Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation Prove That Movies Can Become Great Games

Two of the most praised games of this year are Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation. New titles like Destiny and Titanfall were the most anticipated names to watch this year, while few were expecting great things out of games based on existing film franchises. Yet on Metacritic - an aggregator of game reviews - you can see that these franchise games were much better received, by critics and users alike.

Trying to compare these very different games is of course silly, but it does raise an interesting point. When video games based on movies are widely acknowledged as terrible - and vice versa too, as anyone who has watched movies based on video games can tell you - how is it that two of the best received games of the year are based on movies?

Of late, the movie tie-in game has largely shifted off consoles, and onto our mobile phones and tablets. This makes sense because the relative cost and time involved in making most mobile games today is fairly low, and it becomes possible to release a tie-in game in sync with a movie, without having to make tremendous compromises on quality.

Whether you're releasing a superhero movie like Captain America, or a cartoon targeted at kids like Despicable Me 2, the next step these days seems to be to churn out an endless runner or match-three game - these games are simple and made to a basic template so they can be churned out quickly, but they're also usually free. Some games do try a little too hard to take your money, but it's still a far cry from a full price console game that usually ended up being terrible considering the time and financial constraints under which they are usually made.

Even Indian filmmakers are getting in on the act - films like Dhoom 3, Krrish 3, and Kochadaiiyaan all have games available for smartphones, and they're close in quality to what we expect from foreign films as well. Unfortunately, this even extends to the aggressive monetisation strategies, as we discovered in our review of the two Kochadaiiyaan games.

While the rise of mobile games has seen fewer console-based games that revolve around movies, it has also meant that the production and financial resources of these few games are no longer tied to the release and marketing of the movie, freeing up the developers to express themselves in a manner associated with traditional games.

New movie games like Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation are set in the universe established by their franchises, and are free to pick and choose the best bits of the IP, without having to be tied to a story that you already know. They're free to tell their own tale, and as standalone games, they have largely benefited from being able to fit into an established universe without the constraints of a typical tie-in. This is a proven model and examples like the Knights of the Old Republic just go to further this point - games are better when they are conceptualised as games and released on their own terms.

But that's not to say that a tie-in on a console is a guaranteed success now. Two new games, rather unfortunately, highlight this point. The first is the Falling Skies videogame, which is available now on the PC and consoles. The game itself looks like a copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. That actually fits given the theme of the show, but it's a poor copy that adds nothing to the formula, an also lacks the production quality of XCOM. It doesn't even resemble the TV show, and there's not much that you can say for it at all.

The other one is the video game version of The Legend of Korra. As we've written in the past, The Legend of Korra is one of the best shows you can watch right now, but the Avatar franchise has had bad luck with spinoffs in other mediums, except for comic books.

Avatar: The Last Airbender endured having its first season turned into a particularly terrible movie. The Legend of Korra meanwhile was being turned into an action game by Platinum Games, the same studio which has made some excellent games like Bayonetta and Vanquish. People were therefore a little hopeful that the result would be a good game set in the Avatar world.

The result, however, is unfortunate. The combat is promising, and lets you quickly switch between different types of attacks, but the type of enemies is extremely limited. Making things worse, the story is poorly told. One of the reasons why we watch Korra is because the show has a great story that's made possible by strong supporting characters. Unfortunately, none of them show up in the game, except for Jinora, who's barely there.

The result is something that is flat and barely makes use of the Avatar universe. It's a budget title, and some are making a case that this game is value for money, but frankly, we feel that people would rather have paid more money for a high quality game instead.

From this, you could conclude that console games based on TV shows are the new games based on movies, but actually, the lesson is simple - when you're making a game that's free of constraints around budget or deadlines, where the IP of a movie or a TV show is just the inspiration, then you have a much higher chance of success than when you're making a tie-in. That's what worked for Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation, and that's what went wrong with Falling Skies and The Legend of Korra.