Review by C.J. Bunce
Anthology series never leave the best for last, but that’s definitely the case in Prime Video’s new animated anthology series Secret Level. The result is a mixed combination of combat games adapted to three dimensions with some good science fiction entries and a few other standout episodes. The final episode, Playtime: Fulfillment, is so good it will have you thinking someone really tapped into the future of possibilities of life and video games.
If you liked even the idea of Ready Player One or you liked the format of the animated Star Wars Visions series, you’re likely to find at least a few episodes of this show worth watching.
The problem that might cause viewers to fall asleep after a few episodes is revisiting those animated video set-up sequences so common in video games, the segments that dazzle gamers into buying the games only to find the rest of the game is just more melee combat and pixels. The homage to Warhammer 40,000, And They Shall Know Fear, is one of these. The episode Unreal Tournament: Xan is even better mainly because it taps into the battle framework of Tron: Legacy and seems inspired by that movie. Oddly enough the PAC-MAN episode is the least interesting because it strays too far from the source material. As it looked from the trailer, its more Phantasm than Atari.
Viewers will get the feel that each of these episodes is either an audition tape for a new video game or a rejected audition tape, with the exception of Playtime: Fulfillment. That story is action-packed, a sequel or miniature-sized incarnation of Ready Player One, only tighter and more intense (The Outer Worlds is a fun episode that looks the most like Ready Player One–it also has the best digital human face work). It’s fun, following a girl on a job delivering a package on a bike, all with the very video game-esque goal of winning an upgrade to her bike if she gets the delivery to the destination in time. The story flips from strict fantasy to the flavor of Assassin’s Creed when a shadowy figure asks her to deliver a package off-book, and the object is a starfish-like creature that provides her with extra powers along the route to accomplish her task. It’s exactly what I was expecting, but didn’t find, with Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
Another standout episode is based on New World: Aeternum. It’s a winner because of its clever writing and humor and it features the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a king stranded on an island where inhabitants get an eternity of second chances. His pompous, arrogant king is both layered and real in his ineptitude. If you hoped for Arnold to return as Conan, this may be the closest we’ll ever see (a good argument for a King Conan animated movie?). Along with a Dungeons & Dragons episode, fantasy fans will have some reasons to show up for this series. Other voices get lost in the mix, including Keanu Reeves, Arianna Greenblatt, Kevin Hart, Mark Sheppard, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Heaven Hart is a standout as “O” the courier in that final episode.
In anthologies in book form it’s typical for an editor to take on a theme like this–video games–but usually they pull in more variation, and that’s what I found disappointing here. Most of the animation looks like it came from the same animator, nearly all of it filled with scenes of soldiers with guns moving from place to place with gunfire and bombs around each corner. It’s all that style typical of military war game plots and clunky dialogue.
An episode inspired by Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair, a sci-fi episode based on Breakout, Duck Hunt, Space Invaders, or anything from a GameBoy or Sega might have helped. But the science fiction episodes, like a heist story in Concord: Tale of the Implacable, almost do the trick. The series features stories inspired by Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, and multiple games from PlayStation. A few incorporate some new cyborg characters fans of all things borg will want to keep an eye out for.
The closest anthology to Secret Level we’ve seen is the Star Wars Visions animated series. This series comes from Amazon MGM Studios, Blur Studio, and the creators of Love, Death + Robots, with Tim Miller as its “editor” and creator. Most of this type of animation we’ve seen before, intertwined with the games. All 15 episodes of Secret Level are now streaming on Prime Video.
