Secret Level

It was pretty hard not to get carried away when Love, Death & Robots showrunner Tim Miller took the stage during Gamescom Opening Night Live, and was downright touched by how proud he and the animation legends at Blur Studios were of their extensive animation anthology, each honouring and celebrating the gaming industry's most expansive and beloved universes.

He was proud, no doubt about it, and he and Blur should be, because rarely have I seen such a wholehearted declaration of love for the game universes we know so well, and while the quality isn't quite as consistent as one would have liked, and the length of some sections in particular works against the impression, this is magnificent to say the least.

Okay, let's recap - 18 episodes, each dedicated to a single gaming franchise, but with an original story. This means that you don't need a pre-existing relationship with these standalone universes as such, but of course your impression of them is reinforced by an expectation, a familiarity.

Warhammer 40,000, Dungeons & Dragons, Honor of Kings, Sifu, Mega Man, a multitude of franchises are covered, and with the exception of a few, the artistic style is the one we know Blur Studios use in their world famous work on impactful trailers. This also means that these episodes are downright magnificent to watch. This applies to each episode's use of contrasting colours, depth and dramatic staging, but also just the sheer technical rendering of hugely lavish scenes. The quality is sky-high here, and remains high throughout the episodes.

And then there's the quality of the stories themselves in each of these. The first two episodes are 18 minutes each and focus on Warhammer 40,000 and Unreal Tournament, respectively. They're masterful, hard-hitting and manage to unwind a beginning, middle and end with dramatic climaxes and opportunities for personal reflection. It's the best we know from Love, Death & Robots.

That's why you have to be patient when these episodes get shorter - and I mean a lot shorter. The Mega Man episode, for example, is just shy of eight minutes, and that has pretty drastic consequences for the effectiveness of the storytelling they squeeze in. Episodes dedicated to both Sifu and Spelunky similarly run just over seven minutes, and while they have better luck unravelling their respective stories in such a short amount of time, this "section" of Secret Level plays a bit like a trailer cavalcade that simply doesn't impact you enough during the time you spend in that universe.

Besides, not every franchise simply has the iconography to act as a memorable setting. The section dedicated to Crossfire is somewhat anonymous, a classic militaristic setting with no colour palette, characters or mythology to draw on. It's not a bad section per se, but I wouldn't call it memorable either.

Fortunately, that's the exception, and the vast majority of sections here can draw on a rich catalogue of exciting visual assets that make it a delight to experience action-packed, heroic moments here and there. The Dungeons & Dragons section is a visual cornucopia that I can't imagine fans of that universe being dissatisfied with, and even unreleased games, such as Exodus, deliver excellent science fiction.

An anthology of animated episodes dedicated to major game series was always going to be uneven - that's the whole point. However, the overall quality is high, and compiled with clear respect for the universes they are interpreting. As with Love, Death & Robots, I hope they give it another shot, as this format could do with a slight reduction in the number of episodes and an extension of each of the individual episodes that make up a season - it could allow for more in-depth narratives where individual episodes only skim the surface of what makes these games so iconic.