‘Secret Level’ Review: Prime Video Gaming Series Proves Itself With Strong Animation

The gaming anthology Secret Level is here, featuring short stories from various game franchises. Read our first impression Secret Level review below.

This new series gives fans a taste of what some adaptations of their favorite gaming franchises could hold. There’s something for everyone in this series as it covers triple-A games as well as indie games.

This Secret Level review was made possible by screeners courtesy of Prime Video.

When the series was first announced at Gamescom back in August, I was patiently awaiting the release of the series. I’ve spent most of my life playing video games and I’ve been pleased with the video game adaptations we’ve had over the years so I’m always looking forward to the next adaptation. While I’m not familiar with the full lineup of titles that were featured in the series, I took this as an opportunity to introduce myself to them and hopefully add more variety to my library of games.

Secret Level is an anthology series developed by animation legend Tim Miller, who returns for a second TV series following the success of Love, Death + Robots. The show follows fifteen individual stories set within the worlds of fifteen different video games, including the likes of Armored Core, Pac-Man, Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons and Mega Man. Boosting this gigantic list of IP’s is an all star cast, featuring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Kevin Hart, and Temuera Morrison. 

With such a wide range of titles, the stories told also varied between joyful, sad and bittersweet tones, sometimes combining them for some truly moving stories. I first want to highlight the intro as it was surprisingly satisfying to look at, I never once missed the opportunity to watch it as I became mesmerised by all the shapes and movement involved. The end of the intro also shared a unique animation pertaining to the game with the exception of the indie titles.

For this review, I received twelve out of the fifteen titles most of which I came into blind having no context from the games they were based on. This made a few episodes hard to follow as they throw the viewer right into the thick of things rather than take a moment to establish a proper backstory. Others chose not to give much of a story but rather focus on an inspirational message such as never giving up or to always use your imagination to the fullest. And then there were the episodes where I felt like I had enough of a backstory to fully appreciate the episode. There were also moments where cliffhangers were used which left me a bit disappointed. With this in mind, I do think some episodes would have benefitted from a longer runtime. 

After the release of Star Wars: Visions I have become a bit picky with the choice of art style for animated projects and while I was initially disappointed that the series would use the same style throughout despite the wide range of themes and genres of the games involved. I was eventually sold on the stylistic choice after witnessing how well the characters were animated. Their movements were smooth with the exception of one episode and the level of detail in the character models had me impressed. The visual effects were also breathtaking, a few of the episodes really stood out to me for simply its stunning visuals.

Overall I enjoyed my time with the series and I eagerly await the remaining episodes. The series was successful in encouraging me to play most of these games which I’ve neglected over the years and I can confidently say this is one of the better video game adaptations I had the pleasure of experiencing.

Secret Level is created by Tim Miller and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Laura Bailey, Keanu Reeves and more. The series premieres on Prime Video on December 10th.

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