Forum - View topicNEWS: Secret Level Animated Series Gets 2nd Season
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WatcherZer
Posts: 325 |
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I watched the initial episode dump, a couple were good like the Sifu and Crossfire episodes, while the Aeternum one despite being a bit like a camp mobile game advert trailer (think Clash of Clans or Forge of Empires) was quite good. The Unreal Tournament one was average, wasnt good but wasnt bad. The Warhammer 40k one was disappointing, just an average fan-film in narrative quality, the D&D one was another straight up trailer ending with a movie pose charge against the god Tiamat. The Pac-Man one which was similar to the Winnie the Pooh horror films was so bad it should never have been released, it seriously hurts the brand.
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WANNFH
 Posts: 1884 |
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 793 |
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What the heck does "hurting the brand" even mean here? Is Pac-Man's reputation on the line? Are people seeing that episode and going, "I hate Pacman now!"? Do you have stocks in pacman?
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MFrontier
Posts: 14671 |
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I hope they better pace out some of the episodes but I'm curious what games they'll use next (and hopefully it isn't just a Sony showcase).
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6415 |
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Look at the shit that went down with Namco Bandai & ATGames (yes the same ATGames responsible for those terrible Sega Genesis systems from last decade) over the royalty rights to Ms.Pacman. That’s done more damage to the brand than this has. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Tue Dec 17, 2024 10:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6768 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm seeing a lot of hype over this series, I have this on my watchlist but I haven't got chance to watch the 1st episode yet. I really need to start watching this show whenever I have a chance.
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WatcherZer
Posts: 325 |
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The Pac-Man episode was an R18 gorefest, thematically similar but very different visually to the announced game. The Secret Level showrunner Tim Miller said they struggled with how to adapt the Pac-Man and it went through several complete rewrites.
Yes there are some that love the violence but no it didn't go down well, Polygon called it "traumatizing for kids", Old School Gamer Mag said:
IGN said:
The New Pac-Man game is a spinoff of the Secret Level episode rather than the Amazon episode being created to promote it, Secret Level episodes have apparently been in production for over 5 years and Namco started working on the new Pac-Man game 4 years ago after beginning the collaboration on the show. |
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veemonjosh
Posts: 317 |
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The game came first, according to Tim Miller:
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Covnam
 Posts: 3891 |
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I'm surprised since I've only heard mixed things, but I guess they probably only care about the streaming numbers.
Hopefully the second season takes what works and drops what doesn't. It'd be nice to see a larger variety of style too. |
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YackDe
 Posts: 269 |
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Some of these episodes are weirdly slapdash. Like the Exodus episode is so clearly not a story designed for a 12 minute short, it comes across like something hastily put together in an attempt to drum up interest in a game that's not even out yet.
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WANNFH
Posts: 1884 |
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Bvick00
 Posts: 66 Location: Goa, India |
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Here's my ranking for the initial 8 episodes of Secret Level Season 1 :
1.Warhammer 40 K 2.Unreal Tournament 3.Armored Core 4.Pac Man 5.New World 6.Crossfire 7.Dungeon & Dragons 8.Sifu The first 3 had some great action sequences to them, albeit their stories are rather thin. I actually liked the Pac Man episode for what it was, an interesting horror and brutalist reimagination of the game's core concept. New World felt like an expanded,funny and mature take on some of those mobile games ads you tend to see from time to time (kinda ironic considering that it is an ad for the new version of that game). The last three were just so-so IMO. Edit: I watched the 2nd batch of episodes, so here's my revised rating of all Secret Level S1 episodes : 1.Warhammer 40 K 2.Unreal Tournament 3.Armored Core 4.Pac Man 5.New World 6.Spelunky 7.Crossfire 8.The Outer Worlds 9.Exodus 10.Honor of Kings 11.Dungeons and Dragons 12.Sifu 13.Concord 14.Playtime 15.Mega Man Playtime was just a poor attempt at ad for PlayStation IPs (Helldivers, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, just to name a few) and that Mega Man episode was just....ugh,lame af, IMO. They had all that Mega Man lore and they barely utilised it, what the heck. The Blue Bomber deserved better that. Last edited by Bvick00 on Thu Dec 19, 2024 9:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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GATSU
Posts: 15661 |
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Just wondering. Is that Pac-Man segment anything like this unfamilyfriendly parody? https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/609550
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Lizuka
 Posts: 295 |
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This could not possibly have done any more damage to the Pac-Man brand than stuff like Ghostly Adventures and Pac-Man Museum and Mega Tunnel Battle already did. It's a series they do dumb things with all the time, it's fine.
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 578 Location: PA / USA |
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I've been sitting through this sort of stuff for a long time. The Matrix did one, Halo did one. 3D, CGI, anime..... got some famed director or animator to work on some small several-minute feature of some franchise in their style.... I hate it. I hate all of it, and stuff like Secret Level really gnaws at me because what really I want are more things like the CGI Monster Hunter: Guild film. It's cheesy, too kid-toned, and an English dub does not do it justice, but goddamn is it Monster Hunter world-building in a series that very rarely slows up and peels back the curtain as to how the characters and societies live day-to-day when you're not running around in it and gaming. People BLASTED Guild when it released, but it's the absolute most purest bunch of storytelling immersion in video form for the Monster Hunter franchise, even more than the original Castlevania show, which was considered a pretty big hit on Netflix. It kills me because Mega Man has some pretty amazing story beats. I don't know who all has seen the little Day of Sigma OVA included on the PSP game, but the moment they started showing NES-era Light and Rock in the trailers for this, it was an immediate signal flare that whoever was making the short didn't "get" Mega Man - the darker lighting and over-emotional moments Light is trying to prepare Rock for? Day of Sigma already leaned into that, and I'd argue did it better because in that rendition, Dr Light is sending X into a future he won't be there to see. It's like, if any fan worth their salt had gone in and done a Mega Man short like this, it would have instead been focused in on Proto Man. Fake the audience out, think they're getting the origin story of Mega Man, but then it turns out there's a flaw in his core & drama ensues.... what we get instead with Secret Level and literally every other project like this is the most barebones, surface-level garbage when what we really want is Rock and Blues or X and Zero's big X5 moments..... Zero and Ciel, EXE and Lan discovering what Lan's dad and grandad were into, Tron and Roll trying to bring Volnutt back.... there's a reason Mega Man Legends 3 is a drum that the fanbase is constantly beating. I remember back in the 90's and 2000's when anime would get some kind of mention on the news or in magazines, I'd find it was a pendulum swing of either "all anime is this sexy-violent Ghost in the Shell-Akira medium where heads explode and nudes are rubbed on the camera", or it's Pokemon, and Raymond (Everybody Loves him?) has to go find a Charizard card before Bart watches the TV and gets a seizure. Meanwhile nowhere was anyone saying in the mainstream that Cowboy Bebop was probably so above & beyond action/drama television in general, that most American live action Network TV shows probably couldn't keep up with its quality. It would be an absolute dream project to work on something as big and fun as an OG Phantasy Star story of the size & scope of the Netflix Voltron or Castlevania show. It's an offense to my will to keep existing into tomorrow, every time one of these Secret Level-style projects come around and give us absolutely nothing lasting or memorable. And I say that as someone that actually enjoys viewing The Animatrix alongside re-watches of the trilogy films. I'm sick of these projects, and I'm sick of "re-reading" the film version of those 90's and 2000's articles where everyone only remembers anime as some hyper-sexual violent explosion that you forget even had a story after watching it. |
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