Despite mesmerising us with their characters, worlds, and lore in their own respective mediums, video games based on a pre-existing franchise have had a rocky history. Yes, by this point there have almost certainly been more bad licensed games than there are good ones, but the tide is slowly turning, with developers nowadays given more time to channel our favourite fiction into an enjoyable interactive experience that perfectly encapsulates the source material. We explore the best of them…
Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly 2014)
PC, PS3, PS4, X360, XBO
After the utter disappointment fans of 20th Century Fox’s Alien movies had experienced with 2013’s Colonial Marines, you’d be forgiven for thinking that any chance of a decent (let alone good) game based on the franchise was next to zero. That changed just a year later, however, with the release of Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation, a game that would deliberately shy away from the more action-orientated aspects of the succeeding films to instead successfully replicate the sense of horror and dread first evoked in Ridley Scott’s original ‘Jaws in Space’ masterwork. Stepping into the shoes of Ripley’s estranged daughter Amanda, Isolation went back to basics and put you on the defensive against just one Xenomorph.
Taking place on a large space port known as Sevastopol Station, the setting absolutely nails the retro futuristic aesthetic presented in the first Alien movie, fully aligning with the whole ‘truckers in space’ idea which makes the location not just dank and unsettling, but also believable to explore. All these original sensibilities are reinforced by the fact that you’re unable to harm the iconic creature stalking you, instead having to rely on your extremely ineffective flamethrower to catch a moment of breath or simply make a mad dash to the next save point. Alien: Isolation is a first-person horror that forces you to be calm, calculated, and patient. Marvellous!
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady 2009)
PC, PS3, X360
Superhero games had always struggled to live up to the first part of that moniker until the release of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. A fully 3D metroidvania which allowed players to don the famed cowl and effectively “become the batman” as it were, the game is a great example of what happens when a licensed game is handled by a team that genuinely cares and plays close attention to what it’s based on. Thumbing through 70 years’ worth of Batman comics is a tough job, but someone had to do it!
In addition to the great characterisation of the dark knight himself, his respective rogues’ gallery is what makes this rendition of Gotham’s infamous prison a joy to explore, investigate, and fight through. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill deliver outstanding performances as Batman and The Joker respectively – picking up where they both left off in the much-beloved Batman: The Animated Series. And all this is layered on top of a counter-heavy combat system which has since gone on to influence most combat-driven Triple-A games today. Fighting thugs in Arkham Asylum is brutal, as it should be when playing as Batman, but this doesn’t come at the expense of depth thanks to a suite of bat gadgets. Sadly, no shark repellent though.
Goldeneye 007 (Rare 1997)
N64
Despite arriving on Nintendo 64 nearly two years after the Bond movie it was based on, even this wouldn’t stop the lives of ’90s players being shaken and stirred forever with the release of Goldeneye 007. While the game’s campaign does a decent job of recreating the film’s sequence of events (even if Pierce Brosnan’s likeness hasn’t aged particularly well), it’s without a doubt in its multiplayer that Goldeneye 007 impressed and made its mark on the first-person shooter landscape forever.
This was the game that popularised the concept of split-screen local multiplayer on home consoles, taking a genre previously thought best suited to PC and bringing such high-stakes competition into the living room. Goldeneye 007 featured a good mix of game modes all inspired by other Bond movies – You Only Live Twice, Licence To Kill, The Man With The Golden Gun – in addition to an extensive character roster that’s not so much Goldeneye-exclusive as it is a celebration of the franchise’s then 30-year history. Of course, you’d know you were playing with true friends when no one selected the much shorter and harder to hit Oddjob.
LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (TT Games 2005)
PC, PS2, Xbox, GBA, GC
While opinion on the LEGO games may have since been coloured by the sheer number of them we’re treated to these days, it’s easy to forget that TT Games’ first take on the formula was a surprising and unexpected delight. Released to coincide with the impending premiere of 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith, LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game let players embark on the Jedi’s various adventures across the prequel movies – albeit in lovable brickform. The game’s success would lead to a sequel based on the original trilogy releasing the following year, but for now, destroying bricks with a trusty lightsaber was still plenty satisfying.
LEGO Star Wars was the game that brought parent and child together through their shared love of the galaxy far, far away, and a whopping roster of 59 playable characters that were just waiting to be unlocked, then played with just like a real-life LEGO set. It gave you cause to find every collectable. While the events you played through stuck close to the same plot as the movies, LEGO Star Wars’ charm came from its entirely wordless cutscenes that placed emphasis on physical comedy, as well as puzzle-solving, and getting to smash foes to literal bits.
South Park: The Stick Of Truth (Obsidian 2014)
PC, PS3, X360
A licenced game plagued with numerous delays and an extremely problematic development cycle, imagine our surprise to find that South Park: The Stick Of Truth was actually quite brilliant when it released back in March of 2014. Primarily a turn-based RPG which sees you constantly swap-in and swap-out a familiar cast of characters, The Stick Of Truth perfectly encapsulates the TV show’s intentionally offensive humour whether it’s in how you attack (farting is a genuine method), the various makeshift weapons, or a story which sees you stumble across everything including an alien conspiracy, Paris Hilton, and Nazi zombies.
What makes The Stick Of Truth truly shine is that, due to its paper-like art style, while playing you eventually get the feeling you’re interacting within an actual South Park episode. As your own player-created character simply referred to by others as “the new kid”, you’ll join the gang on an adventure that suitably gets so outlandish by the end you’ll forget how you got there. The game was developed under the guise of the show’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone who, despite a fairly basic battle system, did an excellent job of translating the South Park tone and feel to a video game.