Games based on movie franchises have a bad reputation. At the beginning of the noughties, they were produced on a shoestring budget to be ready in time for the movie premiere. The rush and limited resources had a negative impact on the quality of releases, like Transformers: The Game and Spider-Man 3.
But then movie studios and publishers stopped investing in such promotional projects. Games timed to coincide with the premieres of specific movies disappeared, and low-budget projects based on movie licenses, not tied to specific films, returned to the market.
In the early 1980s, a similar game based on the movie Alien was one of the reasons for Atari’s collapse. And in 2014, Rambo: The Video Game from Polish studio Teyon was released, and it was one of the worst creations based on the famous movie. But despite the reputation, games based on movie studio licenses have been and continue to be released. And sometimes they still turn out pretty good.
Many games, both simple slots at Bet20 and more versatile projects, and movies can be based on a common source, such as a book or a graphic novel, but they have no connection with each other. The Batman Arkham series and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are parts of a single franchise, but the events there take place in sort of alternate universes.
Mad Max (2015)
Making a game based on Mad Max is no easier than making a movie. In 2008, the creator of the movie franchise, director George Miller, mentioned a t project with Cory Barlog, one of the writers of God of War 2, who temporarily left Sony Santa Monica. However, the game designer soon moved to Crystal Dynamics, and Warner Bros. handed over development to Avalanche Studios.
The creators of the Just Cause series changed the concept and development direction several times under the influence of the publisher. As a result, critics gave Mad Max a low rating. Players took an atmospheric action movie in the open world warmer, but it didn’t contribute to the great success. Although the game wasn’t bad, despite a number of flaws.
In the plot twist, Max Rockatansky is attacked by bandits of Chlem Ostrus, son of Immortan Joe, steals a car, and leaves the hero to die in the middle of the desert. The former cop is survived by a hermit mechanic. He also provides Max with a new car that was assembled from rusty junk. The car called Masterpiece (Magnum Opus) must be improved in the course of the game and gradually clean the region from unfriendly representatives of various gangs with its help.
The game, which was developed in parallel with the movie, stylistically turned out to be not as bright and pathos as Miller’s picture. However, furious battles over cars, crazy inhabitants of the dying world, and their even crazier cars are in place.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003)
In 2002, Stormfront Studios released the action game The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Despite the name, the game’s plot covered the events of both the first and second movies of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Instead of cutscenes on the engine, the developers used fragments of the movies, and you could control any member of the Fellowship of the Ring.
After a year, EA Redwood Shores studio, later known for Dead Space, released a sequel. It was of higher quality, and it became much more popular. The creators of The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King significantly improved the combat system of the previous game and refined the character development system, making it generally more intuitive and accessible to newcomers.
Other Lord of the Rings games don’t give as much nostalgia as the familiar characters from the movies, voiced by the same actors and fighting to the great music of Howard Shore. The game was released on sixth generation consoles and PC. It runs on modern operating systems, but today you can only buy it on disks on the secondary market.
Alien: Isolation (2014)
The key characters in all the movies in the Alien franchise are generally not soldiers or exceptional brave men. Ripley is an engineer and a pilot. She is forced to learn to survive and confront a virtually invincible enemy, overcoming loneliness and fear, the most important elements of the atmosphere in all parts of the series. Creative Assembly studio combined them in the word “Isolation,” which is the subtitle of its dark space horror.
Alien: Isolation is set between the first movie and the sequel. At the center of the plot, there is Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda. And she is also an engineer. She goes to the space station Sevastopol, where the black box from the ship, on which her mother served before her disappearance, has been delivered. But instead of answers, the girl finds xenomorphs.
Alien: Isolation looks, sounds, and feels like a Ridley Scott movie. Dark and gloomy corridors, the angle of view mimics anamorphic movie camera lenses, and the movie grain effect suits this game far more than many others. The interiors of the station look scruffy, and the design references science fiction of the 70s and 80s.
Amanda’s main tool is a motion detector, the mark on which can scare as much as the Alien himself in the frame. And the main goal is to survive and get out of Sevastopol station.