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Best non-canon book/movie-based computer game feature?
Posted: 2005-03-17 07:44am
by El Moose Monstero
Basically, I was sitting in lectures doodling martian tripods due to boredom, and I started thinking about the computer game which expanded on the original cover art from Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds - whilst some of the units they invited were a pile of over-powerful crap, the Tempest war machine for example, some of them were pretty much spot-on - the Bombarding Machine seemed to be so fitting with what had gone before that I always assumed it was based on a piece of concept art which hadn't made it on the album cover.
So, what original object or game feature from any game based on an external source, be it movie, book or play, fits in so well with established canon that it's hard to tell the difference? I realise that you could include a huge list of ships from games like X-wing, but I'm thinking about ships/features that have been specifically designed for the computer game to balance gameplay etc without being based on references to them in any previous media - so I'm assuming that would whittle down some of the most obvious stuff from things like Star Wars games.
Posted: 2005-03-17 09:15am
by Brother-Captain Gaius
The bases/buildings of Dawn of War aren't half bad. A few of the names are borrowed and slapped on (like Fortress-Monastery and Webway gates), but most of the stuff is pretty decent, especially the Orky buildings. Waaagh! towers, Pilez o' gunz, Mek shopz, etc., are all perfectly believable. Marine ones are good, with little "drop pod receivers" and the like. Now in "reality" of course the various 40k races don't drop down onto a battlefield with an engineer analogue and a field HQ and build an entire forge world out of it (much less pump out 10 dreadnoughts in the course of an hour, when many Chapters are lucky to have one...), but Relic's implementation of RTS bases was good.
Posted: 2005-03-17 09:39am
by Vympel
Most of the ships that appeared in TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance were already in the EU, ever since the various WEG Sourcebooks. X-Wing, however, didn't add that many unique ships. In fact, the freighters and containers it implemented are the only ones I can think of. The big contribution I think was the TIE Advanced/Avenger, TIE Defender, XG-1 StarWing ("Assault Gunboat") & XM-1 NovaWing ("Missile Boat").
Posted: 2005-03-17 10:40am
by NecronLord
JediNeophyte wrote:<Snip>
You know what's sad? The Necrons really
can do that shit and they're not in it. 
Posted: 2005-03-17 01:34pm
by SAMAS
JediNeophyte wrote:The bases/buildings of Dawn of War aren't half bad. A few of the names are borrowed and slapped on (like Fortress-Monastery and Webway gates), but most of the stuff is pretty decent, especially the Orky buildings. Waaagh! towers, Pilez o' gunz, Mek shopz, etc., are all perfectly believable. Marine ones are good, with little "drop pod receivers" and the like. Now in "reality" of course the various 40k races don't drop down onto a battlefield with an engineer analogue and a field HQ and build an entire forge world out of it (much less pump out 10 dreadnoughts in the course of an hour, when many Chapters are lucky to have one...), but Relic's implementation of RTS bases was good.
You know, I once did a list of rules for some of the buildings in Dawn of War, along with (hopefully)fullfy explanations of why they would exist, and how they could be used in games.
Unfortunately, I posted it all, off the top of my head, on Portent.
Posted: 2005-03-17 01:50pm
by SAMAS
I always liked the altered Xenomorphs shown in the Aliens vs. Predator arcade game.
wikipedia wrote:In order to provide a large array of enemies for the players to fight, the game takes some deviations from the established Xenomorph biology. The differences can be explained in their nature as experimental subjects.
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Facehuggers, Chestbursters, and Infectoids
One interesting note about the aliens in the game is the effect of their Facehuggers. Their gestation period is fairly long, but unlike other Xenomorph broods, the victim is often reduced to a zombie-like state (known as Infectoids), and will move around and attack intruders.
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Warrior
The Alien Warriors are typically based off of the designs in Aliens, with a humanoid build and ridges along its cranium, and typically a black exoskeleton. This brood is also known to spit acid.
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Stalker
These xenomorphs are similar to the creature in Alien³ and are slightly more dangerous than the average Warrior. Of note is that this species does not spit acid while the Warriors do - This is reversed from movie canon, where the Warriors were never observed doing this, while the xenomorph in Alien³ was.
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Royal Guard
Also known as Praetorians, a name popularized in the later Alien vs. Predator PC games. They are almost as large and powerful as the Queen, and are typically encountered more the closer the player gets to the Queen. Royal Guard are capable of spitting acid.
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Chrysalis
A very large Xenomorph with a green exoskeleton and a tan carapace on its head, back, and forearms. It sometimes moves/attacks by rolling itself along the ground in a ball. It gets its name from the chrysalis that it is seen gestating in when it first appears.
This alien is very similar to one that appears in an Aliens arcade game made by Konami.
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Razor Claws
Another large breed with a purple coloration and large, sharp claws on its fingers. It is known for its great speed, making it hard to defeat or even keep up with. It is fond of using that speed to make dashing attacks in which it uses its namesakes to cause massive damage.
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The Queen
Appearing at the end of the game, the Queen is quite similar to her appearance as well as behavior in the movie Aliens. She possesses long, spindly limbs and a thin body with an extremely large and crested head. The inner mouth displayed by her species is especially long in the game. Much like her role in the movie, she is very large and powerful and quite hard to defeat.
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Other Broods
There are several broods in the game that little is known about. These include:
1. Defenders
2. Smashers
3. Arachnoids
They are assumed to be special variants of the Warrior and Stalker aliens created through experimentation, much like the Chrysalis and Razor Claws minibosses.