Video games based on films or television have a better than average chance to turn out horribly. The last two I played were Enter the Matrix—which I took out after a few hours and decided to watch the films instead—and the clunky Iron Man video game. The Fight Club game also disappointed me and was the last time I bought a game without doing my research.
Conversely, there are those film based games that give me hope that I can have more from the films I enjoyed watching such as the Chronicles of Riddick game or the Goldeneye 007 N64 game which is considered to be the best film-to-game title and was recently redone for the Wii. The Star Wars games such as Star Wars: Force Unleashed and even the Lego games are also really good examples of good film-to-game titles (though let’s forget about that horrible Star Wars Bounty Hunter).
There were a lot of arcade games that were done well such as the Die Hard game or the old Simpson side-scroller were you could be all 4 family members like Bart with his skateboard or Marge with her vacuum. Too bad the following Simpsons games haven’t really lived up to that initial foray. Hopefully EA puts out a good Simpsons next gen title soon.
The games that haven’t surprised me are the Transformers games based off the Michael Bay films. They lack any depth at all, but then again, the films were shallow executions of the Transformers universe. I would go with the War for Cybertron game if you are looking for a good next gen Transformers game. Typically you should proceed with caution with any film-to-game release and don’t take my word for it, try the demos out for yourself. These games aren’t patient enough for a bait-and-switch and will expose their shoddy gameplay in the first hour or so.
