
Amazon’s Secret Level is a collection of shorts based on various video games. For the most part, they’re alright, but many don’t work that well as shorts, feeling like something chopped out of a larger piece. A few do stand out as great pieces of work. Here’s some quick reviews of them in order of worst to best.
15. Playtime: Fulfilment

This episode was marketed as a big PlayStation crossover, with many (myself included) presuming that the makers of Secret Level accepted making an advertisement for Concord in exchange for letting them ust PlayStation characters.
Playtime follows a bicycle courier in a world where mobile games with lots of noise and grinding have become augmented reality as a way of life. A stranger offers her a package when she starts getting attacked by PlayStation characters. First are some armoured goons (my only guess is Killzone) then a colossus from Shadow of the Colossus, which turns out not to be a huge threat, then the courier just drives past Kratos. Eventually, Sackboy just drifts past. Not only have they no relation to the story, but they’re not even obstacles.
The main villain is actually the courier’s assistant bot, which hates the Courier cheating and having fun in a different way. At the end the lesson seems to be “don’t forget your nostalgic PlayStation memories”, yet there’s little nostalgia to be had in this. This felt like one of Sony’s old strange PlayStation adverts, although even then it would be a poor one.
14. Warhammer 40,000: And They Shall Know No Fear

One thing Secret Level has in many of its episodes is that it doesn’t do enough to get people invested in the characters for the events to matter. I can only presume that the main character is an existing character elsewhere in 40K lore.
For the most part, this is mindless and meaningless action. It’s full of gore and violence to the point that it has zero impact. The second half has the marines face some kind of fear demon. There are some stunning looking visuals, but nothing really made a connection to me. The narration talks about a life of war and conquering fear due to this, but none of this is shown in the short.
13. Armored Core: Asset Management

Keanu Reeves is a tough, grizzled mech pilot that feels unattached to everyone else as he was connected to his mech in a way that has now been lost. Part of the core of the mech has somehow joined him and speaks to him.
The problem with this one is that the episode is mostly comprised of unnatural exposition. We’re told things instead of getting shown them, and this suffers the same issue as many in that it feels like we’re jumping into the story at the wrong place, only in this one, the exposition reminds us that this is the first time the audience is seeing this character.
The battles are also poor as we’re only told of the dangers and limitations of what is going on.
12. Crossfire: Good Conflict

I know nothing of Cossfire, but the ongoing theme from everyone involved is “we’re not the bad guys”. It takes place as someone is escaping an abandoned city (I have no idea why there’s nobody else there) and hiring a squad to take him. He has a mysterious briefcase he needs to take with him as he escapes something unknown, and the only thing we find out is that it could be dangerous in the wrong hands and is warm.
It’s just two small military squads attacking each other, each believing that they’re the ones doing the right theme. This is certainly a potentially interesting thing, but without any information on the motives of anyone involved, it doesn’t carry much weight.
11. Sifu: It Takes a Life

This certainly has a nice visual style to it, but is another one that has no substance to it. The twist of Sifu is that each time you die, you come back to life as an older version of yourself, so this is about one afternoon of revenge turning into someone wasting away most of his life
The big problem is that the episode doesn’t really have time to dwell on the questions it has of “was it worth it?”, and the fact that it tries to be philosophical kind of takes a lot away because it just doesn’t work. The audience feels like nothing has really happened, especially as the fight with the guy the main character was hunting for is skipped.
Was this supposed to create an unsatisfying ending so that the answer to the question is that “no, this episode was not worth the time”?
10. Spelunky: Tally

This episode also plays around with video game respawning, as the main character of Spelunky 2, Ana, dies again and again. Although, with the main character being a child, we’re spared the gore and are shown implied deaths. This game talks about roguelike mechanics of respawning and how each “run” is different, but you could easily replace Spelunky with any other roguelike and nothing would change.
The message is also confusing. The “mentor” character, Liz, talks about Ana being too lighthearted about everything and not caring about dying, and that death should have a much bigger meaning. Then when Ana breaks down from one too many deaths, Liz then talks about how the deaths don’t matter, as you get to enjoy a whole new adventure.
9. Exodus: Odyssey

Exodus seems to be a game that doesn’t even have a release date yet. It’s from “some ex-Bioware” staff. From this, I’m quite surprised that Drew Karpyshyn is involved as the world in this short is incredibly bland, less interesting than the world of Anthem.
The main gimmick seems to be focusing on time dilation, with the story focusing on a father searching for her daughter (who has gone into space searching for adventure), with him spending years of time dilation as his daughter ages. The big problem is that it seems to ignore the daughter’s own travel, as they go the same route for most of the short. The logic of this one just falls apart.
8. PAC-MAN: Circle

