Four episodes of Amazon's Secret Level anthology hints at a rich, visual pick'n'mix, but is that enough?
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Coming up with a good name for a TV show is hard. So whoever read the initial outline for Prime Video's imminent gaming-inspired animated anthology and pitched Secret Level as the title deserves a shoutout. It's short, snappy and succeeds at putting a general audience in mind of video games while also hinting at something exciting and mysterious. Crucially, it also communicates that this series will build on something that already exists: a little extra treat.
So far, so cute. But the concept of Secret Level also sounds like a marketer's dream, a clever way to package extended cinematic trailers for different gaming properties as desirable streaming content. (Another bonus? No spoilsports complaining about the use of pre-rendered animation rather than in-game footage). On paper the list of 15 episodes reads like an eclectic supermarket sweep of franchises past, present and future, from vintage chomper Pac-Man to upcoming space opera Exodus. Yet the inclusion of Amazon Games' recently revamped MMO New World: Aeternum has the non-sexy whiff of corporate synergy.
So will it be art or ads? Well-crafted vignettes adding a new dimension to beloved gaming worlds or Unskippable Cutscenes: The Series? As the official global release date of 10th December looms, there has been a breadcrumb trail of multimedia promo in keeping with the piecemeal premise, with episode snippets and details accessed by entering special codes via a dedicated portal. But after sampling the first four episodes provided as press previews - all clocking in at under 20 minutes - the potential strengths and weaknesses of the project seem clearer. Let’s dig into them.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - And They Shall Know No Fear
During an emotional Gamescom Opening Night Live appearance in August, Secret Level creator Tim Miller mentioned it had taken him and his creative collaborators three years to get the series ready for launch. That timing has worked out particularly well for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, a clomping, splattery standout from earlier in the year that now gets a Christmas streaming victory lap. Clive Standen reprises his role as Lieutenant Titus but it was likely a brief session in the recording booth: once the helmet is on, he lets his chainsword do the talking.
Titus and three fellow Ultramarines are dispatched to a bleak planet for what is essentially a suicide mission. ("Projected Mortality: Absolute" is the sardonic official assessment.) This involves running a gauntlet of volatile Mad Max rejects and nightmarish cave creatures. Back-to-back action sequences are staged with heft and verve, with confidently deployed time-ramping techniques emphasising the brutality and occasional beauty of the combat. Rarely has a slow walk away from a big explosion been so well-earned. But once the Ultramarines get closer to their target, the battle switches to another realm, and pulls off a more impressionistic setting that feels like a nod to painting actual Warhammer miniatures (or at least the experience of huffing paint fumes). Animated by Miller's own veteran effects house Blur Studio, it is a sure-footed start.
Unreal Tournament - Xan
"Double kill!" Gamers of a certain vintage will be zapped back to old LAN parties when they hear the gravelly commentator from the Unreal Tournament episode (again animated by Blur Studio). But while the arena FPS franchise has plenty of lore to draw from, Xan – named for its mute mechanical protagonist – boils it all down to a single character arc. It is the Gladiator-style tale of an exploited mining droid who leads a semi-successful robot rebellion against the all-powerful Liandri Mining Corporation. Xan and his fellow "Corrupts" are promptly punished by being forced to compete in public deathmatches in front of baying (if rather indistinct) crowds.
Most striking is the lead character design and animation, with Xan a clanking but surprisingly graceful marvel of actuators and JCB-yellow limbs who manages to communicate both personality and purpose via flickers of his single glowing green eye. If the haughty Gamesmaster (voiced by Élodie Yung) and various other humans and alien combatants have a more stylised, almost manga-style look, Xan and his loyal robot clan look like they could step off the screen and into the real world. The result is a heartfelt martial salute to an influential chunk of gaming history, with a suitably banging EDM score by German duo 2WEI.
Concord - Tale of the Implacable
Time to pour one out for Sony's luckless sci-fi hero shooter. Concord's catastrophic late-summer launch saw it yanked from sale after 11 days. With the game permanently shut down, Tale of the Implacable functions as both proof it actually existed and raucous requiem, even if none of the featured characters - Freegunners, in the parlance - overlap with the source material beyond their taste for careworn cosmic streetwear and the odd nifty double-pronged sniper rifle.
Concord's vibe was very much post-Guardians of the Galaxy, with scoundrel-like mercenaries feuding in a universe of eye-searing colours. Here you get a jailbreak story staged like a heist flick, bouncing along with fizzy energy. Cool action movie things happen, but this particular Freegunner gang are allowed to be idiots, which adds some welcome underdog charm. The space junkyard aesthetic is cluttered and scruffily gorgeous but framed via witty editing, particularly in a zippy opening montage that ticks off all the ways that faster-than-light space travel can uncaringly kill you. The animation is credited to Axis Studios, a Scottish visual effects studio that abruptly closed in July, making it a bittersweet elegy twice over. RIP.
Dungeons & Dragons - The Queen's Cradle
Despite its fantasy setting of classic D&D, The Queen's Cradle cranks up the naturalism. Paris-based animation studio Unit Image clearly have state-of-the-art performance capture tech, giving the story's predominantly non-human characters - including a kung-fu dwarf, a shapeshifting druid and a spell-casting gnome - facial animation of startling verisimilitude. Magical realism, indeed.
Closely studying faces is even a plot point: when a paladin-led fellowship of heroes liberates a prisoner from the malevolent Cult of the Dragon, the young boy's phizog has been inked with mystical scrawls and runes. Is it all part of a sacrifice ritual? An initial focus on nocturnal campfire bonding is a nice change of pace but things soon escalate into grand widescreen action with an eye for a memorable set-piece, notably a desperate retreat from vengeful pursuers across a massive stone sword bridging a waterfall. There is also a lot of business with a massive regal dragon. But this story echoes the tabletop gaming source material in other ways: when the credits roll you may find yourself already imagining the likeable party's next adventure.
These first four episodes set a solid baseline of craft and visual richness. Official press images really don't do the material justice – in motion, these shorts all look casually incredible. But the key to going beyond the realm of technical showreel will be finding some extra dramatic spark that transcends the source material. Among the remaining 11 episodes, the Armored Core story starring Keanu Reeves is surely carrying the highest expectation of being breathtaking, while hiring Arnold Schwarzenegger to do a voice in New World: Aeternum feels like a brazen cheat code to ensure it ends up on an Amazon spreadsheet as at least the second most-watched instalment.
Of the rest, the heavily stylised beat-em-up Sifu and wacky sci-fi satire of The Outer Worlds 2 look like they should be tonally faithful to their excellent source material, while Mega Man seems to be doing cyborg Pixar. Everything else - the aforementioned Pac-Man and Exodus, Spelunky, Chinese MOBA behemoth Honor of Kings, South Korean FPS hit Crossfire and a vaguely defined episode spotlighting first-party PlayStation characters - is harder to predict. But that will hopefully be part of the fun: dipping into a joystick pick'n'mix of shorts and landing on something surprising, comforting or delightful.
One last reason to be optimistic ahead of the launch date is the brief episode title interstitial after Secret Level's predictably slick, minimalist, sonic-cathedral-soundscape intro sequence. It's a little visual blurp that channels the plink-plonk spirit of the Nintendo Gamecube's boot-up screen, with each instalment getting its own cute customised icon. It feels like Secret Level's secret handshake to gamers: we know this world. Now let's explore it.