Video games stopped being the little brother of audiovisuals to become a first-rate generator of aesthetics, stories and emotions. ‘Secret Level‘ has just landed on Prime Video as a tribute to virtual worlds, from the great retro classics to the latest additions to the pantheon of digital gods. At the controls is Tim Miller, one of the creators of ‘Love, Death + Robots’, who already brought an episodic experiment very similar to this one to Netflix.
And as in ‘Love, Death + Robots’, each short exhibits its own style, although here, as it is based on previous material, The margins are narrower and there is less tendency towards experimentationcloning in many cases the style of the cinematics of the games themselves. The first batch of chapters (the second one that completes this first season will arrive shortly) includes eight episodes of around 15 minutes each, and adapts ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, ‘Sifu’, ‘New World’, ‘Unreal Tournament ‘, ‘Warhammer 40,000’, ‘Pac-Man’, ‘Crossfire’ and ‘Armored Core’.
And that is sometimes a problem, since the colorful variety of the ‘Love, Death + Robots’ shorts is missed, as well as the humor and capacity for surprise and risk that they demonstrated in many episodes. Here we have to stick to the canon of the games, because we already know how nervous fans get as soon as someone wants to give the slightest surprise with the adaptations, and that need to please the ungrateful fandom at all costs weighs down the final result a bit.
Still, there are surprises and discoveries. One of them, as it could not be otherwise, is the chapter dedicated to ‘Pac-Man’, which for obvious reasons can be adapted in any way, and the darkest and most insane route possible is chosen. Aesthetic daring is also on the side of ‘Sifu’, from Digic Pictures, which successfully imitates the aesthetics of ‘Arcane’ and exhibits choreographies that many action films with real actors would want. Finally, the brutal and expeditious chapter dedicated to ‘Warhammer 40,0000’, the most spectacular of the lot, makes one wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea, for the upcoming film adaptation, to opt for the animated format.
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