio simulators. Back in the 2000s, there was The Movies, a movie studio Tycoon game that is still beloved to this day and sets the bar pretty high. With Blockbuster Inc., smaller indie studio Super Sly Fox takes their jab at the premise. And it’s also their debut title in general, something that really shows since the resulting game is fun yet rough around the edges. Story As is often the case in Tycoon games, the plot revolves around a simple rags-to-riches story. You start with a predetermined amount of cash in the bank and an empty plot of land. Through your own business ventures, you’re tasked with transforming this huge slab of nothingness into a thriving movie studio that produces blockbusters, shoots actors into fame, and wins awards. You can also start in an era of your choosing, ranging from the 1920s all the way to our current day, which affects the type of technology you can start with and how much you’ll have to unlock along the way. Graphics Blockbuster Inc. doesn’t look bad but we don’t think it looks great either. The game has a cartoony style very similar to other popular Tycoon games like Planet Coaster, though with a lot less detail. The quality of the graphics is quick to devolve if you zoom out a little, which you’ll have to do often if you want to keep a good oversight of your studio. The user interface is uncomfortably crowded and not always easy to navigate. Besides this, however, we did appreciate the amount of sets, decorations, and items that evolve with the eras the game covers, allowing you to give your studio a unique look. Sound We don’t have anything to complain about here in terms of sound design. This game has a nice enough soundtrack that also evolves with the timeline as you work your way from the early 1920s to the late 2010s. There’s always some fun background music to listen to and a lot of good sound effects that bring life to the world around you, such as traffic around the studio. Later on, you get the option to edit the soundtracks of your movies too and we were pleasantly surprised at the sheer number of different tracks available. The game has no voice acting. Gameplay Blockbuster Inc. is a movie studio Tycoon game that’s all about managing your money and your employees. You can start the game in whatever era you want, so you’re not forced to start from the 1920s if you want to jump right into the thick of it. However, you’re still limited in what genres and themes you’ll have unlocked at the start. The difficulty you pick decides your starting budget, and after that, you’re thrown straight into the tutorials. As a side note: while the tutorials are almost mandatory with how complicated this game’s interface is, we also encountered a bug in one that meant we had to restart an entire segment of the tutorial for seemingly no reason. With your starting budget, you can go about building your studio. The first thing you need is a few offices for your staff, a canteen, and a research office. All these rooms can be built from scratch and filled with the needed furniture, though the game conveniently also has predesigned rooms you can throw down quickly. We appreciate this feature. The other thing you need is at least one set for your filming to take place. Sets are tied to genres and themes, which is important to keep in mind when making movies. As you progress in the game, the plot of land your studio occupies can be expanded to fit more buildings and sets. Your employees start as nobodies but will gain experience and fame by working on movies. Want to give them an extra boost? You can send them out to train so they get better at their jobs. But you also need to keep them happy by managing their work schedule, giving them good food, and even making sure they earn enough money to rent a home. If you run out of cash, you can pop by the bank to take out a loan. Then there’s the fun part: making a movie. Obviously, you can adjust the basic sliders like what genre the movie is and who acts in it, and let the game write a script for you, but that’s boring. With a simple click, you can take it upon yourself to customize scenes to your heart’s content. Sadly this is where the game shows it’s a lot of cool ideas with flunky execution. While you can move individual actors around on the set and change camera angles or costumes, none of the animations currently allow actors to interact with each other or with objects on the set. The best you can do is use the very few fighting or kissing animations to try and mimic an interaction. And your actors just clip through set furniture. This seriously limits creativity. While Blockbuster Inc. does include a lot of immersive features, such as the ability to research new technology or how you can only include stunts in your movie if you have hired stunt actors, the game feels shallow. The final quality of your movie is determined by things such as how experienced your actors are or what genre is popular, but it still feels hard to make bad movies, and earning money is very easy. And that’s the main annoyance we have. Everything feels too simple, and a lot of the game is spent waiting around. Before you know it, your studio will be thriving with no effort. Conclusion At the end of the day, Blockbuster Inc. is too easy to be a fun management game and too underdeveloped to remain entertaining when it comes to making movies. We hope to see this change in the future since the developers seem very open to adding new content and taking feedback into account. For now, however, this might only entertain the most hardcore Tycoon fans.