The Pac-Man episode actually turned out to be a secret trailer for an upcoming metroidvania called Shadow Labyrinth. It shows a strange man falling out of a tube of liquid, having the urge to consume other beings to survive and being pushed even more to do so by a mysterious yellow orb.
The stranger eventually realises that the maze they’re in is actually a prison for this orb, and refuses to let it out, where it tries to take over his body to force them out the door. It ends with a new being being released from a tube as the process starts again.
It’s intriguing for its strange take on Pac-Man, but somewhat feels less unique now that it’s the prequel to an actual game.
7. Dungeons & Dragons: The Queen’s Cradle

This episode creates an interesting cast of characters, but doesn’t give us enough time with them. It even focuses on the least interesting character, leaving you wanting to know about the others even more. It portrays the world of Dungeons & Dragons well, and has some amazing visuals.
But it all feels like you’re watching it out of context. It seems to be written as though you’ve already seen these adventurers on a previous journey, like jumping into a series in episode 4. It even ends abruptly and in the middle of a fight. It did leave me wanting more, though.
6. Mega Man: Start

Just like Dungeons & Dragons, this feels like something cut out of something even bigger. In particular, it feels like the last part of a pilot episode for a new series.
It’s a shame, as the snippet we see is really good. Dr Light’s inventions have been taken over by Dr Wily and are ransacking Mega City. Dr Light’s robotic son, Rock, wants to help but Dr Light refuses, before Rock is forced to combat Light’s last robot as it gets hacked inside their lab.
It’s a fun fight making use of a few powers, and Rick is immediately likeable. The short ends up feeling unsatisfying as you want to see more.
5. Honor of Kings: The Way of All Things

I had to google what this game was after watching the episode. It’s some boring looking colourful MOBA game. Luckily, other than using a few place names, this episode isn’t really based on the game. Even the main character is someone created just for the collaboration.
Instead, this is a very artistic short that adapts the board game Go (also known as Weiqi). It takes place in a city that moves around, but has been having issues. Anyone can face the computer controlling the city for control, yet anyone that tries ends up insane.
The young hero we follow ignores the danger and tries to conquer the machine, not just to fix the city, but also for revenge as the city killed his parents. Throughout the short, we see (instead of just getting told) pivotal movements and the emotions the hero went through to become so determined to break fate.
It’s a really solid thing that works really well as a standalone short.
4. Unreal Tournament: Xan

The main character of this short, a robot called X4N, manages to portray more development and emotion with a single light than most of the other shorts combined, and our connection to him is what makes this action-heavy short actually work. The snippets of the world we see gives us enough story without the need for exposition, as well.
It’s an enjoyable and meaningful tale, and you don’t need to know anything about the source material for it to work.
3. Concord: Tale of the Implacable

Considering it took less than two weeks for Sony to completely abandon Concord and delete it, it’s somewhat ironic that the Secret Level episode for Concord is one of the better ones. Even more so when the big reason the game failed was its immensely boring cast of characters.
In this short, we follow a new group of characters, who are a group of misfits that are part of a crew trying to save their captain for the oppressive guild. One really fascinating thing about this particular short is that it feels like you’ve watched an entire film in just a short timespan, with plenty of twists, turns, funny moments and emotional moments.
This shows that the world of Concord is actually an interesting one, it’s just a shame they couldn’t turn it into an interesting game.
2. The Outer Worlds: The Company We Keep

The Outer Worlds felt like Firefly with a bit of Fallout thrown in, and this short portrays that vibe beautifully. The short is a little snippet of the universe, following the journey of a garbage worker trying to follow the girl he loves, who left to become a scientist. He gets a job as a test subject for the company she works for, suffering a ton of hardship as a result.
It’s a well told and emotional story, with amazing visuals and plenty of dark humour and violence that actually works with the short. It works both as a new story in the world of the game and as a standalone short.
1. New World: The Once and Future King

I have no interest in this MMO and I still have no interest in it, yet this short was highly entertaining. It’s about a king who loses his army as he tries to conquer a mysterious island. Despite this, he’s still determined to take on this new land for himself. He soon discovered that everyone on the island, including him and his servant, is immortal and comes back to life when they die (although reset to the beach they landed on).
The king is a kind of incompetent buffoon who is baffled that other people are better than him at absolutely everything, and Arnold Schwarzenegger does a wonderful job with this character and heightens the uselessness of the character. No matter how many times he fails, he’s still determined, yet it has a surprisingly emotional ending.
It’s highly enjoyable and rather humorous, its only failure is that it doesn’t make me want to check out the game, the short works fine on its own.
I personally loved the sony one. Sure, the cameos weren’t perfect, but the nostalgia factor worked for me. It’s not deep, but it’s fun!
As a Warhammer fan, I loved the atmosphere of the 40k episode but I get why some felt it was shallow. It’s a great intro for newcomers, though
brother what a trash take about warhammer, please never post again