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Lies

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Franchises which should have good games but don't

By Lies 21 Comments

You ever run across something in another media form and think to yourself: "this would make a great videogame"? No? Well no matter. Because I did... and this is horrible stylistically. Let's cut to the chase, shall we? These two franchises should have better games than what they currently have.

Harry Potter

Dude look at this PS2 shot of HBP. Wait... PS2???
Dude look at this PS2 shot of HBP. Wait... PS2???
This is a no-brainer, as the books are practically already set up like a game as is. A large, open castle environment with lots of secret places to explore, going to classes to increase abilities, sports mini-games, a continuing story that isn't too overbearing and progresses slowly throughout the year- there could even be dialouge trees or a dating mechanic to inteact with other students and form relationships a la Bioware games. And you know... magic. Spells and potions and shit. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts has seemed content to pump out movie tie-ins with little creative use of the license. The Harry Potter world is vast and expansive- it would be a perfect game world that could support many different game styles. All EA is likely to show us though is Harry's story, which isn't all that compelling since we know where it ends, and it allows the player almost no freedom to make their own choices. Think about an action-RPG or the like set in Hogwarts, putting you in the shoes of a new character as a completely new story unfolded. The setting and world could make great videogames, especially with Wii controls. Maybe after the last movie comes out EA will get a little more creative with the license (or maybe it's something to do with J.K. Rowling). All I know is that Harry Potter has tons of videogame potential, but we haven't seen very much of anything yet.

Lord of the Rings

LOOK AT ALL THAT
LOOK AT ALL THAT
This one is slighty different, as there are some pretty decent LOTR games out there. Nothing too spectacular though (ignoring LOTRO, because I have no experience with MMOs :P). Again, LOTR has an incredible wealth of source material, with Tolkein having essentially mapped out the history, geography, and social structure of this entire world from the moment of creation. The mythos has been treated to an almost insane amount of detail, and there are plenty of interesting ways to use that canon for games. All that we've really seen so far though is hack-n-slash and RTS, set during or around the story put forth in the books and movies. There was a Hobbit game from Sierra recently which was surprisingly good, and The Third Age, which was hilariously bad, but besides that it's been mostly rote. This is probably related to the Tolkein estate, as they tend to keep a tight fist on his work, but the possibilities for games are limitless. Any of the stories from the Simillarion, Aragorn's travels in Harad and Rhun, only breifly touched upon in the books, Gandalf and his Wizard homies (RIP The White Council, it was not yet your time). Middle Earth is so broad, it could do so much more besides RTS and Hack n Slash- or at least try different time periods besides the frame around the books and movies.

Both of those franchises (Both EA Licenses, oddly enough) really are something special, but haven't been put to good use in the videogame space. It's kind of saddening to see such potential not fully utilized, although I'm sure EA is laughing all the way to the bank. Any franchises you feel this way about? Disagree with my choices? Sound off in the comments :)

Thanks for reading. It is appreciated.
21 Comments

21 Comments

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Lies

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Edited By Lies

You ever run across something in another media form and think to yourself: "this would make a great videogame"? No? Well no matter. Because I did... and this is horrible stylistically. Let's cut to the chase, shall we? These two franchises should have better games than what they currently have.

Harry Potter

Dude look at this PS2 shot of HBP. Wait... PS2???
Dude look at this PS2 shot of HBP. Wait... PS2???
This is a no-brainer, as the books are practically already set up like a game as is. A large, open castle environment with lots of secret places to explore, going to classes to increase abilities, sports mini-games, a continuing story that isn't too overbearing and progresses slowly throughout the year- there could even be dialouge trees or a dating mechanic to inteact with other students and form relationships a la Bioware games. And you know... magic. Spells and potions and shit. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts has seemed content to pump out movie tie-ins with little creative use of the license. The Harry Potter world is vast and expansive- it would be a perfect game world that could support many different game styles. All EA is likely to show us though is Harry's story, which isn't all that compelling since we know where it ends, and it allows the player almost no freedom to make their own choices. Think about an action-RPG or the like set in Hogwarts, putting you in the shoes of a new character as a completely new story unfolded. The setting and world could make great videogames, especially with Wii controls. Maybe after the last movie comes out EA will get a little more creative with the license (or maybe it's something to do with J.K. Rowling). All I know is that Harry Potter has tons of videogame potential, but we haven't seen very much of anything yet.

