I'm going to answer the question in my headline in very literal terms, just to get that out there before anyone decides to comment “this is it, duh”: Secret level there for IP extension, and money. That's it, that's almost certainly the real reason, since all operators care about these days is IP, why else would you think Disney goes into series and Hollywood is looking for any game to change, although it is a bit of a silly idea? Except, I don't even know how Secret Level plans to do that.
The first batch of episodes dropped this week, and I'll be honest with you, I thought they were all a bit rubbish. The best thing I think I can say about any of them is that the Pac-Man episode (which we'll come back to) was bold, and I wouldn't even say that if I'm honest. Seen at their worst, these episodes are fancy advertisements for their own properties, but if we look at them that way, I think they've failed in that respect.
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Putting things off is the Dungeons & Dragons program, a tabletop game that has important moments, but is widely known as a game where you play the role of doing the most amazing nonsense with your friends. Instead, we just got a big battle sequence that was clearly meant to be that I couldn't care less because I didn't get to know any of the characters, and that's not the draw of a world like that. ? It certainly didn't encourage me to get my friends together and try it.
None of the other episodes were very successful in getting me to check out their buildings either, so the question is how do they stand on their own? Well, not particularly good to be honest. Sifu at the episode was good, but only one long fight scene. Crossfire's was so dull I was half on my phone the whole time. There was an attempt at comedy in New World's, but it fell flat. Even Keanu Reeves couldn't save the Armored Core episode which was really just a bunch of mechs fighting each other, and I usually eat that up.
Not being a late 90s/early aughts parent who doesn't really get video games and just thinks all the violence will poison their kids' brains, but they were all just a little bit violent too ! In fact, it felt almost ironic how every episode that was shown had some gratuitous violence in one way or another. As a collector's item it felt like the very thing that assholes used to degrade video games too, it felt completely disconnected from what it is and what games could be.
Yes, there is a lot of violence in them, but the short time for each event takes us away from a context that sometimes justifies that violence. I think I would really like it Warhammer 40K game episode, with its mysterious and atmospheric vibe, but when literally every episode is full of violence as well, there's nothing that makes it stand out. And when I say every episode, I mean every episode! Including the Pac-Man one.
Pac-Man is perhaps the most ridiculous of them all, except for the Warhammer one, with the titular lip-flapper killing animals in increasingly bloody ways before going down on the raw flesh. they have There is a strange reference to the games themselves as when he, a gray alien, at least not the floating yellow orb you would assume to be Pac-Man, eats cherries. Get it! Pac-Man! It felt like a fan film, not that there's anything wrong with fan films, it's just that they can be incredibly selfish, and yes, sometimes pointlessly violent just for the sake of exploring a bottom -think Pac-Man, but edgy. “How revolutionary!” they write with the strongest possible sense of sarcasm.
Sure, there are more episodes coming up next week, but I really just don't get the point of Secret Level as a series. Despite being days old, it is already dated, a reminder of a time that may never have existed in the first place. But I guess, if anything, we can at least get some idea of what Concordance it was meant to be, for better or worse.
