Secret Level

You will get entertained here. Some episodes are good, some are great, some are just incredible. You need to make that decision for yourself. For me, 1.5 "You Shall know no fear" is the best of the bunch, but 1.5 is the best animation of Warhammer history and it does everything right. My god, it was unbelievably good. That said, there is no reason to read my review, go watch the episodes instead and choose your best one.

I knew that the creators of love death and robots knew how to nail animated short stories, but this simply is amazing. We need more of it.

And we simply require more of the Warhammer Universe. Exactly! As shown here.

Short stories within the setting of video games. Or very loosely based on the setting of the games. Very different games, ranging from Pac-Man to Warhammer 40.000. Even Concord, where I assume the creators have been cursing themselves when seeing what that game ended up being.

It's mainly meh stories about mostly mediocre-at-best games I often have hardly even heard about. The visuals are great though. But except for one or two out outliers there is little substance. I am sure the cutscenes for most of those game were better. Let's not compare this to anthology shows like Black Mirror or Love Death and Robots.

Still. It's made by people that seem to be gamers.

The animation is beautiful, that is undeniable. I struggle to get excited about such short episodes though. They seem like apprentice attempts. Can't get fully enthralled as you know it's over before you can even get any sort of connection with the characters. Was nice to see some celebrity involvement. Reeves and Arnie both play enjoyable parts. It's just all a little too experimental and depthless for me. Additionally If I was given the chance to choose the source material. I reckon I would have chosen a completely different set of games to revere. The Pacman episode was o.k. But was a demonstration of taking artistic licence to its absolute limit. It made me laugh at least. Overall I found the whole series to be a little underwhelming. 6 for the visuals.

All the episodes except few felt like game trailers, like what's the point of even making them if it's over before the conclusion. They have no plot elements or any kind of character developments. Few had very well laid out foundations and its execution was also well done. Ex: I was looking something in mega man episode. Maybe the next season they try a different approach.

So far the best ones are Warhammer, Unreal tournament and Armoured Core. These episodes have the best overall narrative which can be enjoyed as a story. Others were not bad but they felt like an afterthought or like a game trailer.

I was really disappointed when I saw critics say this show was just mid. I've watched it and all I can say is most of the critics are wrong. I really enjoyed this show! The episodes could have been longer, that's my only gripe honestly. If you love video games, definitely check this show out. It's a quick watch too. Now I want to go play some of these games again after seeing their episodes. I would imagine the whole point of Secret Level is to attract new players, and in that regard, I think they succeeded. There was heart in a lot of the episodes too, which I also really liked. Hopefully this show does well enough to warrant a season 2. If they do make a season 2, the only thing I think they need to improve upon is the length of the episodes. I really, really wished they were all at least 20 minutes. Overall though, I'm thankful we got this show because video games mean a lot to a lot of people, myself included. Thank you to all of the people who worked hard to bring us this show. You guys rock!