Are Licensed games that bad?

While I was looking at my collection, I noticed I had a lot of licence games. Most of them are a lot of fun. People can go on and on about how goldeneye bucks the trend. This got me thinking what about the other games that are based on movies or other media, that are great games. There has to be others right?

Well there is, but there is a definite correlation of what makes a great license game and what makes a bad one. But to understand what you have to separate the different source medias first. Character and story. Character are from licences such as Batman and Story are direct from TV and Movies. Why are these differences so important? Because it's about what a good license game should do. That is make you feel part of that story or universe. This herein lies the biggest problem. These games are taking place in established universes. Giving developers more restriction on what they can do. Unlike developing games with a new IP. Devs have to work pre-existing characters and rules, Rocksteady couldn't make Batman fly or teleport as a fast travel mechanic around Gotham. So what to do?

First and foremost the game needs to be fun to play. You want to feel like you are part of that universe. Chances are you brought the game because of that reason in the first place. You want to all the strength and flaws of the main character. You don't want your batman to be a gun toting mass murderer of villains, you want him to pick the non lethal option against those that'll shoot first and shoot to kill. So with Character license games you need it to be true to the character. Case in point is Superman 64. Even if it wasn't the broken and buggy mess it is, it still removes one of Superman's main attributes. That is he is actually quite smart. Superman wouldn't just fly through rings and done what lex luthor said. He would have definitely found a way to get out and beat Lex.

Story is almost direct opposite of that of Character based games. Because these work better when the story is expanded upon. If you look at Goldeneye and Mission impossible both games add missions and sections that are not even in their respective movies. This help fill in the holes of story that are missing in the movie or even forgo the all the movies in their entirety and just expand the movie universe like so many star wars games. Unlike character based licenses, story based ones can bend the rules slightly by adding new characters or new elements to their franchise. When a game tries to be a carbon copy of their source all this does is highlight the problems with source more as no two people think alike. So the game needs to add elements of problem solving, that the movie protagonist wouldn't use. Just for those that wish to solve it in a different manner. It would still have to be in keeping with the character, again you don't want a pacifist to start creating rivers of blood.

These are just some of my thoughts what are yours?

#nintendo64er #BATMAN #license #games #superman #not #bad #gaming #gamer #retro