Going across mediums part 2: Films into games

So, where were we?


Ah, yeah, films based on games. They've had an earlier start than the other way around, so it should come as no surprise that they have so much more experience. Also, why they suck so much more.


I'll have to admit that, while I've seen every film in question in part 1, I haven't played all of the games that were based on films, mostly due to self-defense, and only partly due to not owning any consoles produced after Gameboy Color. Still, there were several games that fit the bill even before that, and truckloads of them that were produced for or were eventually ported to the PC, so I guess my opinion is not completely without merit.


So, where do we start from? I guess the beggining's as good a place as any.

I can't remember which one was the earliest one I got my hands on, back in 1990 or 1991 but it most probably was Activision's Ghostbusters 2.
Yes, it was as awful as you'd expect, of course: a mismatched collection of bad mini-games. How else could you expect to adapt a film such as Ghostbusters into a game in that era? It took, quite literally, decades for the technology to evolve enough so we could get to the picture below. But, I digress. The original Ghostbusters game was crap.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

This one wasn't

And, as early as this example was, it seems companies didn't pick up on it and avoid it, as they should, like the plague: as recently as 2010, there's still mismatched collections of bad mini-games tied with a rudimentary "story" that doesn't do a shred of justice to the original source.

Do yourself a favor: Never press anything other than QUIT.

You get plenty of those, and you better believe they have the potential to interact with your loving recollections of the source material like a zombie virus: in the end, there will only be a few eventually doomed survivors left.




But what of the other kind? What of games that are not just trying to turn the popularity of the original licence into $$$ in the developer's pocket? What, in short, of those that actually try to adapt the film into a game "as is"? Unfortunately, such a huge majority of them is bad, that the suckiness is all but ecumenical. The examples that break this rule are too few, too thinly spread and too far back. Sure, there were platformers such as Super Star Wars, a series of games that followed the Trilogy's plot. Well, at least as much as a platformer could follow a plot. And, you know what? It was a good platformer. It really was. A good platformer flavoured after the source material, not based on it. Same goes for, say, that ole ditty, Home Alone 2 on the Gameboy. There's a few examples like that, all of them waaaaay back and, in their entirety, platform games.

Nowadays, when a film gets adapted into a game, it's either the port of a port, meaning it's the adaptation of a film which is in itself an adaptation of a comic book (see Spider-Man: The movie, Sega's Iron Man and Incedible Hulk forays, Ghost Rider et al)

Or, god-awful games such as Avatar: The Game, Path of Neo and Return of the King.

Or, the game adaptation of a film which is an unfaithful (but still good) film adaptation of a comic book, like Wanted.

 I honestly do not know why that is. I mean, I have a solid idea why games don't make good films, but why films can't make good games eludes me. It may have something to do with all of these examples being released simultaneously or, very close to, the film's release. Could that mean that the film hasn't had time to entrench itself in our taste and one look at a mediocre game will suffice? Could it mean that getting that game out is more in keeping with a marketing schedule rather than working on the game itself? I don't know. What I do know, is that those games were bad. There's only one exception to this, released simultaneously with the film: Enter the Matrix.

Plot-wise, it follows Captain Niobe (featured heavily in some kind of Matrix sequels that were never released. You hear me? They were never released!), and her second in command, Ghost. Years after the original Matrix, It picked up were the Animatrix left and would continue up until near the end of that first sequel. Notable characters from the films cameoed, you sometimes visited sets from the films, but the thing that made it a good game: it had its own characters and story, which differed from the ones in the films, while not pretending they didn't exist (I'm looking at you, Avatar).


It was not, by any stretch of the term, a great game, but it was enjoyable and a game in its own right. Hmmm. We might just be into something there.


Yes, there are great games based on films. But, they are all based on some aspect of the world in the film, not the plot of the film as is.

 X-Wing

 Blade Runner

 Ghostbusters

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Force Unleashed

Alien Vs Predator

It's true. Some worlds lend themselves for games more readily than others. It's no accident there's so many Star Wars games out there, only some of them bad. However, all of the above examples have something in common: the acting technique known as "yes, and".

"Yes, and" assumes the actor, be that in improv or legitimate acting, accepts what his or her partner gives them, no matter what that is, and adds to it. It's what makes you bark when someone tells you "do like a dog" instead of going "no, that's stupid, you be the dog, I wanna be a cat".

All of these games accepted the world as it was and added to it, sometimes for better (looking at you, good ending of Force Unleashed), sometimes for worse (looking at you, evil ending of Force Unleashed). But what they did, they did by themselves, paying their own dues. And you know what? It worked. Blade Runner might just be Westwood's non-strategy swan song, one of the best adventure games ever made. KotOR is widely known to gamers as the best Star Wars film never made. Alien Vs Predator, although now blemished in the eyes of fans who haven't tried it because of the films based on it (Gee, thanks for that, Paul W. Anderson!), is one of the scariest experiences you'll have without actually being in danger.

Please, developers, keep that in mind next time you want to adapt a film. Gamers, sooner or later, get a brain, and we hate being taken for fools.


PS: Next week, comic books. This should be fun.