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Movie Tie-In Games

Started by AsparagusTrevor, May 29, 2011, 02:45:15 AM

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AsparagusTrevor

Movie tie in games are mostly bad, mostly. There have been some exceptions though, not counting the LEGO games which are always fun if you're a fan of the style and the franchise. The Alien vs Predator games, first two PC ones especially, while not tie-ins in the strictest sense they are generally regarded as great games which show respect to their sources.

Goldeneye goes without saying. I befriended a rich boy at school who was an utter cunt just to get the chance to play this on his N64. The two other friends we'd play multiplayer with did the same. It was just something spectacular, a real benchmark.

Going back even further, I used to love the Mega-Drive Disney stuff, Aladdin was brilliant, The Lion King quite good as well. There was also Jurassic Park which was quite enjoyable, and for one birthday I got the Menacer gun and bought T2 Arcade which was a fun blaster for one of my favourite films at the time. 

More recently I enjoyed the X-Men Origins Wolverine game, which managed to finally be the violent slash 'em up which suited the character. Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but very entertaining mindless fun.

Spider-Man 2 was a game I put many hours into on the PS2, although it only loosely followed the movie's story and took a lot of cues from the comics it was pretty much the first great super-hero game, and subsequent games have failed to live up to this, barring Ultimate Spider-Man.



Then we get the shit ones. The real toilet fodder games which people still buy for some reason. The games rushed out to meet the movie release window so interest is up, but effort is down. Doesn't matter, they'll still be bought. I played Terminator Salvation at a mate's house, is was pure gash. Everything about it was incompetent, the controls made it a chore to perform the simplest of tasks. Same with the Transformers game, my mate just seems to impulse buy these shit movie tie-ins.

Dune II (the RTS one) was pretty genre-defining. I suppose that's technically a book game though.

Some other goodies:

The Great Escape, although not exactly a "tie-in".

Some of the Robocop games were considered to be good ones.

Cerys

Alien Trilogy on the Playstation is still the only FPS I'll play for any length of time - even if it is impossible to get 100% completion, which is annoying.

El Unicornio, mang

There are a lot of ropey ones, but some that I really enjoyed (and the versions I played) include:

Robocop (Spectrum and Arcade) - bit easy to complete (I know because I completed it and I'm shit, but still a good side scroller)
Aliens (UK) (Spectrum) - kind of a precursor to Doom, and about as scary and atmospheric as games could get in the mid 80s
Super Star Wars trilogy (SNES)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Adventure) (Amiga)
Ghostbusters (Spectrum)

That last one I probably only liked because it was based on my favourite film of the time, but it still got many hours of play (as did GB II)

The worst?

Friday the 13th (Spectrum)



NoSleep

Quote from: Cerys on May 29, 2011, 12:03:56 PM
Alien Trilogy on the Playstation is still the only FPS I'll play for any length of time - even if it is impossible to get 100% completion, which is annoying.

Isn't that Alien Resurrection? Another one of those film tie-ins that occurred years after the film (like The Thing, Evil Dead, The Warriors etc). Not so much a tie-in as homage to the original films.

Alien Resurrection is an awesome game, anyway.

Famous Mortimer

I was a bit surprised they never did a tie-in to "The Fast And The Furious", as it seems perfect for a game. Lots of fast cars, maybe some side-missions where you have to do fun car-based things...or did they and it was so rubbish it's disappeared from my consciousness?

NoSleep

Does Driver count, as a film genre tie-in?

MojoJojo

The Blade Runner adventure game.
I always liked the Batman game that came with my Amiga, although it's a bit ropey if not actually awful.

Uh, do the X-wing/Tie-fighter games count?

I liked the Ghostbusters game too - had it on an Atari 800XL. The angry video game nerd had a rant about it, which put me off him, since most of his complaints were "This makes no sense", and I'd managed to work the game out as an 8 year old. That and the forced anger just made it seem a bit shit.

Oh and since Dune II has been mentioned, the first Dune game should probably get a mention. It was an adventure game that somewhat followed the plot of the book/film. I've never played it, but it's supposed to be good. It often gets mentioned in these lists [nb]sure I've read this before pretty recently... where?[/nb]

These games are further distinguished by more or less ignoring the film they wee based on:
The Alien3 platform game on the 16bits was pretty good - dumped everything from the film except Ripley's haircut. You thankfully have guns.
Robocop 3 on the Amiga - came out a year or more before the film.

Sure there are more.



Hmmm, aren't some of the tie-ins released on Xbox Arcade and PSN supposed to be ok-to-goodish? Thinking about Scott Pilgrim (Ok but a bit dull) and the Watchmen game (haven't tried it).


Cerys

Quote from: NoSleep on May 30, 2011, 08:54:20 AM
Isn't that Alien Resurrection? Another one of those film tie-ins that occurred years after the film (like The Thing, Evil Dead, The Warriors etc). Not so much a tie-in as homage to the original films.

