It should come as no surprise that there are game tie-ins to big-budget films all the time. Although it is mostly in summer films, movies such as: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Thor, Green Lantern, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Iron Man and it’s sequel, The Incredible Hulk, and the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man all have their own video-game adaptations of the film which either reiterate the story of the film or expand on what the film already covered. These movie-games all share one unifying theme: They have been or will be poorly received by critics.
Why will The Amazing Spider-Man will be bad? The sad fact of the matter is that movie-game tie-ins only exist to exploit the casual gamer at Wal-Mart or surfing on Amazon for their hard-earned cash. Only on rare occasions does a movie-game tie-in exceed expectations. Spider-Man 2 really surprised people with its open-world web-swinging gameplay. The side-quests were laughable (retrieving balloons for little girls) and the dialogue was pretty horrendous. But I remember Spider-Man 2 fondly just because it gave the illusion of really being Spider-Man. X-Men Origins Wolverine was developed by Raven Software and it was a movie-game that exceeded the film it was based on. In fact, many reviewers pointed out that the game was considerably more bloody and true to the source material than the film.
I’m sure you’ve heard that there will be a Battleship film, based on the popular board game, starring Liam Neeson this summer. If you haven’t heard that they are making a plot-lacking board game into a feature film, you can see the trailer here. On Feb 8., IGN reported that “Activision and Hasbro have announced Battleship for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360…. the game switches between a Battle Command map and first-person shooter gameplay.” So let me just do some mental gymnastics. There is a film adaptation of a board game but then there is also a video game tie-in about that film based on the board game and this video game tie-in will be a first-person shooter instead of a strategy game, which might actually make this whole thing come full circle.
Personally, I think publishers should just drop the movie-game tie-ins because they just upset critics and the people that buy them. I suggest that franchised properties go the Batman: Arkham Asylum route: A well-established character with a developer that just “gets it” and is passionate about the subject matter so the critics will be happy, the consumers will be happy and the sales will be indicative of that happiness.
Sound off in the comments and shoot me an email at shfawcet@asu.edu with any other movie-games I might have missed.
