For as long as gamers can remember, if you go to see a successful film in the cinema or watch a popular show on the television, you can be almost certain to see a video game released at the same time or shortly after aiming to cash in on the waves of excitement created.
We have seen this happen with the obvious (Spider-man trilogy), to the not so obvious (a Rambo game set for release in 2014!?), to the downright ludicrous (why would anyone want to play the game of Pacific Rim?). But the fact that remains is that far more often than not, these shameless money-spinning exercises annoy gamers with generic content, scripting that sticks almost exactly to the original source or a complete lack of effort to produce an engaging and fun game.
One of my favourite film franchises of all time, The Lord of the Rings, has been guilty of putting its name to poor games such as The Two Towers, Return of the King, War in the North and Aragorn’s Quest. Plodding along a linear level hacking and slashing irrepressible spawning enemies does no justice to the sheer awesomeness of Peter Jackson’s trilogy. Fans just want a unique and entertaining experience for their £40, I mean, can we imagine a Skyrim-esque RPG set in the Lord of the Rings universe that had endless side quests and had you hooked for over 100 hours? Or similarly for Game of Thrones, not just a basic and boring representation of the series to get something available on the shelves.
Telltale Games has shown that it is possible to not follow an existing plot to give gamers a chance to make their own decisions within a game of their chosen film or TV show. The Walking Dead episodic series blew the full-priced game featuring Daryl and Merle out of the water while way back on PS2, I massively enjoyed playing as Jack Bauer in 24: The Game, which had an original story written by the show’s own writers and had the original cast as voice-over artists. Perhaps the biggest triumph in recent memory would be the Batman games which completely steered away from the Christian Bale films and focused on Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, even featuring Mark Hamill doing an impressive turn as the Joker. Garnering perfect scores from numerous publications and fans, they are considered the greatest superhero games ever created in a genre that has so often seen mediocrity plague its releases.
When you’ve seen something play out at the cinema and on television, it seems a waste of everyone’s time to play it out again at home when you could be having fun with a quality new experience while using the same characters you loved in those films and shows. The good news is that it looks like many publishers and developers are taking notice of the success of these original games and planning for immersive and divergent gameplay for their next efforts. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor for PS4 and Xbox One looks to be a sprawling, open world Lord of the Rings title that has so far been sorely missed in the eyes of every Tolkien fan, while a proper Game of Thrones adventure is in the works courtesy of The Walking Dead developer Telltale.
In this day and age, with leisure time becoming more and more precious amid all the non-gaming activities or commitments, there is simply no excuse for our wallets and purses to be robbed like this. We deserve more for our loyalty and it looks like we just might be getting it a lot more often in the future. Here’s hoping for a Jon Snow-based RPG coming soon!
What are you favourite or most despised game tie-ins? Let us know in the comments section below!
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