Alien Resurrection is an awesome game, anyway.

No, it predates Alien Resurrection - which is definitely an awesome game, but doesn't have the same place in my heart.  Alien Trilogy has the added bonus of having IGOTPINK&CIDBOOTSON as a cheat code.  Great for destressing - there's something very satisfying about standing there letting a xenomorph go graahgraahgraahgraahgraah at you, and then lobbing a grenade into its face and giggling manically as it splatters into green acid.

NoSleep

Quote from: Cerys on May 30, 2011, 12:18:21 PM
No, it predates Alien Resurrection - which is definitely an awesome game, but doesn't have the same place in my heart.  Alien Trilogy has the added bonus of having IGOTPINK&CIDBOOTSON as a cheat code.  Great for destressing - there's something very satisfying about standing there letting a xenomorph go graahgraahgraahgraahgraah at you, and then lobbing a grenade into its face and giggling manically as it splatters into green acid.

Just looking at reviews of it now (and downloading a DOS version from an abandonware site). Doom-like apparently.

I've avoided it until now because I assumed it was a platformer like Alien 3, which I did play, but suffers from a depressing soundtrack which doesn't help the frustration levels during difficult parts of the game; I think the Mario games would be cause for spawning many axe-murderers if they sported a similarly doom-laden score.

Cerys


Benevolent Despot

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (original xbox and PC) was a pretty excellent game. I've never seen the movie but always assumed it was wank. The movie would have to be damn good to beat this game anyway. It had everything - fantastic design and graphics, lotsa different gameplay types - talking and trading, fist-fighting and melee fighting, guns, stealth, special see-in-the-dark powers, puzzle-solving, mech-combat, varied sci-fi environments, a decent story and voice acting. One of my favourite original xbox games.

(5) Chronicles of Riddick - The Shiv (Gameplay)

I guess this isn't exactly a tie-in as its plot is entirely seperate from the movie, as far as I understand, but it's still pretty closely linked.

Jemble Fred

Quote from: AsparagusTrevor on May 29, 2011, 02:45:15 AM
The games rushed out to meet the movie release window so interest is up, but effort is down. Doesn't matter, they'll still be bought.

Have you played Thor as well, then?

Big Jack McBastard

#13
Not tied with a release or anything but the Ghostbusters game in 2009 for the consoles/PC was a pleasant surprise, a lot of cast involvement made it something special.

Quote from:  WPGhostbusters creator Dan Aykroyd has said that "this is essentially the third movie."

Capturing ghosts had the right look and feel to it which was great, very satisfying tangling with them, kicking out the traps and driving them down while ripping up the walls and furniture, nothing quite like burning a giant cock and balls festooned with swastikas into the back wall of a decimated ballroom with your proton stream and then spending your payment from the gig on new upgrades for your pack. Had some nice set pieces too, Stay Puft does turn up once or twice, burning streaks in his forehead and arms as 'The Rookie'[nb]Cool name bro[/nb] hangs by his feet from a skyscraper was a memorable moment.

It took me a day to finish it on hard it's true, but I did little else that day and was keen to continue and entertained throughout.

mcbpete

I was a huge fan of Platoon on the C64 as a kid, though for some reason I still haven't got round to watching the film yet. This level was my favourite but it also creeped the shit out of me -

Platoon: Level 2 - Commodore 64

El Unicornio, mang

I always thought Platoon was a weird film to make into a video game, given the heavy subject matter, kind of like if they made a Schindler's List game. There was also a Platoon game released for the PC in 2002.

Cerys

Quote from: Cerys on May 30, 2011, 12:18:21 PMIGOTPINK&CIDBOOTSON

I did, of course, mean IGOTPINK8CIDBOOTSON.

Jemble Fred

Quote from: Big Jack McBastard on May 30, 2011, 04:59:29 PM
Not tied with a release or anything but the Ghostbusters game in 2009 for the consoles/PC was a pleasant surprise, a lot of cast involvement made it something special.


Oddly enough, two years or whatever it is on, I'd only just ordered that off Amazon about an hour before you posted. Surprised you'd mark it down for ease of completion though; the biggest gripe I heard – from the best gamers around – was that it was just annoyingly tricky. Not, as you say, massive or a Herculean task, but all the mini-marshmallow thingies were apparently just such a chore to get through. I'm just worried I won't have the staying power to press on when I get to irritating bits like that.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on May 30, 2011, 06:12:08 AM
The worst?

Friday the 13th (Spectrum)



Heh, I remember that on the Commodore 64, and Zzap giving it their worst ever percentage, which I think was about 10%. The embarrassing thing is that I kind of liked it for the first hour or so, as it was the first ever game that I'd played that allowed you to be the bad guy. It really is shit though, and ridiculously repetitive.