MDickie's Popcorn is a movie industry simulator game, where you direct your own movies and you try to get to the top of the Hollywood branch! Hire actors, play roles, become a director!

Pop Culture As the title suggests, Popcorn is very much a sequel to last year's Popscene. Everything, from the the presentation to the concept itself, harks bark to that first instalment. Although ignorant men will attribute that to "laziness", it's actually a deliberate attempt to produce a consistent series. Afterall, this is simply "Popscene goes Hollywood" - and any attempt to avoid that would do more harm than good. That said, the game has taken strides towards establishing its own style. Most noticeably, the blue & white colour scheme of Popscene has given way to a black & white variation for this game (which is surprisingly superior!). Even the logo, despite its similarities, has made its own statement with a movie reel motif running throughout the background. What remains are a series of pleasantly familiar screens that let us dive straight into an exciting new concept...

Tale Of The Tape As ever, deciding who to employ is no empty gesture. There are well over 100 characters in the game's universe, and each one is unique in terms of appearance, personality, and talent. Many of the attributes will be familiar to fans of previous games. "Popularity" and "Reputation" indicate their star power and credibility respectively, while "Attitude" and "Happiness" indicate their mental state. New to this game are "Directing" and "Writing", which govern their ability to deliver the respective content - while "Performing" and "Acting" serve as the on-screen equivalent. Of course, no one man is perfect (and they certainly won't have time to play all roles!) - so you'll soon be constructing an ensemble cast that can share the responsibility of getting the job done...

Game Of The Living Dead In addition to props, you can also sell your soul to the art of make-up. The gore that happened accidentally in other games is now an official option that you can assign to characters as surely as any other part of their costume! As with the props, this gimmick boosts entertainment further yet at the expense of artistry - and makes those cheap action flicks all too tempting. Quite what you use the effect for is down to your imagination. It can either be used to portray a battle-scarred hero or a blood-stained corpse. In fact, the all-over scarring is so good for an "undead" look that I even added a zombie walking animation to complete the illusion!

Motion Pictures Considering how superfluous most of this on-screen activity is, it's surprising to see how much detail has gone into the visuals. In addition to brand new models and textures, we also have the best animations yet to go with them. There are literally dozens of different stances and gestures - covering everything from fighting to fornicating! Yes, to my eternal shame it's possible to make porn films in this game. If you like your romance a little more subtle, however, you can settle for innocent hugging and kissing interactions. The more unusual animations even extend to things like the Superman flight pose - which actually floats in mid-air, allowing you to position the actor anywhere in 3D space! All in all, it's possible to put together practically any scene you can imagine - with hilarious consequences that can be as fun as the game itself...