Slashdot Mirror
Movie-Licensed Games That Might Not Suck
Thanks to GameSpot for their new mini-feature discussing movie licenses that might actually make decent games, as opposed to "every big-budget blockbuster getting a cheap and dirty game that is less a game and more a lackluster piece of promotional material." The suggested movies include Run Lola Run as a game "with hundreds of available outcomes", Battle Royale as a "twisted and sadistic" action title, and Fletch with "a Max Payne style of narration.. to represent Fletch's internal dialogue." But, the big question - do Slashdot Games readers have any better suggestions?
You could try to prevent your character from ending up as the butt of many jokes, choose not to be in a TMNT movie, something..
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
Making movies from licenses from good movies isn't necessarily hard. I think the main factor in explaining why almost all movie licenses suck is that most movie-licensed games must be released, ready or not, at the same time as their respective movies. Add to that the fact that the production cycle of a typical movie is shorter than that of the average game, and you have a recipe for disaster that smells vaguely like most of what Acclaim releases.
There's no reason that licensed games have to suck. Some don't. (Goldeneye was released years after its movie counterpart, and didn't really have a strict deadline to meet.) It's just that rushed games tend to suck.
Producing a good game nowadays requires more time and money than most licensors realize. When licensed games are treated less as a marketing tie-in and more as separate entities, their quality will improve dramatically.
Westwood made an excellent game based on 'Blade Runner'. It didn't follow the storyline too well, which made it more interesting. It was a point and click and explore kind of adventure game similar in gameplay to 'Grim Fandango'. But, it was damn hard, and I couldn't finish it. There some very cool parts of it.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
That Two Towers game was a blast. I'm looking forward to the Return of the King game with two player play, more characters and whatever else they pack into it. Fun.
I'd like to see a Fight Club or Big Trouble In Little China game. Just to see what they'd do with them.
It was published by Virgin Interactive, before Westwood was bought by EA, and then Destroyed by EA (The Ba$tard$) /rant
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
Just set a ground rule: don't start development of the game until the movie is already done its theatre run, gone to rental, gone to Wal-Mart purchase, and been shown on normal broadcast TV.
By then, the biggest factors that work to make a movie game SUCK are gone:
1) the movie is finished, and the game cannot increase hype for the movie, therefore there is no reason to rush or cut corners. There is no pressure to get the thing out the door before the movie is out.
2) the movie is finished, and therefore the movie's name on the box won't be enough to sell the game. Thus the game will actually have to be good on its own merits.
It isn't a guarantee of success, but it sure helps avoid failure.
Why no, I don't know what I'm talking about. Why do you ask?
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
I think The Ass Collector would make a great game. Just imagine being Rocco, running around and collecting ass. They could even make it a MMORPG.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
If you include all licensed franchises, Golden Eye was great, the various X-Wing/Tie Fighter series games were golden. TMNT/GI Joe in the arcade as well.
To completely buck the CW, on a lark I rented Enter The Matrix the other day. I avoided it because of the bad reviews. I shouldn't have. Quite frankly, it is one of the best pure action games I've played in a long time. The good action game has pretty much died in the 3d era..it's good to have a fun one to play. The camera does suck sometimes, but it's not the worst I've seen. The driving stages are somewhat cheap, but they as well are fun. The game on hard is somewhat short, but provides a refreshing skill based challenge...something I havn't had in a long time.
I get the feeling people just expected more from it. I expected a simple beat-em-up with some cool cutscenes. I got what I was looking for. (And more, to be honest.)
"It didn't follow the storyline too well"
Of course it didn't follow the storyline. It wasn't supposed to. It was a completely new story that ran parallel to the events of the movie. It actually had several elements from the book (Do Androids Dream of electric sheep) that weren't in the movie. The interesting thing about was that each time you started a new game, it randomized a few elements. So you never knew if the person who was a robot in the last game is this time around, or if your own character was even human.
-- Remember, we're not happy until you're not happy. -- Local FAA Inspector --
Drunken Master. Learn Kung-fu. Get money and hire a master. Fight battles. Master drunken fighting and other forms. It seems to really lend itself to a good game.
Spaceballs, the Video Game. Play the game as Lone Star, dodging Dark Helmet.
Yellow Submarine. Avoid the Blue Meanies. Get the Beatles. Save Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Highlander. Battle through the ages taking the heads of immortals.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A game has already been made, but a totally cool game could be made with lots of cool graphics.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
If you include all licensed franchises, Golden Eye was great, the various X-Wing/Tie Fighter series games were golden. TMNT/GI Joe in the arcade as well.
To pick a nit, I'd submit there's a major difference between movie license and franchise license. Of the games you list, the only one that might be considered truly movie licensed is Golden Eye, and given the enduring popularity of the James Bond franchise, even that is stretching it.
X-Wing and Tie Fighter were emphatically not movie licensed; there isn't a Star Wars movie five years either side of the original X-Wing (maybe more, I'm being conservative). GI Joe was popular for decades. I don't recall if TMNT had any movie-specific games, but it did have a lot of non-movie specific games.
Now, this is a Star Wars movie-licensed game. It is not immune to licensing crapiness.
Actually, Star Wars does have one of the few truly movie-based games that I did not read uniformly bad things about, and that was the Pod Racer games. Still, an exception does not a trend make.
Anyways, just a little nit, but when seen this way, the movie license sucks trend holds very strongly, whereas franchise licenses sometimes work out OK. (The best Star Trek games were set in the Original Series universe, 20-25+ years after the show went off the air, for instance.)
The Running Man..
Tron!
Oh wait....
Seems like a natural. Lots of zombies to kill. The players goal could simply be to survive until the virus runs its course.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
I think this might make a good action/RPG style game. It's got unrealistic fighting, magic and powerups built into the movie. The game practically writes itself! And as a bonus, you could probably get all the original actors for the voices, except maybe Kim Cattral.
While Requiem for a Dream would make for an interesting drug-related game experience, I'd have to argue that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would have the greater potential to leave a mark on the video game industry as a unique gaming experience and a well-needed break from the norm.
Why settle for one addiction when you can have twenty? The ideas of drug experimentation and mixing alone would make for a unique gaming experience (with pretty colors and oodles of famous quotes). Graphics designers could go wild, especially when the hallucinations and paranoia start setting in....
As for plot, a straight adaptation of the screenplay wouldn't make for much of a game. However, basing an open-ended exploration/adventure in the weird and wild world of Las Vegas could do it. With at least the movie-featured locations of bars, casinos, and carnivals the possibilities for character-environment interaction would be high.
Potential ESRB Rating? Definitely at least Mature. Exploring the darker side of human emotion and the world as seen through Mescaline-tinted glasses would hardly qualify for a children's game. In fact, checking out the ESRB site I spot at least 12 remarks that would fit including "Use of Drugs", "Strong Language", and "Mature Humor".
Would anyone buy it? I'm not sure. I know I would....
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.