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Movie-Based Videogames - Not Actually That Bad? 77

Posted by simoniker from the celluloid-pixeloid dept.
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."
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Movie-Based Videogames - Not Actually That Bad? More

Movie-Based Videogames - Not Actually That Bad?

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  • My comments on the Riddick game (Score:4, Funny)

    by Takeel ( 155086 ) <v32gd4r02&sneakemail,com> on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:21PM (#9443595) Homepage Journal
    I played the Chronicles of Riddick game. The game was good, but the movie sucked! Perhaps this is a new paradigm! A video game based on a movie can be good...if the movie sucks!
    • Let's see. . .

      Super Mario Brothers-- good game(s), movie sucked.
      Street Fighter-- good game, movie sucked.
      Tomb Raider-- good game, movie(s) sucked.

      Maybe the Riddick movie is based on the game?
      • All three of those games were made before the movies. Those are GAME-BASED movies not MOVIE-BASED games.

        If you're going to go with the crappy movie == good game, theory, reading the article would have shown you that bad movies like Toys, still made for bad video games.

        More recently, Reign of Fire sucked. The Reign of Fire video game also sucked.

        • The movie came out after the game.

          The release date for the Riddick game was 1 June 2004 [imdb.com]. The premiere for the Riddick movie was 3 June 2004 [imdb.com]. So it could be argued that the game came first.

          (And I never noted that 'crappy movie means good game'. I noted that 'good game means crappy movie'.)

          In Reign of Fire's case, the movie came out before the games did; the movie premiered 9 July 2002 [imdb.com], while the games didn't come out until 22 Oct 2002 [gamefaqs.com] (PS2 and XBOX), 31 Oct 2002 [gamefaqs.com] (GBA), and 26 Nov 2002 [gamefaqs.com] (GC); Thus, in th

        • Those are GAME-BASED movies not MOVIE-BASED games.

          so then is everyone looking forward to the Doom Movie [empireonline.co.uk]?

          Max Payne is the one i'm really looking forward too - that game is just destined for John Woo greatness (and may pull him out that creative slump that he's been in recently..).

    • What about the matrix tie ins?

      totally punches new paradigm in the neck

    • Well, that's how it's worked with Mario, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider...

      New paradigm? No, same paradigm, working in the opposite direction.

    • So does this mean that Gigli the game will revoulatinze gaming?
    • I played the Chronicles of Riddick game. The game was good, but the movie sucked!

      I think you suck. It must be the influence of your mom =P.

      The Riddick film wasn't a masterpiece, but it was a lot of fun and definitely worth the $7 I paid to see it the second time (first was free because I got a pass with my Pitch Black DVD).
      • Most movies try to have something called 'plot' and another something called 'acting'. Unfortunately, Chronicles of Riddick had neither.

        I was quite disapointed because in Pitch Black, your set in a future earth universe. There are no other wierd humanoid races, just humans. Riddick is human, not some other race. Then all of a sudden you are dealing with several different races. To me it was a turn to the worse from Pitch Black.

  • Goldeneye? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:30PM (#9443698)
    Hello? Anybody remember 1998?

  • Enter the Matrix (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slashrogue ( 775436 )
    Maybe it was just me, but I actually liked Enter the Matrix. It was a short game and not particularly challenging, but it was fun, it had stuff from the actors and plenty of quality cutscenes without being intrusive about it. I guess it depends on your definition of "suck" -- if the majority has to like it, then I'm sure lots of games that are good suck, regardless of the movie license stuff. End rambling.
    • Chick games, but fun.
      I got these games for the wife but Nemo was really fun to watch and pick up the controller at difficult portions. Frankly it was fun reliving the movie. Havn't seen haunted mansion, and looks like the game is nothing like the movie but its also a fun game. They are both puzzle/adventure games. Simple to play, decent graphics, a hell of alot less buggy then morrowind. I wouldn't mind recomending them at all.
      • hey, just cause Im a girl doesnt mean I like crappy games. 'Chick' games are nintendo puzzle collection
      • Nemo was really fun to watch and pick up the controller at difficult portions. Frankly it was fun reliving the movie.

