151–160 of 357 posts
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Mortal Kombat was not a bad movie if you ask me.
All of Paul W.S. Anderson video-game movies are entertaining AF. Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Alien vs Predator. ALL well crafted & inspired movies. They're not going to win Cannes Palm d'Or, but they will hit the spot.
Applying those words to the Resident Evil sequels surely is some form of crime against humanity
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I think that's close to the mark, but not quite there. To quote Sid Meier, "A game is a series of interesting choices." It's hard to make a good game with a great plot: the better the plot, the more you restrict the player's choices. It's not impossible, but it's hard. Plenty of games have great characters and excellent world-building. Quite a few pose interesting questions, make you face hard dilemmas and leave you…
There are plenty of good games that dont give all that much choice to player. Which is why I dont like the "A game is a series of interesting choices." framing. It is true only if you limit definition of games to rpgs or strain definition of "choice" to pretty much anything. Whether games have great characters is of course subjective, but I have to say that I did not seen them. The best ones tend to be comparable wit…
Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for. Videogames are great at being interactive diversions, but their stories leave a lot to be desired and are really just thin background dressing for the real reason we play videogames: for the gameplay. The most successful videogame movies tend towards genre films like Mortal Kombat (the film) and Resident Evil (the series). Of course, let's…
The video games that do have a decent plot often have a plot that just can't be squeezed into a movie. I've seen some decent anime conversions of some video games, which were arguably interactive anime anyhow (i.e., Persona 4), but at roughly 8 hours (call it 24 20 minute episodes by the time you're done with commercials, opening, and closing) and still feeling a bit squeezed at times, that's not going to be a movie…
Short answer, because they have hard dates, and games are usually on Valve time [1].
Forcing creativity and creating fun usually ends badly, the creativity and fun come through research, prototyping and play testing.
Creativity like John Cleese said is an open mode, but you have to be in closed mode to ship [2]. Forced hard dates lead to more closed mode than open mode and the creativity and fun are compressed to times where it just doesn't work out right.
> We've become fascinated by the fact that we can usually describe the way in which people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed.
> So what i can just add now is that creativity is not possible in the closed mode.
Sometimes games for events or product releases like movies can be good, usually it is because most of the fun and systems are from existing, already successful games or formulas. So the other problem movie games run into is they are usually just a re-skinning, but those are usually more fun and better built for fun and performance.
[1] https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
[2] https://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotat...
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I loved the Mass Effect games but I disagree it’s an automatic home run. The characters are all very thin and the main character, like most main characters is a vessel for the player to project themselves into and not a compelling protagonist.
You don't think Garrus, Tali, Wrex, or Mordin have enough depth for a 90 minute movie? Shepard will of course require the screenwriter to flesh him or her out because of the nature of the game--I'm guessing a Hollywood screenwriter wouldn't have the balls for a renegade Shep though.
Actually, in some ways, Hardcore Henry ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3072482/ ) was a great video game movie. It has lots of problems, but it captures both the feel of a video game with the power of film. While not based on a specific game, it's easy to see many gaming cliches (intentionally) in the film.
Sharlto Copley as %90 of all "NPCs" made that movie better then it had any right to be.
I absolutely loved the concept of the "Jimmy" character, it made the entire movie super satisfying. The topic of surrogate bodies, whether virtual, robotic, or in this case biologic, is very interesting to me.