10 Video Game Movie Tie-Ins Better Than The Movie

Movie tie-in video games often have a bad reception. Most of them are generally produced in a short timeframe with a low budget, meaning their quality can’t keep up with their source material.

Other times, however, the opposite happens, where a movie can come out to lukewarm critical reception, but a video game adaptation of the source material can get much more praise. Usually, this happens when the team actually tries to put in an effort to make their game good rather than rushing it out the door.

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For every twenty terrible movie tie-in games, there is at least one that manages to be a pretty good time.

Sometimes, the creative liberties game developers need to adapt the source material actually made improvements to the story, or stripped out some of the things that made the film bad in the first place.

I feel these ten games did a good job of really giving players the satisfying experience they were denied in the movie theaters. And while not all of these were terrible movies or amazing games, it’s clear in each of these cases which one was better.

10 Speed Racer

A Fun F-Zero Clone

In 2008, a live-action adaptation of the Speed Racer anime hit theaters, directed by the Wachowskis and starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci. While far from a disaster like Dragonball Evolution, it was still a pretty mediocre film, as while it excelled at being a visual spectacle, it did so at the expense of building a compelling plot or having interesting characters.

Critics mostly dismissed it, and it flopped hard at the box office, being overshadowed by other big movies like the original Iron Man. However, a video game adaptation was released around the same time, and it really was a hidden gem among the countless movie tie-ins of the era.

The Speed Racer video game was a futuristic racer in the vein of F-Zero and WipeOut, and given that the former series was basically over at the point and the latter had been a PSP exclusive for nearly half a decade, it filled the void that fans of those games have felt throughout the past several years.

It’s not a perfect game by any means, as while the gameplay is very fun, there’s a lack of variety to it, and it could use some more game modes. But even with me feeling that the movie gets way more flak than it deserves, I still think the video game adaptation is the stronger of the two.

9 Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

One Of The Best GBA Shooters

The 2002 action movie Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu, is widely regarded as one of the worst movies of all time, with it holding a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a cliche-filled mess of an action movie, with a plot that made no sense, terrible acting from both lead stars, and action scenes that felt like you’re watching a parody.

Surprisingly, it got a video game tie-in for the Game Boy Advance, but also a prequel game based on an early draft of the script released several months earlier, and both were solid Doom-style first-person shooters, an extreme rarity for Nintendo’s handheld. Metacritic gave the game a 72 out of 100, a far cry from the thrashing the movie got.

Its strongest asset may be its four-player multiplayer, something that honestly should not have worked as well as it did, given the limitations of the Game Boy Advance. But with a friend and a link cable, you would not have been able to get enough of the game when it came out.

A PlayStation 2 version was planned, but never released, and given how well they were able to make a mountain out of a molehill on a portable console, imagine what the developers would have been able to do with the full technology of a sixth-generation console.

8 Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters

More Focused Than The Film Itself

Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern movie from 2011 is a far cry from Deadpool, getting thrashed by fans and critics alike and losing Warner Bros. a ton of money at the box office. While Reynolds himself did a serviceable job, the film itself was an incoherent mess that tried to combine too many storylines into a two-hour runtime and had extremely tacky CGI, even for its time.

The video game adaptation, while far from amazing, was definitely a step in the right direction. The game mixes two gameplay styles of a classic superhero beat ’em up with rail shooter stages, and both are well done, though it can get stale and repetitive quickly.

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While the story, set after the events of the movie, was less of a focus, that was for the better, as it allowed the plot we got to be more focused on one aspect: namely, defeating the Manhunters. The co-op gameplay where Hal and Sinestro teamed up was even better.

Given the decline of movie tie-in games in the early 2010s, this ended up being the last DC Comics video game based on a movie, although Marvel would have a few more over the coming years. This was definitely the right call, as the best comic book video games, like the Batman Arkham series and Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, told their own original stories about the characters.

7 King Kong

Ubisoft Brought The Magic

Let’s get this out of the way first: Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong movie is hardly a bad movie. In fact, it’s one of the best of the year, and a breathtaking remake of the 1933 movie that kept the spirit of the original alive while making it more tailored to 21st-century audiences.

But Jackson had a very tough act to follow after the massive success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the film was inevitably going to suffer a bit because of those comparisons. The video game adaptation, on the other hand, didn’t feel that same pressure and was more easily able to stand on its own two feet.

Putting Michel Ancel in charge of the project was a match made in heaven, as his work on Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil meant he had all the expertise to make an exhilarating adventure game. And indeed, all the Ubisoft magic you’d expect is there, with a hugely vast world to discover and a sense of player freedom that was truly ahead of its time in 2005.

The game lets you play as both human character Jack Driscoll in a first-person shooter, and Kong himself in a brawling adventure. It felt like two games in one, and it actually works extremely well.

Notably, this game was a launch title for the Xbox 360, and it helped enter the seventh generation of console gaming with a bang. If only more video games were willing to put as much care into their product as King Kong.

6 Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

More Action, Less Jar Jar

The Star Wars prequel trilogy has been extremely divisive ever since it hit theaters, and no film of these is hated more than The Phantom Menace. It laid bare a lot of the problems movie prequels have, as it was basically an exposition dump for a story we already knew the ending to, and featured several disliked characters, such as kid Anakin Skywalker and the infamous Jar Jar Binks.