Lord of the Rings

LOOK AT ALL THAT
LOOK AT ALL THAT
This one is slighty different, as there are some pretty decent LOTR games out there. Nothing too spectacular though (ignoring LOTRO, because I have no experience with MMOs :P). Again, LOTR has an incredible wealth of source material, with Tolkein having essentially mapped out the history, geography, and social structure of this entire world from the moment of creation. The mythos has been treated to an almost insane amount of detail, and there are plenty of interesting ways to use that canon for games. All that we've really seen so far though is hack-n-slash and RTS, set during or around the story put forth in the books and movies. There was a Hobbit game from Sierra recently which was surprisingly good, and The Third Age, which was hilariously bad, but besides that it's been mostly rote. This is probably related to the Tolkein estate, as they tend to keep a tight fist on his work, but the possibilities for games are limitless. Any of the stories from the Simillarion, Aragorn's travels in Harad and Rhun, only breifly touched upon in the books, Gandalf and his Wizard homies (RIP The White Council, it was not yet your time). Middle Earth is so broad, it could do so much more besides RTS and Hack n Slash- or at least try different time periods besides the frame around the books and movies.

Both of those franchises (Both EA Licenses, oddly enough) really are something special, but haven't been put to good use in the videogame space. It's kind of saddening to see such potential not fully utilized, although I'm sure EA is laughing all the way to the bank. Any franchises you feel this way about? Disagree with my choices? Sound off in the comments :)

Thanks for reading. It is appreciated.
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crunchUK

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Edited By crunchUK
Both EA Licenses

you see, there's the problem ;)
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krazychris

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Edited By krazychris

Crank could have a good game, the concept of needing to doing exciting things to keep alive really shouts out a sort of time attack style of gameplay to me.

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deactivated-5f9398c1300c7

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Edited By deactivated-5f9398c1300c7

Batman, defiantly. It's been a long time since we had a great game involving the franchise. Ever since the NES 1989 Batman, the rest after that started to be mediocre or just plain abysmal.


I guess there's still hope.
I guess there's still hope.









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Systech

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Edited By Systech
Yeah, Superman should be much much better.









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Themanohall

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I think an Atlas- made Harry Potter game would be insanely cool, but that'll never happen...

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JamesF

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Edited By JamesF

I actually thought the Order of the Phoenix game was pretty enjoyable for the most part.


Fingers crossed the Half Blood Prince game is good.
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HandsomeDead

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Edited By HandsomeDead

Lord of the Rings is so generic that I feel even the best game to come from that, assuming it's not an RTS, would be dominated by The Elder Scrolls.

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Lestater

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Edited By Lestater
@JamesF said:
" I actually thought the Order of the Phoenix game was pretty enjoyable for the most part.

Fingers crossed the Half Blood Prince game is good.
"
It's not so much that the games were bad, but that there is so much more you can work with to create an awesome game within the Harry Potter universe.
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jakob187

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Edited By jakob187

LOTR has a LOT of good games, actually.  LOTRO, BFME 1 and 2, Return of the King, and The Two Towers are prime examples of this.  The Hobbit from Sierra, LOTR: Fellowship from Universal, and Third Age from EA are prime examples of how to make the games suck (even though I still think that if the development time and budget had been more substantial for Surreal in the making of Fellowship, it could've been a killer game like they made out of The Thing).


