Comments on: We’ve Been Expecting You, Mr Bond…

By: PHeMoX

PHeMoX — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:00:21 +0000

“One of the best games from a movie was the Thing. The whole trust/fear mechanism was awesome. Watching one of your NPCs blow his head off or piss himself because he was too afraid and didn’t trust you was shocking the first time it happened.”

Totally agreed. It’s up there, together with Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcherbay as the best movie-to-game products ever made.

By: PHeMoX

PHeMoX — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:57:44 +0000

Terrible non-game! It suffers from all the classic movie-to-game mistakes ever made. Bad level design, ridiculous gameplay limitations, weak graphics, too casual; not challenging, it even has a fair share of control and performance issues…. despite the “great” engine.

I’d say it’s a typical Treyarch game as well. Meaning, not good.

By: Eli Just

Eli Just — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:59:26 +0000

Ran terribly on my PC, and I play CoD 4 with high settings. WTF?

By: Reddy

Reddy — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:40:16 +0000

QOS demo verdict: looks ugly, very scripted in a bad way, nonexistant AI, mediocre level design, shooting part of the game is very unsatisfying, it has a HUGE crosshair, movement and generally the gameplay feels awkward for some reason, and finally the worst thing: it’s just not fun.
And I was actually really looking forward to this game, trying to overlook who made the game.

By: roryok

roryok — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:29:23 +0000

oh yeah! forgot about the thing. That was brilliant. But AGAIN, it was a game that came 20 years (actually 20 this time I promise) after the film.

I guess taking older movies and making them into games works better. I wonder what other games we could make from classic films.

Apocalypse Now anyone?

By: OldmanTick

OldmanTick — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:27:17 +0000

One of the best games from a movie was the Thing. The whole trust/fear mechanism was awesome. Watching one of your NPCs blow his head off or piss himself because he was too afraid and didn’t trust you was shocking the first time it happened.

By: James Brophy

James Brophy — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:42:09 +0000

Did I play it wrong or did the demo only last for 3 minuets? I played it twice just to make sure. I was being attacked by the same 3 guys again and again while firing at an indistructable man. I don’t mind the indistructable man as much as I mind the lack of context and identakit bad guys. It’s just about the shortest demo ever made. Why would they release that?

By: Lacobus

Lacobus — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:59:06 +0000

I’ve played it, and my expert (useless) opinion is that is a bit bland. Not as bad as Haze or anything like that, just nothing special at all. I hope this is because all the talent at Treyarch were working on CoD5, or because the thing is more than likely being rushed out. But you never know, it could be just that Treyarch are as shit as lots of people say they are.

By: roryok

roryok — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:45:33 +0000

but every second preview you read of a big name movie tie-in has the lead designers saying “We’re trying to do something really different”. Are the ALL lying? In the history of movie tie-ins, someone, SOMEWHERE along the line must have thought, ‘lets try and make a really great game out of this’.

It just seems odd that no-one ever succeeds

I think the problem arises from movie and games being too dissimilar. Games of movies often lose the story and try and put the player into the shoes of the hero in the action sequences, but then must artificially tie them to only doing what happened in the movie. Likewise, it seems movies of games are equally rubbish because they lack the key element that makes a game good – gameplay. It doesn’t matter if doom the movie looks very similar to the game, and features FPS camera. The game had no plot AT ALL. it was just you shooting things, forever.

And yet, there still are a handful of games that have taken their source material and turned it into something brilliant, something addictive and fun. So if it can be done, why is it so bloody rare?

By: mandrill

mandrill — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:34:38 +0000

games of movies are always rubbish because they are simply there to cash in on the movie. The publisher’s don’t care if its crap as long as it sells (and they do more often than not), the developers don’t caer if its cap as its not their IP and it pays the bills, The sheep who buy it tend not to care if its crap because they’ve got a game based on the movie du jour and can pretend to be their current hero, also they can trade it in for money off the next hot movie tie in when it comes around 10 minutes later.

I avoid them like the plague, unless they look like they’re going to do something interesting with the IP, which is very very rarely and usually not tied to a movie release, a la bladerunner and Goldeneye.

By: aldo

aldo — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:52:03 +0000

Yes, badly designed OTEs are inherently bad.

Surely badly designed anythings are inherently bad?

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:48:14 +0000

“Why are movie tie-in games almost always rubbish?”

I think the differential with the 2 you site is the fact that they were made afterwards and weren’t direct marketing tie-ins like most film games are. With a game that needs to ensure it hits release when a film does it almost goes without saying that innovation goes out the window along with anything else that might hinder it from making it’s deadline.