Gaming The System: Movie games that don't suck

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: SHELF ABUSE
“Go up, baldhead!” said the guards. And then he shanked them with a screwdriver.

It's capitalism at its worst, a true exploitation of the faithful: the movie game.

Almost inevitably, a successful movie is trailed with merchandise, the most gregariously sinful and wasteful of which is the attempted adaptation of silver screen magic into a shoddy interactive experience for all to (not) enjoy.

Luckily, like most things consistently terrible, there are a few bucks to the trend. Games that are worth checking out for the fact that they're not only playable, but outright fun, despite being merchandise for a film, do exist.

GoldenEye 007 (N64)
I'm only mentioning this first to get it out of the way. Yes, heralded as the king of doing movie games right, playing GoldenEye will probably make you want to watch the movie, and vice versa. The multiplayer is fun, too. Just don't expect others in the room to let you live if you pick Oddjob.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Xbox, PC)
Vin Diesel fans celebrate, I have given this swan song of movie gaming a rightful place on this list. Serving as a story prequel to the 1999 space horror film Pitch Black, its core mechanic is simple: you are a bald, goggled man who sneaks in the shadows and stabs people with makeshift shivs. But Escape from Butcher Bay's greatness comes from not just the fact that Vin Diesel himself voiced the titular Riddick, but from the mindblowingly awesome graphics and art design the game throws at the player. Set in an oppressive prison planet, you play out Baldy McStabstab's escape with some cool first-person shooting and stealth thrown in the mix. This game is a definite must-play for fans of stealth, action and Vin Diesel.

Spider-Man 2 (PS2, Xbox)
The world's first open-world Spiderman game came, surprisingly enough, in the form of a movie tie-in that came out alongside the Sam Raimi superhero classic Spider-Man 2. It was Grand Theft Spider for most players, opting instead to swing around the expansive city completely unlocked for the player's exploration. Although the tie-in for the follow up Spider- Man 3 was a bit lacking gameplay-wise, despite having an even larger rendition of New York City, it's worth checking out as well.

Toy Story 2 (PS1, PC, N64)
There were plenty games before this platformer that attempted to shrink down the player to the size of a toy and level the playing field accordingly, one of those of course being the tie-in game for the original Toy Story. However, with their 2D side-scrolling nature, any semblance of exploring a regular world from a tiny perspective was lost in linear level design. Toy Story 2 blew all those games out of the water with its massive (for the PS1 era, anyway) open-ended levels. Familiar locations like Andy's home can all be explored as Buzz Lightyear. You'll likely end up ignoring objectives in favour of wasting hours just finding literal nooks and crannies. It's a lot of fun despite its age.

Aladdin (Genesis, PC)
First, do yourself a favour and ignore the Super Nintendo version. It's not a bad game, but it's a different game entirely from the Genesis/MS-DOS version, one that is poorer in spirit. The Genesis port of Aladdin is, frankly, a beautiful game, with incredibly fluid character animations created from scanned hand-made cels drawn by the movie's artists themselves. Even the eye candy aside, it's a genuinely fun lightly challenging 2D platformer that's worth checking out.

The Lion King (Genesis, PC)
Being future king of the jungle is no easy task. This game is hard. Studies show the average player goes from bobbing their heads to the game's melodious translation of the film's various music numbers to screaming at the screen in the span of one and a half levels, or 7.53 minutes. The ass-kickingly difficult platforming in The Lion King likely raised a whole generation of kids into a masochistic lifestyle.