Secret Level

It shows so much proficiency in creating these deeply-imagined addendums to established worlds, all we want is more.

Secret Level is ultimately hit-or-miss, as one would expect from an anthology series, with the best episodes seizing the chance to tell exciting new stories within their worlds rather than trying to sell the audience on their games or the possibility of their own adaptations.

Created by Tim Miller, Secret Level features a handful of standouts that evoke considerable senses of mood. .... When it attempts substantial commentary, though, Secret Level proves to be reductive.

With a dubious selection of source material and indistinct styles of animation, Secret Level struggles to find satisfying stories for a short-form anthology.

Taken individually, few of these shorts are bad, even if some of them are ugly. (The Outer Worlds installment, despite having one of the best scripts of the lot, is also the one that puts the most focus on human faces—completely to its detriment.) Taken as a whole, though, they represent an inability to look at gaming and see much more than a grim, dark present.

All in all, this feels like a collection of extended trailers pretending to be a TV show. But with 11 episodes still to watch, it’s hard to say whether or not a general audience will enjoy it.

As a fan of "Love Death + Robots," "Secret Level" felt to me like the show that "Love Death + Robots" haters incorrectly accuse it of being: a series of boring tech demos and video game cut scenes focused more on violence than good storytelling.

The animation for every episode was breathtaking and although the episodes didn’t have enough time to delve deeper into the source material I am delighted to get more content from some of my favourite series and games (warhammer, armoured core and sifu) I very much enjoyed every episode even the ones I didn’t expect much from like Pac-Man. I hope In the future we can see more from different franchises.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The first batch of episodes was excellent. Some good episodes, some great ones, and the Unreal Tournament one was my particular favorite. Great fun, great action, great writing, a great start. The second batch of episodes was a disaster and there is nearly nothing to redeem it. While the first batch had a great balance of dialogue, story and action, the second batch is nearly nothing but bad dialogue. If it wasn't for that perfect Unreal Tournament episode I'd give the entire series a 5.

Unfortunately, Tim Miller has gone from enticing independent storytelling to surface level eye candy. A few episodes have interesting narratives to spin off of existing IPs, such as PacMan, Unreal Tournaments, and Armored Core, but the majority of episodes are short eye catchers with nonexistent meaning and horribly oblivious writing. I understand the show cannot be as original as Love, Death, and Robots due to its very nature, but most of these episodes could have had even a sprinkle of something other than fan service and basic, spelled-out storytelling.

Well many of the episodes are visually very impressive, it feels like a cross between advertising, and a visual demo, not an actual show, and not actual stories. Almost all of the main characters are also in some way invincible, which removes a lot of the tension and storytelling potential. Many of the shorts also include references to video games, but have almost no relationship to the **** general, I suppose it's fine if you want to look at something pretty, but the storytelling left a lot to be desired.