The Movies: Stunts & Effects review

Thanks to last year's film studio sim The Movies, you no longer have to watch films contrived by lazy Hollywood execs; now you can contrive films of your own. TheStunts & Effects expansion pack adds more sets, costumes, props, vehicles and backdrops for your virtual productions, along with a new employee type: the stuntman. That's all great, and fans of The Sims -style "god gameplay" will appreciate the new bits as they hire directors, bankroll productions and try to keep their stars' scandals out of the papers. However, nothing radically alters the fundamentals of gameplay like the new Freecam mode - and that's where Stunts & Effects really brings the magic home.

Freecam mode blows the doors off of Advanced Movie-making.You're free to choose the camera placement and movement for each shot, rather than picking from a static palette of pre-rendered templates. This will profoundly change the way you approach the game and the movies you make with it. It's now much closer to the real-world filmmaking process: script, storyboard, shoot and edit, in that order. One of the biggest frustrations in the original game was pawing through heaps of stock clips and finally settling for something completely different from what you were looking for. Tarantino never compromises his vision, and now neither do you. Freecam alone is worth the price of admission, especially if you (like many Movies owners) enjoy the moviemaking aspects of the game more than the game itself. They should have called it The Movies: Camera Unleashed - it'd make more sense than Jaws Unleashed, anyway.