Adaptations are a common practice in any form of entertainment, whether its books to movies like Harry Potter. Books to games like The Witcher series, games to books like the Halo novels and so on so forth.
But they’re not always good adaptions, such as with several notorious games that couldn’t live up to the pleasure of their movie counterparts even a bit. Adapted failures are a common occurrence (Iron man 2 for the 360) but every now and then, we do hit gold. Here are a few video games based on movies that were actually good.
Spider-Man 2
Sam Raimi’s Spider-man movie trilogy starring Tobey Maguire is something we all hold near and dear. The video game counterpart series of the movies were no less. Specifically the highly acclaimed Spider-man 2 game for the PS2. A game which just like its movie counterpart, is the best of the 3. This Spidey video game nailed almost every aspect of the wall-crawler perfectly.
Whether it was the look of the city and suit (which at that time of video game graphics was amazing). Or the combat, which involved a mix of fisticuffs and bouncing around with acrobatics.
This coupled with a bit of web action perfectly captured the Spidey experience. Most importantly, however, the game absolutely nailed the web swinging. With the controls being very manual and in the player’s hands. Along with the web lines actually attaching and acting as anchors for added realism. Something some Spider-man games often lack. The city life and activities also helped you feel more in the superhero identity. Whether it was stopping a high-speed chase or saving a kid’s balloon. Of course, none of us can ever forget the epic pizza delivery missions from Mr. Aziz either. With the most nostalgic soundtrack, I’ve experienced in a game up to date.
Peter Jackson’s King Kong
Everyone probably remembers this reboot of the classic movie which for the most part was definitely made better by the CGI. But did you know that the movie had a game adapted off it? And it was playable for the PS2, Xbox, and PSP.
The game follows the same events as the movies. You play as the game/film’s protagonist, Jack. And are tasked with finding Ann, the female lead actress of a movie you went to shoot on Skull Island. You know how it goes, Ann gets kidnapped by Kong and you now need to traverse the dangerous island to retrieve her.
Now while the movie’s pacing in the survival was a bit too quick because of the hour and a half time stamp. The game quite thoroughly delivers on the survival aspect. And you really tend to feel like a person in the harsh wilds of a hostile island. With your weapons being either a rarely used gun. Or the inevitable sticks and bones on the ground. With everything having its own durability but that’s just half of the game.
The other half is then playing as Kong himself. And the game does an amazing job in giving the player that transition. Where you go from an unwanted guest who’s prey to everything on the island, to the king himself. Who owns everything and can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants.
Now, this is not only an example of a good video game adaption out of a movie. But it’s also a case where the game actually surpassed the movie it was adapted from. Now most of us shouldn’t be too surprised if we’ve seen the disaster of a movie that was. But the game captured many important factors that make players feel like they’re Logan. Most important one is the violence that the movie originally lacked, the ways in which you could slice, dice and shred Ryker’s men with the built-up bloodlust being turned into a berserker rage.
The killing frenzies you could go on and even the gory yet highly detailed healing factor was perfect. Sure, both had that pit-stain of a Deadpool in them as a major fight. But beyond that, there’s very little to criticize the game for.
So yeah if you missed out on any of these, I hope you’re either a vintage console collector or know how to emulate. Because if you’ve missed out on these bad boys, you need to play them.
