Once upon a time they were pretty much just throw aways but over the last generation movie tie-ins and licensed games have gotten significantly better. The past few years have seen some damned good ones too like Wolverine, last year's Transformers game, and Toy Story 3. I can't honestly say what triggered the change in philosophy with developers and publishers to actually take advantage of the licenses to make good games and therefore make money as opposed to the old logic of "the name will sell the game."  I do remember a string of good comic book games late last gen that began with X-Men Legends and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (which sort of set the model for Infamous and Prototype). But it is safe to say that the days of dismissing a game because it's a tie-in are over.

Funny how movie games used to be all the rage, then as the gaming audience caught onto the lack of quality they became a joke. Really I want games based on older movies, it's about time we had a great new Robocop game or a Total Recall game. They had games back in the day but that was with like NES or megadrive graphics.

gamingeek said:

Funny how movie games used to be all the rage, then as the gaming audience caught onto the lack of quality they became a joke. Really I want games based on older movies, it's about time we had a great new Robocop game or a Total Recall game. They had games back in the day but that was with like NES or megadrive graphics.

HELL YES.

Golden Compass? wtf why....

aspro said:

Somehow I ended up with both the PS2 and PSP copies of The Golden Compass, that will probably break my streak.  I also jhave a King Arthur game, Nightmare Before Christmas -- actually a whole bunch.

IIRC, I hear that Nightmare Before Christmas game is actually pretty damned good.

But good god, I don't envy you playing through the Golden Compass. Suffering through the movie was bad enough, can't expect the game to be better.

gamingeek said:

There were actually games for a hell of a lot of fun films which would make great modern games if done properly. There was a SNES True Lies game which was pretty good. Personally I feel like the 80s action movies are ripe for the picking and you still see the Aliens franchise being done, I would love to see it done properly. But otherwise, maybe a Commando game would be fun.

A Rambo 2 game like Snake Eater?

Maybe a graphic adventure or first person WRPG for Total Recall?

The recent Rambo arcade game by Sega is acutally quite fun, if you can find a machine.

1. AeonFlux
2. Astroboy
3. Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
4. El Tigre: The Adventure of Manny Rivera
5. Golden Compass, The (PSP and PS2)
6. Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
7. Resevoir Dogs
8. The Simpsons Game (DS and PS2)
9. Van Helsing
10. Wall-E
11. Wolverine's Revenge
12. Evil Dead: Fistful of Broomstick
13. Fight Night EDIT: Fight Club
14. Godfather, The
15. Goldeneye: Rogue Agent
16. Incredible Hulk: ULtimate Desctruction
17. King Arthur
18. The Punisher
19. Scarface
20. The Thing

So those are the ones from just the PS2 and XB. I didn't include the Star Wars ones, since those are their own thing.  I probably missed some too, since I may not have recognized the name as a movie property.

gamingeek said:

But otherwise, maybe a Commando game would be fun.

It's been done, and by Capcom no less.

Commando (Arcade)

And it's still a lot of fun to play.

God Fight Club was such a terrible game. I hated to see one of my favorite movies turned into such a crappy game. Credit has to be given for including Abraham Lincoln in the game, but otherwise it was pure crap.

Foolz said:

The Thing was pretty good from what I played of it. Which wasn't very much.

It is very good, I got three hours in or more a couple of years ago, and then got into a situation where the difficulty ramped up crazily. It had a lot of nice touches.