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Most of the movie tie-in stuff is utter dreck. My smell test for if its going to suck is how the gaming press approaches the game - if they have the usual "good game" coverage, then its likely to be at least decent, but if it just shows up one day as a finished game, you know its going to suck.

The best game of this type (excluding most of the Starwars and Trek games that have no connection with the actual movies) is the Blade Runner game. Its still the pinnacle of the serious adventure market for me, with a great changing storyline capability not seen since. Probably a bit antiquated graphically by now, although when it was released it was pretty revolutionary.

THe pixellated characters of Blade Runner are dated, but the backgrounds still hold up well enough.

Regarding SW games, how would you categorise the Lego Star Wars games, they do try to follow the movies but they're almost like a niche in their own right.

Jade Falcon wrote:Regarding SW games, how would you categorise the Lego Star Wars games, they do try to follow the movies but they're almost like a niche in their own right.

I was going to mention them in my original post as an example. Then I thought about it for a minute and couldn't come up with anything about how I'd classify them.

They would be in between 1 and 2, but you'd have to actually have seen the Star Wars movies to understand anything that's going on as they really just parody (quite well in fact) the OT and PT dialog.

But I can wiggle out of this one easily by saying: It's Star Wars.

Stark wrote:

General_Soontir_Fel wrote:I'll have one after I play it.

Ha! Branding in action. You will play it... because it's Star Wars. Thus it doesn't have to be good (and it sure ISN'T good) because it has a built-in market.

I said I'll play it. I didn't say I'll buy it. I will do that only if it's any good.

I only played Galaxies for the trial period, and the Battlefront series at my local cybercaf. That was enough for me to decide I had better use for my money.

The built-in market hasn't appeared all by itself, anymore than it did for the rest of Star Wars EU. While we all like to bitch and moan about the quality of current EU (it actually has been getting better from the nadir a few years ago), the EU began with the Thrawn Trilogy. If SW EU debut had been, say, The Crystal Star, and was followed up by dreck like the Dark Nest trilogy, it wouldn't have anywhere near the market it has now. Ditto for games. LucasArts produced some really high-quality games--the Dark Forces series, KOTOR, and the fighter games, in particular.

You could argue that there's a built-in market for Harry Potter games, even bigger than the one for Star Wars. But it doesn't seem to be working. Why? Because the Harry Potter games suck.

Tolya wrote:I have Spiderman 3 for PC and quite frankly, though it has some annoying bugs and problems, it is a very enjoyable game. Think GTA3 Spidey-style.

The reason I probably like this game so much is that I generally like Spiderman. Read the comics, saw all the new movies (and some of the old) and liked them very much.

As for the bugs...yeah, they are there and the 6,3 that Gamespot gave it is pretty well justified. Still, I enjoy this game very much.

I know it is a bit late for me to say this but "Ultimate Spiderman" (which was a good games by the way) was Spiderman GTA style.

Jade Falcon wrote:THe pixellated characters of Blade Runner are dated, but the backgrounds still hold up well enough.

Regarding SW games, how would you categorise the Lego Star Wars games, they do try to follow the movies but they're almost like a niche in their own right.

Calling them a niche in their own right sounds about right - while they follow the basic story of the movies and as such could be classified as a direct tie-in, their implementation is so off-the-wall different that they really are a separate product. Sure, the Star Wars name helps, but I'm sure you'd get almost the same critical and public reaction if it was, say, Lord of the Lego Cubes (audience: "groan").