As for what franchise I think should have good games but doesn't:
Transformers
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TheKidNixon

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Edited By TheKidNixon
@HandsomeDead said:
" Lord of the Rings is so generic that I feel even the best game to come from that, assuming it's not an RTS, would be dominated by The Elder Scrolls. "
It feel generic largely because it set the ground rules for the genre. Elder Scrolls belongs to a long tradition that grew directly out of the work of the Inklings. Not saying that that makes it okay for LotR games to be so damn dull, but there you go. Same reason I find Superman to be fairly trite and limited compared to other superheroes.

Moving on to the original topic, I'm consistently shocked that there has never/like will never be a truly excellent Matrix game. The franchise seems perfectly suited for the medium, and you could do some really fascinating storytelling stuff where you're not only directly controlling someone in the Matrix, but your actions on the controller also effect the world at large, IE futzing with the programming of the Matrix itself. Of course, the whole franchises time has come and gone, so probably never will be full realized. Plus bullet-time has certainly been carried over, done to death and buried.
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JamesF

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Edited By JamesF
@Lestater said:
" @JamesF said:
" I actually thought the Order of the Phoenix game was pretty enjoyable for the most part.

Fingers crossed the Half Blood Prince game is good.
"
It's not so much that the games were bad, but that there is so much more you can work with to create an awesome game within the Harry Potter universe. "

Very true.
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Tylea002

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Edited By Tylea002

Interesting Blog, Lies, I may just have to counter blog on this one in response, cause I can think of many others.

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Oni

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Edited By Oni

LOTRO makes great use of the license. I enjoyed the hack n' slash games but yeah, it's not exactly making the most of LOTR's lore.

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Death_Unicorn

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Edited By Death_Unicorn
@Lies: I think EA only has the license to the Lord of the Ring movies, any thing other than that is territory only the Tolkien family can lease.
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Lies

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Edited By Lies
@Death_Unicorn said:
" @Lies: I think EA only has the license to the Lord of the Ring movies, any thing other than that is territory only the Tolkien family can lease. "
Sierra was making games based off of the book licenses for a while, which was weird because they couldn't use any movie licenses, so the characters were designed to look ALMOST like the movie versions, but not quite close enough for EA to sue. See: War of The Ring, a forgotten Sierra RTS based on the books. And the Hobbit was good dammit Jakob. Nice art style and pretty fun honestly.
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ArbitraryWater

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Edited By ArbitraryWater

Oddly enough, I found both brawlers based on the movies (The Two Towers and Return of the King) to actually be pretty good, as were the GBA versions (which were basically Diablo lite) and the RTS games. Conquest was pretty bad though.

But then you reminded me that The Third Age existed. For those who haven't played it: Imagine the most generic and unoriginal J-RPG in the world (Yes, I said J-RPG. There is no hint of the customization found in most western RPGs), but then have characters that are like the Lord of the Rings characters but slightly different, then make it have tons of random encounters to pad out the length and make it linear as hell. That is The Third Age.

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kashif1

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Edited By kashif1

i wish that the guys who made oblivion could make a lord of the rings game

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Claude

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Edited By Claude

These are great franchises to get better games. I'm sure publishers will keep trying... but of course will they be good. I thought the LOTR action games on the PS2 were pretty fun. As for Mr. Potter, I've played one and it was the Chamber of Secrets, not a bad game. I thought about picking up a copy of the Order of the Phoenix for the Wii, just for the kicks, plus it got some decent reviews.

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jmrwacko

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Edited By jmrwacko

I agree with the OP. Harry Potter and LOTR both should make great subjects for video games. But we all know how movie to video game tie ins work out, excluding Goldeneye.

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End_Boss

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@HandsomeDead said:
" Lord of the Rings is so generic that I feel even the best game to come from that, assuming it's not an RTS, would be dominated by The Elder Scrolls. "
Actually, the Lord of the Rings already dominates Elder Scrolls by default, since almost all of the source material contained within can be found in the groundwork that was laid down by Tolkien's trilogy.

Many are those who would rage indignantly at your comment.