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Movie-Based Videogames - Not Actually That Bad?
Moryath writes "The fine folks at Glide Underground look like they've started a new weekly column - and for their opening run, they tackled the question of whether movie-licensed games are in fact cursed or not. Apparently it was in honor of too many reviewers picking up the new Chronicles of Riddick title, and proclaiming boldly that the game broke some curse - 'movie video games suck, it doesn't suck but it's a movie game, ergo curse broken.' Quite an interesting read, going back all the way to the days of Atari 2600 to examine the history of movie-licensed games."
Hello? Anybody remember 1998?
I won't play movie based games because they're an obvious cash-in. Doesn't matter much if it's that good or not.
That being said, the Chronicles of Riddick isn't an adaptation of the movie, it's just a seperate story for the character which is both more creative a development and well made, so probably a bad example to use in comparison to other movie-licensed-crap.
The underlying problem is still and will always be there- games based on movies tend to be promotional tie-ins first, games second.
So, the idea of "one game that breaks the curse" doesn't really work for me.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Movie based games are utter shite.
Movie INSPIRED games tend to be good.
schild
editor, f13.net
I wonder if we're actually seeing a different sort of trend developing, when movies suck so bad I say they should have be released "Direct to Video ... Game".
I was rather underwhelmed by the plot in Chronicles of Riddick, I mean really, dude escapes from prison, gets tangled up with a religeous military commander, lots of gunfights, melee, corny jokes... great video game, defintely not your epic sci-fi.
Even Shrek 2, for all its comedy, the whole thing with the Keebler Elf Potion Factory, so help me I was sitting in my chair thinking "conveyor belts, jump to the next one, swing on the machine... Shrek 2 The Video Game is on its way". It's almost like scenes are gratuitously added to the movies so that there's something to do to stretch out a game.
Of course from the capitalist perspective, it's ingenious. You'll blow $8 on a movie for two hours entertainment, $20 for a DVD, but if you can get people to spend $50 on a game, now that's serious profit.
From what I've seen, not all movie-based games suck. Not by a long stretch of the imagination. However, as a general (horribly general) rule, I think they can be broken down into two groups.
First of all, we have games which come out within the same immediate time-frame as the movie they're based on. These tend to suck. Examples include, but are by no means limited to: Enter the Matrix, Fifth Element, Terminator 3, etc, etc, etc. I'm sure you can think of many more. This is where Chronicles of Riddick breaks the rules; it falls into this category and doesn't suck. But most games in this group are, and always will be, cheap attempts to cash in on a movie whose brand has a short shelf-life.
The second group contains games based on movies or movie franchises which appear when the movies aren't the hype-of-the-moment. In general, these tend to be games based on *good* movies, since only the better movies stand up over time. Examples here include: Aliens vs Predator games (excluding the recent console RTS), Blade Runner (the adventure game - it's aging now, but it still rocks) and Terminator: Future Shock (and Skynet). Perhaps because the movies aren't flavour of the moment, these games have more freedom to move into expanded universes and craft a plot that works well for a game, rather than a movie.
Of course, half-way between the two groups, we have the Star Wars games, some of which rock and some of which suck. I think, however, that the same rule holds true here. Think about it... in the early and mid 90s, before the prequels, Star Wars games tend to rock. We have the SNES platformers/shooters, the X-Wing and TIE Fighter series etc. Sure, there's the odd dud, like Rebel Assault, but at least they're innovative duds. When Episode 1 comes out, the quality of Star Wars games, even from an objective, non-Jar-Jar-bashing point of view falls through the floor. We get a few utterly forgettable shooters and third-person games. Even today, when the license has recovered a bit from its nadir, the best games (Kotor and JK2) are those which are based more heavily on the universe of the original trilogy.
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Cross-media retellings generally suck. The novellization of a movie, the movie of a novel, the miniseries of the novel, the comic adaptation, and the video game license.
Cross media *shared universes* however, can be great. Note the Halo novels; the retelling of the video game blows, the other two novels are wonderful. Riddick: Butcher's Bay; not the movie, just a different chapter.
Enter the Matrix, well, I didn't think it was so bad. Rushed, certainly, but I quite liked it.
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I wouldn't say that - he did say he was leaving things (like the reason movie-based games are usually bad) for another week. And going back and looking up titles all the way back through the 2600 days must have taken a while.
You're saying that because he didn't mention your particular games - or because he didn't go by the "well the impression comes from the percentage of games" - that he didn't do his homework.
Isn't it more likely that he was just trying to show that there are plenty of movie-license games that can manage to not suck - not that they'll all be super blockbusters like Halo, but that they'll be good enough that people still like them - and that the presence of a license, all by itself, shouldn't be reason to dump the game?
I mean, seriously now. Look at the titles you mention - Robocop 3 is a prime suspect here, why knock it when the first Robocop game on NES was, while not super-ultra-cool, decently fun to play? Or at very least, that explains why a Robocop 3 was made as much as the presence of the movie does.
The other question is - as many crappy movie games come out, is it pretty close to the percentage of non-movie games that are also crappy? I mean, sure, we don't remember the crappy ones as long when they're not movie licensed, but they're certainly there, or haven't you seen the bargain bin at Gamestop lately?
The problem with Enter The Matrix was that a large portion of it's players (on both XBox and PC) had major problems with it; random lockups, corrupted savefiles, corrupted graphics, that sort of fun stuff.
To this day I still haven't been able to play it all the way through on the PC. Apparently my 2GHz Athlon with 1gig of RAM and Radeon 9800Pro video card isn't powerful enough to render the "bullet time" effects. Riiight. Stick in a GeForce3, and it actually runs FASTER. Boggles the mind.
They promised new patches a few months after the game came out, but there have only been two (and they didn't fix anything, really.)
Atari can suck it.
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