        Unless I'm totally mistaken, the Nemo video game came out far before the movie did. So that really doesn't have its own curse going for it. That's why there can be DnD video games that are good - they weren't based on the abysmal movie. (Of Daily Radar "DnD movie fails saving throw against sucking ass" fame)


        --LordPixie

    • Re:Enter the Matrix (Score:3, Insightful)

      by delus10n0 ( 524126 )
      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
    • The best part of the Matrix game, hacking it on the command line. I had more fun doing that than I did actually trying to play the main game.

  • Depending (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:31PM (#9443705)
    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.
    • What making money is a crime now?

      Are movies based on books "an obvious cash-in" and therefore not to be watched. (reference Lord of the Rings trilogy, Fight Club, Bladerunner, etc)

      Evaluate each on their own merit.

  • Give credit to the developer... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Song for the Deaf ( 608030 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:36PM (#9443752)
    If Chronicles of Riddick is good, all that means is the developer [starbreeze.com] actually cared about the product and had the imagination and talent to pull it off. It's that simple.

    The underlying problem is still and will always be there- games based on movies tend to be promotional tie-ins first, games second.



    • The underlying problem is still and will always be there- games based on movies tend to be promotional tie-ins first, games second.

      Another huge problem being : time

      These companies are usually given 6 months, give or take, to build an engine and game thats up to par. Rarely is this pulled off with a quality product.

      And I wouldn't say just because this 1 movie-based game is acceptable/good, that the "curse" is broken. I have faith that someone else will waste time/money developing a movie-based game th
    • Any clue how much input Tigon (Vin Deisel's company) had on the game? I mean, don't get me wrong, much props to Starbreeze, but without Diesel's wanting to make it worthwhile would they have gotten so much control?

      It's not that movie-related games are bad, just movie-regurgitating ones. On that note, anyone know of other games that did this? This, Matrix, Aliens vs Predator?
      • Aliens vs. Predator was a work of art. It's the only game to actually scare the crap out of me. I once ruined a set of headphones when I was playing a marine: a facehugger jumped me out of the darkness, I screamed and literally jumped over the back of my chair.

  • I Agree (Score:3, Interesting)

    by astrokid ( 779104 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:47PM (#9443861)
    Not all video games based on movies suck unfortunately though it is the majority.

    (briefly) Looking over the article it seems as though it was written more from a console standpoint. If you look at the arcade you'll notice that most movie based games are actually enjoyable. It's true that they are mostly shooters/fighters though.

    Star Wars Trilogy [shinforce.com] was a great time sink and provided a lot of enjoyment for me on my lunch breaks.

    Star Wars Racer [sega.co.jp] had a lot more excitement than the actual movie :)

    The Jurassic Park shooter was fun also.

    I wouldn't call the above games great, they had their problems but they definately didn't suck.

    On a tangent, it's a shame the arcade scene isn't how it used to be. I miss the days that sega ruled the arcades.

  • Predator on NES (Score:4, Funny)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:47PM (#9443871) Homepage
    For a while I thought it was called Schwarzeneggerbecause his name was bigger than the title on the cartridge. It was a sidescroller starring a guy with a machine gun shooting bubbles. Surprisingly fun for a few hours. Alex.
    • Hey! I still haven't finished that game! I've got the C64 version.. do you have to fight the predator at the end with your gun/hand to hand, and he like knockes a life off you every time he runs away? Cuz I STILL WANT TO KNOW HOW TO BEAT THAT!

  • It really wasn't a movie game (Score:4, Informative)

    by crstophr ( 529410 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:48PM (#9443879) Homepage
    It just had the same title.

    The game took place before pitch black in the timeline. The only real similarity was the Riddick charactor.

    It had it's own plot, storyline, etc. I think it did well because it didn't even try to be a movie game. It stood on it's own and was just a good console shooter.

    --Chris

  • Aliens games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ronfar ( 52216 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:49PM (#9443881) Journal
    There have been a lot of games based on Alien movies that have been good. I remember the Alien III game for the SNES was pretty good.

    So, the idea of "one game that breaks the curse" doesn't really work for me.

