Our two cents on gaming's most important issues.

It used to be one of the cardinal videogame rules: that if it wasn't Goldeneye or Blade Runner, any movie-licensed game would be bad. Average maybe, and terrible at worst. But a lot of the old rules don't apply anymore, and this is increasingly becoming one of them. The evidence? Spider-Man 2 wowed the gaming press and the casual gamers alike with its exhilerating fluidity of movement and urban playgrounds. EA's prolifity with the Lord of the Rings is matched only by the quality and diversity of the games. The recent Riddick game is actually better than the film. But is this just window dressing, a fortunate turn of events?

Are movie license games shedding their shoddy reputation?

Ash:

Movies, and general tie-ins, are becoming better. Spider-Man 2 and Shrek 2 are currently tearing through the charts, okay so that may show popularity rather then quality but people aren't going to keep buying rubbish games. I have played Spider-Man 2 and found it enjoyable and captured being Spidy well. Shrek 2 I have played briefly but is aimed at a younger demographic, I did enjoy being able to switch between the four characters to play and I may have enjoyed it more if I liked the film more.

We all know in the past that developers relied more on having the name then having a quality game but there seems to be a crackdown on improving the games as a good tie-in is more like to sell more then a bad one. This is not to say there aren't exceptions, one is a fairly recent feline, although from what I hear the film isn't very good either. However with WB recently announcing they will punish developers who create poor games based on their licenses, maybe this will improve.

Iun:

Hmm... movie licences... TV licences... Comic Book licences... Driving licences... whoops, scratch that last one from my meditations.

Anyways, onto business. Games based on licences are mostly utter shash, and that doesn't look like it will change in the near future. Sure, Spider-Man 2 was okay, even quite good in bits. But you couldn't help but feel that in places corners were cut and belts were tightened.

Maybe the fault is within ourselves? We see our favourite characters on the silver screen and expect nothing short of cinematic perfection in our games, therefore we're over stepping our own boundaries in expecting too much from a product that it simply will not be able to deliver.

There have been a few good licences recently: Transformers is one... um... er... well, Spiderman 2 passed a brief but web-slinging afternoon... um... Catwoman? Oh, no... bad movie, worse game... Shrek 2? Great movie, what the heck was that game supposed to be doing?

Recently the ratio has been 3 to 1, Transformers = Good, the others = not so good. In the past you have been hard pressed to find good licenced games at all, therefore one out of four in recent memory is pretty good, but hardly heralds a turnaround in fortunes for the licensed games.

And like my erstwhile colleague, I fully support Warner Brothers in their laudable efforts to pay developers by review scores. Although let's not forget that tight development time can result in not anly a bad game, but also a bad movie.

Simon:

The Warner Brother's thing could actually be a bad thing - remember the Driver 3 review scandal? That could become a lot more common if this idea takes off. As for the topic of the Roundtable, yeah - some licensed games are good nowadays. Return of the King (in my opinion) was excellent, and the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick is meant to be awesome.

Some movie to game conversions still go horribly badly - look at Shrek 2 and Catwoman (because I don't want to).

Certainly a high for movie-based games

Edge:

"The game industry has had its time to exploit movie studios all day long and to get away with producing inferior products, but, with Warner Brothers, no more. Those days are over. And we mean it. This isn't just lip service. Honestly, the bad games are over."

That's what Jason Hall, senior vice-president of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, had to say following the company's recent announcement of escalating 'compensatory' royalty fees for low-scoring games. But will the strategy really force developers to drive up the quality of licensed games, or will it simply scare codeshops into pandering to the current market even more?

Movie tie-ins have hardly been a renowned source of creativity but what are the chances of developers risking their game in unexplored territory when there title's numerical performance is to have a drastic effect on their much-needed pay packet? And besides, even if money was not an issue, why would designers want to waste their original ideas on somebody else's IP?

