3.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Hollywood Animal.

This has the legs to be really, really damn good when its out of early access. I'm a gremlin for a saucy ol' tycoon game, and while I appreciate the hordes of people crawling from the wordworks trying to pull the metaphorical Excalibur out of the stone that was The Movies, let's face it. That beautiful bastard of a simulator belonged to our childhoods, it will never come back exactly as it was, and all of the imitations of it just fall sort of flat. This is the first of these modern movie studio tycoon games to really sink its hooks in because it isn't trying to be The Movies. It's trying to simulate what I find interesting about a tycoon game. Casting you as a studio head and letting you very clearly dictate the direction of your studio while you get fucked over by circumstances outside of your control. And that's the fun part. Making movies is great, but the fun should lie in the politics of running a movie studio. Negotiating with annoying actors but knowing they pull in too much money to be ignored. Having to pump out Oscar-bait movies because awards will make future movies more profitable. Making decisions about what shady shit you wanna pull to ensure Toe Grabber 3 can have full nudity in it to get the teenage demographic in the seats. Personally, that's the stuff I want in a tycoon game. Creating the wacky-ass behind-the-scenes stories you read about your favourite films and telling a narrative full of organic little anecdotes exclusive to your run. The problem with this so far is that it definitely feels like there's a distinct fall-off point. It's really tricky early on, and you're forced to make hard decisions to survive in this landscape of big blockbusters raking in all the cash, and then suddenly, you're absolutely stacked, money means nothing and when the game pulls some shit like "oh no! All your big actors went to war!" You're like, ok, I'll just bankroll like 70 more of them. It feels like there's a moment where in-game events are rarer, you're making infinite movies with no real issue, and they're all making bank because your actors are all incredible. There are definitely smaller issues in there, like the "ceiling" on talent always meaning you make movies that aren't 10/10, but other studios are cracking those bad boys out like they're A24 in a world where everyone's a 30-something craft beer expert that frequents Letterbox and smokes those joints that come in little plastic tubes. But it's all fixable through tweaks and adjustments I assume are on the way. They just need to mix things up, make certain events more impactful and generally fuck you over more frequently to ensure it doesn't get stale. But right now, this has the potential to be one of the best tycoon games in years, and I've already wasted like 15 hours going gremlin mode on it. It also really cements how absolutely gagged people were for cowboy movies 100 years ago. Nerf cowboy movies, because these bastards were yeehawing all over that shit like little fiends. I have a cowboy franchise, and those hungry bastards don't even care that I switch the actors every movie and usually crank them out with the worst post-production humanly possible. I finally understand why Kevin Feige was banging out shit like Antman 3. Bro was like, they want slop, let's make slop.