    • There have been a lot of games based on Alien movies that have been good. I remember the Alien III game for the SNES was pretty good.

      I think time has made your memories of that awful game fond.

      Here are the good Alien-based games I've played:

      - Aliens (C64)

      Here are the bad Alien-based games I've played:

      - Alien (Atari 2600)
      - Alien 3 (Multiplatform)
      - Alien Trilogy (PC) *
      - Aliens (PC - this is the comic-book style one) **

      * this one is the absolute worst. The developers were too lazy to make a Ripley model
  • It depends on the developer, the freedom they have, and the original movie material.

    Have movie-based games become better (relative to other games released around the same time on the same platforms over the last decade? Probably, and that's probably the result of Hollywood paying more attention to them, as well as games becoming the big business it is today. Is the average movie-based game as good as the average non-movie-based game? Possibly, since they typically contain very little innovation (which of y

  • The answer is simple: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schild ( 713993 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @01:56PM (#9443950) Homepage Journal
    Movie based games are utter shite.

    Movie INSPIRED games tend to be good.
    • So, what you're saying is a developer under a hard deadline to complete a game and basically has to rush the thing out sucks, while a game that is made without such time constraints doesn't, right?

      Somehow I don't think whether it's using a movie liscence or not matters there. It's just an issue of if the developer can take the time to give the game the polish it needs.
    • i'll agree with this. another recent example of a movie *inspired* game that turned out to be awesome in practice would be "Tron 2.0"
  • I always loved the Aliens VS. Predator arcade game. I realize that there was a comic book, but the movie is coming out sometime.

    And the top down Jurassic Park game for the NES(or SNES? I can't remember) I was so close to beating that game until I got killed by a bug. I got stuck in a plant. That was the last time I played it.

  • Movies that should have been Video Games... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Orne ( 144925 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @02:37PM (#9444332) Homepage
    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.

  • Games made from movie franchises tend to suck, but that doesn't mean that they must. The reason they tend to suck is that the story has already been told, and in order to remain true to it, artifical limitiations must be placed on the user (you can't kill that person because they're your friend...the movie says so).

    The best games let the gamer tell the story by making interesting choices about how to proceed. In many cases movies have already made those choices (implicitly and explicitly) so there's less p

  • Movie-based games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @02:56PM (#9444518) Journal
    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.
    • You leave the Lord of the Rings games out of your examples in the first group, and they also break the rules. The games are incredibly well developed and a whole lot of fun. Still, I tend to agree with your point in general.

      hed.

  • I dunno ... (Score:2, Funny)

    by evslin ( 612024 )
    That first Ghostbusters game on NES was pretty tight.
    • The C64 version gave you 3x more options with how to customize your vehicle - plus, instead of the ridiculous stair climbing crap at the end, you just had to sneak two of your three guys past Mr. Stay Puft.

      The NES version was good on its own, but it still was a mediocre port of the fantastic C64 version.

  • Game based on Movie about a Game (Score:4, Funny)

    by darkmayo ( 251580 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @03:03PM (#9444593)
    Street Fighter:The Movie.. game
    Now that was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @03:05PM (#9444604)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's a little know fact that movies and the games that are based on them draw Karma from the same limited pool.

    That means that if the movie is really, really good, there just isn't enough juice left to make a good game.

    Luckily for the programmers on Riddick, they found that the pool had been strangely untouched when they got to it.

  • Well. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <slebrunNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @03:11PM (#9444664) Journal

    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.

  • Seems to be:
    games based on a movie (ie the game plot and objectives mirror the movie plot and objectives)
    vs.
    games inspired by a movie (ie games that merely occur in the same universe with more or less the same characters as a movie)
    I know there are exceptions to the rule on both sides, so I do not need to be inundated with examples. But generally, this seems to be the determining factor.

