Whenever a piece of media is based on a movie, I can’t help but leer with skepticism. TV shows, sequels, and video games are usually only made to capitalize on the success of the actual film. When maximizing profits is the main goal, quality tends to suffer.
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But that isn’t ALWAYS the case. Sometimes movie video games, even if they look bad, can be a surprising amount of fun. Once you get past their lower-quality exterior and the shoes that were a bit too big for them to fill, you’ll find that these games are still well worth your time.
1 Jaws Unleashed
Odds are, Jaws Unleashed isn’t on anyone’s top list of old school titles, but this PS2 title was remarkably ahead of its time. In what I would best describe as a carnage simulator, you control the titular shark as you break out of a scientific lab and cause havoc on the local population.
Jaws Unleashed swam so that Maneater could hunt. It’s an easy, destructive formula that plays perfectly into the movie’s style, while also letting the player feel in control. It’s not the longest game, but that keeps it from getting too stale, if anything.
2 Scarface: The World Is Yours
I might catch some flak for this, but I actually think Scarface: The World Is Yours is better than half of the GTAs out there. You play as the film’s Tony Montana in a world where he didn’t die at the end of the movie (sorry if that’s a spoiler).
Instead, you rebuild your drug empire from the ground up, building wealth and reclaiming the turf throughout Miami. It’s a surprisingly engaging adventure, and the feeling of building the empire is super satisfying. The combat, while not as crisp as shooters of the era, still feels better than open-world adventure games of the era.
3 Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace
Calling a PS1 game ugly might seem unfair. All PS1 games were ugly. That was just a limit of technology at the time. But that’s why this Star Wars movie game based on the first prequel is so impressive.
Following the beats of the film, this game offers an extended look at some of the scenes and areas, filling in gaps between transitions cut from the movie to save time. And while it’s very much of the current game design style of the time, it also features some impressive mechanics that other games of the same year lacked.
4 The Matrix: Path Of Neo
There are a handful of Matrix games out there. But almost none of them rose to a proper level of acclaim. Though if any of them would have, it’d be Path of Neo. This game starts out as a stealth game with basic combat. But as the playable Thomas Anderson progresses through the plot of the film, they unlock more grandiose powers and abilities, shifting the gameplay into a more fantastical combat-centric one.
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You’d be within your rights to compare it to the Batman Arkham games. The mixture of plot and 3D melee combat strikes a similar gameplay loop and mechanical feeling (though with less open world).
5 Goldeneye 007
Do I even need to explain this one? Despite its rough appearance, Goldeneye is regarded as one of the most culturally significant adventure shooters in history. It paved the way for public interest in first-person shooter games on console platforms (which was previously only a PC thing).
The stealth mechanics, weak-point damage system, and AI systems were marvels of the time. It’s a game that was so good, it was easy to forget it’s based on a movie of the same name.
6 The Lord Of The Rings: The Third Age
Don’t let the muddy graphics and muted tones fool you, The Third Age is one of the stronger Lord of the Rings games out there (and it’s not short of competition). In this turn-based RPG, you follow a squad of side characters as they more or less trail behind the main cast of LotR.
The Evil Mode, which lets you play as the enemies fighting the protagonists, is also a surprisingly novel concept, providing a fun twist on existing content. All in all, it’s a surprisingly rich RPG in a world where both Lord of the Rings media and RPGs are abundant.
7 The Terminator: Dawn Of Fate
When most folks think about third-person survival horror games, they think of modern or historical settings. Full sci-fi dystopia is usually reserved for first-person horror shooters. The notable exception, of course, being Terminator: Dawn of Fate.
A prequel story to the films, you’re fighting in the human robot wars of the future, going through the events that lead up to the Terminator going back in time for the first movie. It features similar item management and hostile combat as Resident Evil, with a greater focus on fighting back.
The same studio, Paradigm Entertainment, developed Pilotwings 64.
8 Aliens: Colonial Marines
There are plenty of reasons why Aliens: Colonial Marines would be disregarded. The youngest on this list, it came out in 2013, a time when gritty first-person shooters were at their most popular. Other shooters were doing the same thing, but better and with higher quality graphics.
It also suffers from the fame of its name. As a member of the Alien media franchise, it manages to fall short of the themes and continuity present in the films. But if you can look past that, it’s a solid action shooter that does something more interesting than the military FPS of the era.
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