Amazon Secret Level [Mild spoilers]

[sundancer 43057xp 3]

Well so now I’ve seen all 8 episodes that are released so far.

To sum it up: visually they are alle very good looking.

Story wise: hit and miss.

Arnold as the voice of the eternal king was funny and the last episode with Armoured Core/Keanu Reeves was gritty and dark. Pac Man was the biggest surprise.

But the rest felt like unnecessary long video game cut scenes. Especially the D&D and Warhammer 40k were very bland.

Short lived entertainment for ~90 minutes but nothing really worth remembering.

[avien 2033xp 3]

I haven’t watched all 8 episodes.
I watched the 40k one and was surprised to find that the story was actually somehow worse than Ultramarines. Complete lack of dialogue didn’t help, I feel even some inter-squad chatter would have greatly improved it, without having to change a single frame of animation.

 

I watched the pac man one as well because it auto played and that was surprisingly dark for the underlying material. Overall the two episodes didn’t leave me particularly interested in watching the rest.

[grantinvanman 2227xp 1]

I’ve only watched the 40k one, and rather enjoyed it! Wasn’t expecting much, so the relentless action, excellent animation, and the portrayal of the demon at the end, made it very good – for me.

I’m going to watch the rest tonight.

[limburger 21763xp 2]

It kind of feels like the Blizzard Warcraft movie all over again.

The various short movies Blizzard had done were looking good and interesting.
When it came to making a movie … things fell apart rather quickly.

It show cases that the problem these days is not in the art or animation, but in the actual story telling (and voice acting).

I suspect that’s why the episodes are less than 30 minutes and practically all of them are extended combat scenes of some form with minimal dialog. If they’re doing a new season then I hope they include more story and less fighting.

Pacman was the last one I’ve watched and I liked it the best. Turning that game into a horror story of sorts was brilliant.
Sifu (Tekken?) tried something interesting, but made no real sense.
The one with Schwarzenegger was funny, but I don’t know which game that was supposed to be.

40k highlighted once again the great mismatch between the lore and the game itself.
In the lore the space marines are almost brutally efficient lethal killers. In game they’d be lucky to survive the first encounter.
It definitely needed more lines to add character and depth.

It’s kind of funny how the combat in the Unreal Tournament episode did match the lethality of the game itself 😉 (with the possible exception of those bots using themselves as cover 😀 ). I think they also had the announcer of the game (or at least a sound-a-like).

On a related note : I miss Unreal Tournament. Such a shame the game tanked once 2k3 version got released. It never recovered from that and the market moved on as the genre practically got replaced by the survival/last man standing combo.

[sundancer 43057xp 1]

The one with Schwarzenegger was funny, but I don’t know which game that was supposed to be.

That would be Amazons own New World: Aeternum (an MMORPG that launched and failed spectacularly in 2021 IIRC)

Sifu is a game itself and I found the story well done. Maybe you’ve missed the important bit with the glowing stones getting less and less.

Sifu is a 2022 beat ’em up game developed and published by Sloclap. Set in China, players control the child of a martial arts school’s sifu (master) who seeks revenge on those responsible for their father’s death. Every time the protagonist dies, they are resurrected by a magical talisman and age up, gaining access to more powerful attacks but reducing their health. When the player character becomes too old, they can die permanently, in which case players must restart the level from the beginning and from the same age as their initial attempt.

And on the announcer of unreal: I wouldn’t be surprised if they had just taken the audio files from the game.

HEADSHOT.

[onlyonepinman 18072xp 2]

I watched a couple of episodes last night.  I think if you view them more as proofs of concept or demonstrations, of what is possible,  they are generally pretty good I think.  Sure, the stories, where they even exist, are very basic and quite shallow.  But by the same rule, each episode is only 10 minutes long.  They are fairly good tasters for people to get a feel for different,  less main stream sci fi and fantasy settings

[limburger 21763xp 0]

@sundancer it made no sense as I don’t remember that aging as part of Tekken. It had a similar style, but I guess that’s because one of the primary characters in Tekken is an old angry Asian guy.

I guess the bad guys and the boss in that story didn’t get the resurrection tokens.

//

It very much is a tech demo series, isn’t it ?
Either they’re not confident that they can do a regular sized episode or they simply can’t extend the ideas/concept beyond the tech-demo level of competence.

Anthology series can be very good, but there’s got to be more substance for it to really deliver. Longer episodes would enable them to set the scene and explore a story hook with a bit more depth.

Not sure which game episode 7 was supposed to be. Looked like a generic counterstrike like thing. It was the one episode that showed almost realistic humans in a contemporary setting. Everything else so far was clearly fictional.

Armored Core was interesting and dark indeed.

I’d say Pacman was the best so far.
Unreal Tournament was fun because I like how they tried to expand upon the setting.
The Dungeons & Dragons episode left no room for an expansion as they were fighting at too high a level to be interesting.
The 40k episode kind of suffered the same problem. How the heck are you going to beat fighting a demon next ?
Sifu was nice and contained, but again … no room for additional material in a future episode without retconning what happened.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by  limburger.

[onlyonepinman 18072xp 0]

I suspect it was probably more to do with not investing the budget into a massive project.  These had, for the most part very simple stories that didn’t require a lot of effort to write and in most cases, minimal dialogue.  But it’s a great proof of concept and I will say that they are well and truly through Uncanny Valley and out the other side with some of that CGI.

[grantinvanman 2227xp 1]

The best one, to me, is the Pac-Man themed one. Great execution and twist!

[sundancer 43057xp 1]

So know the second part of “trailers” was released.

And you know what? I can barely remember them.

There was the The Outer Worlds one which was OK and did feel like the game did but was a bit too serious for my liking and the context.

Than there was Mega Man who somehow managed to cut all down below the 3 Minute mark. oO

The rest is a blur of “shiny graphics” and “colourful scenes” but nothing that caught me.

My top three:

1. Pac Man (that one is really good as a short form movie/story)
2. The Eternal King (Basically Arnold Schwarzenegger making fun of himself in the role of Conan)
3. Armoured Core (Keanu Reeves fighting big stompy robots and being very dark and almost out of character evil)

Over all “Love, Death & Robots” was better.

[grantinvanman 2227xp 0]

LDR was better, and you’re right: the new shorts were just meh at best. Totally forgettable.

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