THIS MONTH ON EDGE
Some of the other things on our minds when we weren’t doing everything else
TV
Secret Level
bit.ly/secret-level
Ever since the announcement of Prime Video’s anthology series, we’ve been fascinated by the eclectic mix of games chosen for adaptation. The first batch of episodes features
Pac-Man
alongside
Unreal Tournament;
Keanu pilots a mech in
Armored Core
while Arnie reigns rather hammily over Amazon’s
New World.
And we’re writing this with
Spelunky
and, unbelievably,
Concord
yet to join the fray. It’s a shame, then, that so many of these animations flatten their divergent source materials into the same dark, drab house style. The standouts are those few that break the pattern:
Sifu
adapts the game’s loose painterly look with aplomb;
Pac-Man
isn’t nearly as successful, but the idea of adapting the arcade classic into a survivalist sci-fi horror is at least amusing enough to sustain its ten-minute runtime.