I’m not much of a gamer. I think the only game I’ve played since Tecmo-bowl in college was Nascar Thunder 2004. Which, by the way, I’m awesome at.
*Ahem. *
Anyway, whenever I see these games rolled out and cross-promoted with movies, say the King Kong game, or some Star Wars game, I always figure, “oh, that’s just some lame-o game to cash in on the movie promotion.”
As opposed to some well-put together game that was designed as a game from the ground up – like Sims or Myst or what have you.
Clue me in.
Are they put together by the big game studios with as much care and thought as the “pure” games.
I think movie to game translations have the same chance of being crappy as any other video game. You get a few that suck, some that are pretty good, and the occasional game that is great.
FTR, the Spider Man 2 video game is pure gaming gold.
There are games from movies that rock ass, and are some of the bst games ever made, such as:
Goldeneye
Many Star Wars games, most notably X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and Knights of the Old Republic. Granted, most are not direct movie games, but spin offs. But they wouldn’t exist without a Star Wars series of movies, so they are counted.
On the other hand, they nca make crappy games, such as:
Almost any NES, SNES, or Genesis game based on a movie.
To expand on bouv’s comment, back in the day this was true. Every non-chick-flick movie seemed to get its own crappy side-scrolling game. Even Wayne’s World got one (I am not making this up!) These were universally awful.
Star Wars was always a bit different. They had high and low periods, but I note that even their “low” periods had a number of innovative, if not top-notch, games. Both Force Commander and Rebellion had serious problems, but both were also pretty interesting conceptually. There were worse games and better ones, and a few silly ones (Super Bombad Racing, anyone?). Buton the whole, Star Wars has been good. Even their side-scrolling SNES games were incredibly fun to play!
Bond games have been pretty good, though also uneven.
Many movie games do suck. However, it’s probably amazing that so many of them do well. Outside of Role-Playing Games, which are hard to come by and tend to have a lot more work put in them when they do come out, I can’t think of a genre with as much consistent quality.
One line which deserves special recognition for suckiness is the Matrix series. Frankly, it’s awful. It seems to be universally recognized as a terrible series. Which is very unfortunate. You’d think they could put out at least straight-up fighitng game. I mean, wouldn’t it be grea to see Ressurected Trinity up against Super Smith 2?!
Wait. *The Matrix * as a pretentious version of Dragonball Z.