The video game adaptation on the PlayStation and PC is an improvement, as it kept the focus on more well-liked characters like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn, whereas Anakin and Jar Jar took more of a backseat here. Additionally, each of the four playable characters felt unique, at a time when multiple playable characters would amount to little more than palette swaps.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward but enough to keep Star Wars fans engaged, though there are times when it gets tedious and repetitive. Still, though, it’s a more enjoyable experience than the mixed-bag movie.

While the next two movies also got video game adaptations, they don’t fit here quite as much. The Game Boy Advance-exclusive Attack of the Clones was not a good game, and while the Revenge of the Sith game was a step in the right direction, it was based on a stronger movie to begin with.

5 The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

More Like Pitch Black

2000’s Pitch Black was a breakout performance for Vin Diesel, as his character Riddick engaged in a very compelling survival horror story as he tried to escape a dark planet full of carnivorous aliens. The 2004 sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, got rid of all of that and instead was a generic sci-fi action gorefest that was little more than “Vin Diesel looking badass for two hours”.

The video-game tie-in went in a different direction, as it was a prequel focusing on Riddick’s escape from a maximum-security prison. It had captivating gameplay and realistic graphics that made you truly feel like you were Vin Diesel stuck in a claustrophobic prison, and perfectly blended stealth elements with adventure and shooters.

Many players have compared it to games like Splinter Cell, Thief, and Deus Ex, and given how well-regarded those games are, inheriting the best aspects of all of them without feeling like it was having an identity crisis was a miracle in game design.

The game’s success even led to it getting a sequel in 2009’s Assault on Dark Athena, and while that game was not quite as superb, it’s still a very worthy follow-up.

4 X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Marvel Made A God Of War Clone

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was Hugh Jackman’s first solo outing as Marvel’s clawed mutant hero, and it was not well-liked. Logan’s origin story suffered from an identity crisis, with many pointless subplots that detracted from the main storyline and felt tonally inconsistent, as well as portrayals of Marvel heroes that felt totally out of character.

Its video game adaptation is a hack-and-slash action game like Devil May Cry and God of War, and while it’s certainly not reached the heights those two series ever did, it’s still very enjoyable if you’re a fan of Kratos or Dante.

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While the story itself is not much better than the movie’s, given that it’s a retelling, it’s much easier to overlook that when there are other strengths to counteract it. It’s also one of the most graphic Marvel games around, and definitely earned its M rating despite being based on a PG-13 film.

Logan’s next two solo film outings were much better-received, but they didn’t get their own video game adaptations. That’s kind of disappointing, because if you’re able to make a good video game off an awful screenplay, imagine what kind of game could be made when the story is actually strong?

3 Spider-Man 3

A Worthy Follow-Up

While the first two movies in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy are excellent, the finale is a bit more divisive. It felt like they were trying to combine three ideas into one movie, and some of the narrative choices, like Symbiote Spider-Man, were dumb decisions more focused on trying to be cool than telling a good story.

From a story perspective, the video game version of Spider-Man 3 tried to do the same thing, with multiple of Peter Parker’s rogues gallery having their own plots, and focusing on multiple short stories rather than one overarching one was a letdown.

What gives the game a heads-up over the movie is the gameplay. As I’ve said before, how a game plays is often the most important part of a video game, and thus it’s easier to overlook a bad story here than in the actual movie.

The gameplay doesn’t change much from the first two Spider-Man movie games, but since those are considered some of the best video game tie-ins to begin with, that isn’t exactly a bad thing. Still, though, that lack of innovation does keep the game as only good rather than great.

2 The Matrix: Path of Neo

Papering Over The Story’s Flaws

The Matrix, released in 1999, is a groundbreaking science fiction film and is still considered one of the greatest movies ever made. The sequels from 2003, Reloaded and Resurrections, on the other hand, are way more polarizing to fans, given that all the effort went into the action and special effects at the expense of exploring the philosophical themes on hand in the first film.

There were two Matrix console games released around the time the original trilogy ended, and while 2003’s Enter the Matrix was a poorly-received game due to its focus on original characters and being rushed out to release alongside the second movie, 2005’s Path of Neo, a more straightforward retelling of the movies, was a step in the right direction.

Unlike the movies, the main objective of Path of Neo was to make players feel like they are Keanu Reeves. Thus, the bad story decisions the sequels made can be forgiven as long as it feels exciting to play, and boy, does it.

The gameplay is incredibly fast-paced and exhilarating, with all of Neo’s signature abilities translated seamlessly to consoles, and the combat is incredibly fun and doesn’t get boring. It has its flaws, like a wonky camera and graphics that felt a bit behind the curve for 2005, but they are only minor hiccups in an otherwise solid title.

1 GoldenEye 007

Brosnan Film Turned Into Pioneering FPS

1995’s GoldenEye was Pierce Brosnan’s debut as James Bond, and while it’s considered the Irish actor’s strongest outing in the franchise and one of the best Bond movies to date, many nowadays view it as an outdated ’90s action film whose over-the-top feel doesn’t hold up in comparison to Daniel Craig’s more grounded-in-reality movies since 2006.

The video game adaptation, GoldenEye 007, is a different story altogether. Released on the Nintendo 64 in 1997, this first-person shooter is considered to be a revolutionary game in its genre.

The single-player campaign is a great retelling of the story and is still considered one of the greatest in FPS history, at a time when narrative often took a backseat to spectacle in the genre. More importantly, though, was its status as a pioneer of multiplayer in the world of shooting games, and its four-player mode is still played competitively to this day.

How impactful was this game, you ask? Masahiro Sakurai actually considered putting James Bond in Super Smash Bros., the one time he ever considered breaking the cardinal rule of only allowing video game characters into his series.

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