But such matters of creativity are only half the problem. Development time of a licensed game must be strictly regulated, with features and content often rejected in favour of a punctual ETA. Enter The Matrix is a perfect example of a ready-or-not release; a half-baked product pushed onto the shelves before it had been iced. A clearly rushed final level, and a plethora of would-be placeholder textures, smacked of a unfinished product, and, barring an insidious masochistic streak, I very much doubt Shiny were eager to release a below-par piece of software. And don't even get me started on the downfalls of using an aggregate review score.

I'm not completely blinkered; I realise that many companies have taken advantage of the instantaneous credibility a license can secure. But, Hall's claim that videogame companies have continually exploited Hollywood is a little hypocritical � Warner Brothers are the first company to have ever expressed any concern over receiving unsightly large returns upon the signing of a license, regardless of product quality. I don't believe licenses should simply be signed off and forgotten until release. There needs to be constant communication between developers and IP holders to ensure a final product that is both of high quality and faithful to the license. Thus, Warner Bros.' strategy for 'reigning in' developers, whilst well intentioned, may have exactly the opposite effect of that which they seek.

But such thoughts are for the future, when the first batch of games held under WB's new regime can be analysed through the use of more than simple supposition. For now, let us enjoy the tarnished glory of web-slinging around a virtual New York, or trading invectives with the inhabitants of Butcher Bay, for tie-ins are stronger than they have ever been before. True, that does not mean they will be picked out as examples of gaming's greatest achievements, but at least they are improving. The real question is, are they doing so fast enough?

...let's just move on, shall we?

Jordan:

Movies and games are too completely different types of entertainment. How you interact with them is also different, sometimes you can make a great game from a movie (Aliens v. Predator series) or a completley terrible one (Enter the Matrix...).

To be honest, it really does depend on the developer, how the movie is used and what platform it's done on. For example, a movie game could have been fantastic if they used a good story line, or if they used a different game genre. Spider-Man 1 for consoles got bad press, the problem was, in the films Spiderman seemed free and you could roam around the city as you wish, also the story was well written. In the game however, you couldn't go onto the streets and it was a case of go here, do this do that affair. Developers learn, and thankfully Spider-Man 2 was fantastic.

Other times developers... and the public want too much from a game. Enter The Matrix was going to be fantastic we all thought, oh jeeze it disappointed. We didn't know the story, we didn't know the characters and overall the game was rushed and it was really really bad. The sad fact is, if a movie is popular enough it usually leaves the rest of the good games lower in the charts.

So, as I said. If done well, a movie game can be awesome, if done badly a movie game can be as bad as Universal Studios.

Conor:

The general problem with bad movie-based games is not a unique one, the various traits also lend to poor licensed games in general. The licence gives the developers a comfort factor; an allowance of a certain amount of sales even if the finished product isn't up to much. The problem is doubly enhanced if it's a children's licence, because, lets face it, they have low standards. And it's hard to say no to a whining little child. I know - I used to be one.

Thus, the onus is on the developer to give the consumer some respect. To not patronise them with garbage. Movie-licensed or not, we know sometimes they don't do this. You just have to look at the amount of terrible games about to realise this. But I think that with movie-licensed games, developers and publishers are treating gamers with a little more respect. They're trying to make a worthwhile game. This isn't a new trend, but it does seem to be one on the grow.

A good example is EA, a publisher once symonymous with assembly line production, now proof that companies can chnage for the better. They could've easily stuck the LOTR label one soulless, run of the mill titles (a la the James Bond IP) but instead created a bunch of fun, faithful games, in different genres. Perhaps they realised that we're not so stupid.

And on the issue of paying in proportion to magazine scores, I'd have to disagree with the logic behind it. In theory it seems like a good idea (you can just imagine it being dreamt up in a focus group or corporate meeting) but in practice, like a lot of things, it doesn't stand up. Magazine scores, in general, are not the best judgement of a game's quality. But then again, neither are sale figures. Hard to know what it is, to be honest.

Did you enjoy Spider-Man 2 or EA's Lord of the Rings games? But what about Shrek or Catwoman? Is the standard getting better, or maybe worse?