  • LoTR (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why hasn't anyone mentioned the Lord of the Rings? It is both a great movie trilogy, and a great trilogy of games....one would think these games would defy this....
    • The LotR games got mixed reviews, as some people just saw it as mindless arcade-style orc slashing, while others enjoying the arcade-style gameplay. As a result, the average review for Two Towers was ~80% and Return of the King was ~83%, which basically describes it as being good, although nothing amazing. Riddick has an average score of 90%, which is usually seen as a must-own title.
    • Funny thing about that - they're mentioned in the article. Also, the old SNES version of Lord of the Rings (based on the book/the Bakshi animation) are mentioned too.

      It's called "doing your homework".
  • It feels like the author wasn't that impressed by Chronicles of Riddick, and tried to write a six page article about how this wasn't the first good movie-licensed game ever made. I'll agree with him, there have been other good movie-licensed games, but his examples are poor. Rather than point out the games that were actually good, he just barrages us with a million mediocre titles to which he says about all "It wasn't that bad."

    I don't understand why the author chooses to defend mediocre titles, as that

  • See, there's a VERY good reason that games that use movie licenses have a bad rep: THQ. Now, many of you may not remember THQ in their sucky SNES days, but at that point, all THQ did was license stuff and make crappy games from them. Admittedly, some of these games didn't MERIT being made from the movies in the first place, but they were.

    - Home Alone
    - Home Alone 2
    - Lawnmower Man
    - Wayne's World

    And let's not forget one of the BIGGEST license hounds: Acclaim.

    - Judge Dredd
    - Demolition Man
    - Dragon - The Br
    • 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 gam
      • I think it's hard to counter the argument that "movie games suck" by saying "here's a few that don't" without seeing what percentage of the whole those are.

        My point was that with 10 minutes of combing *1* system's library, I could find a boatload of crappy movie licensed games. To me, it's hard to justify destroying that stereotype by saying "here are a few good ones."

        Now, the question as to whether or not that percentage is *higher* than the regular percentage of crappy games is an excellent one, and if
  • ... I have to agree, i genrally feel that move based games tend to be some of the worst, not that they are often terrible, its just very rare that they try anything new or do anything better than before.

    I have Riddick however is actually an amazing game, It doesn't do stealth as well as splinter cell however its significatly better than Manhunt (nearly as brutal too). Its not as good a raw shooter as say Quake 2 (still amazing) but its nearly that good (only really hampered by the lack of guns and the fac

  • Movie-based games as a genre (Score:3, Informative)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @04:08PM (#9445363)
    If you look at movie-based (or movie-inspired) games as a genre, the crap to good ratio is about the same as any other mature genre. Most of it is crap (ET, Rocketeer, Untouchables) but there are quite a few good games in the genre (Super Star Wars, Tron, Blade Runner). That's true for all genres.

    What makes the movie-based genre different? The movies still get seen from time to time, especially the good ones. That makes us remember the games even if they were terrible. I can't remember most of the slew of crappy 1-on-1 fighter games from the mid-90's that were SF2/MK clones, but I can remember most of the NES movie conversions that were terrible (Total Recall, Three Stooges, Karate Kid, Rambo).

    Movie-based games only seem worse because we actually remember the bad ones from this genre.
  • Riddick wasnt a great movie to videogame conversion, it was yet another horrible videogame to movie conversion. Did these reviewers not see the movie?
  • For the 3DO was pretty faithful to the movie. Even has the sex scene with Sly & Bullock. "You're doing a good deed" "I'm the Demo Man"
  • The coin-op Terminator 2 game ruled (the light gun game). I hadn't spent that much cash on a game since Gauntlet.

    And Ghostbusters on the Apple //e was the game to play. I never did get past the stay puft marshmallow man though.

    Tron: Deadly Discs (an incredibly rare game) was also a lot of fun, and the best tron-based game I've played.

    I think the key is that the games need to provide actual gameplay, and not much story. We know the story, we've seen the movie.. don't waste our time with FMV.
  • Not to troll here but what's up with all these articles about games based on movies and their apparent success?

    Just because "Riddick" is a decent title doesn't mean the flood gates are open again for more movie based games. We've still got a ways to go before games rival the movies their based on.

    For now I think publishers should learn from the lesson "The Chronicles of Riddick" has taught us:

    If you wanna release a game based on a movie you gotta be playing hard ball. Gamers aren't as stupid as you thi

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