While I watched the series several months ago, I haven’t had an opportunity to write about Amazon Prime Video’s Secret Level series until now. When I saw that it involved a lot of the same folks behind Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots (of which I still need to watch the latest season at the time of this writing), I knew I had to check it out. The CGI series features 15 short episodes each centered around a different game, except for the last one, which was something of a gaming homage. Out of the 14 game-based episodes, I was only familiar with 7 of the games. The games, in order of appearance, are:
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Sifu
- New World
- Unreal Tournament
- Warhammer 40,000
- PAC-MAN
- Crossfire
- Armored Core
- The Outer Worlds
- Mega Man
- Exodus
- Spelunky
- Concord
- Honor of Kings
If you’re a fan of gaming at all, the series is most definitely worth watching. Even a lot of the games that I had never even heard of, let alone played, had interesting episodes, like Crossfire and Concord. There were a handful of episodes that really stuck out to me as my favorites, though.
Best Overall: Warhammer 40,000
This one surprised me a little because I’ve never played any iteration of Warhammer (tabletop, video games, etc.) or read any of the books. I’m familiar with it, though, have watched some videos with a high-level explanation of the universe, and am super interested in doing some reading. I’ve even done a little research into where I should start with the plethora of Warhammer books out there… I just haven’t had a good opportunity to start yet. So despite not actually having much experience with Warhammer at all, this is the episode I was the most excited about… and it most certainly didn’t disappoint.
After a quick, interesting backstory, the episode basically cuts to some Marines hacking their way through cultists, using a psyker, and fighting a sorcerer. From the gorgeous animation to the large number of Warhammer things they managed to cram into such a short episode, it was easily the best of the bunch in my opinion. I’ve actually gone back and rewatched just this episode several times.
Most Unique: PAC-MAN
I was really curious how they were going to handle a game as basic as PAC-MAN and turn it into a compelling episode. The team behind the episode opted to make PAC-MAN look like something that could be out of an Oddworld game.
I won’t go into spoilers, but what appears to be the main character of the episode is a humanoid creature that wakes up in an underground complex. A yellow sphere greets this character and guides him through the planet, encouraging him to use a sword found close at hand to kill the dangerous inhabitants of the strange world on which the human find itself and eat them to get stronger. Huge kudos for the folks behind this episode for such a unique and creative take.
Best Cast: Armored Core
I played the original Armored Core and Armored Core 2, so it’s been nearly 25 years since I’ve had any experience with the series. As someone who just kind of likes mecha in general, though (several Gundam series count for my top anime of all time), I was excited to watch this episode.
The episode itself was great. It was another shining example of actually managing to fit a decent plot into such a short amount of time. It wasn’t just about the action (which was great); I was genuinely interested in what was going on with the main character. What I hadn’t realized before going into the episode, though, was that the main character was Keanu Reeves.
Would the episode had been good if the main character wasn’t Keanu? Absolutely. Was it made better by the fact that Keanu was perfectly cast for the role? Also absolutely.