Not too long past there was a time when the phrase 'movie tie in' was a curse uttered upon the gaming world. For those with more power than sense would see the production of a movie as synonymous with that of a game, and expected a full quality game to be whipped up within the year or so of filming in order to coincide with movie release schedules. This would, obviously, result in the worst possible games as developers desperately struggled to produce something working under the horrific constraints which inexplicably made a reputation and a bit of money because of the name association alone. At least, that was until they grew so bad that people knew not to waste their time anymore. Now the movie game is largely just a thing of myth, but every now and then one does pop around to surprise us and raise the question- does the curse of the movie tie-in still exist?
The early 2000's were rotten for the worst of games like these, with some coming out as little better than a mobile trash product from an amateur coder might. Of course I'm talking about the original Iron Man game- good god that disaster haunts me in my sleep and I only played the demo! Ugly, unintuitive, boring- just the worst of all worlds. At least people who fell for the 'Thor' tie in game got a terrible God of War rip off to pass the time with. Not exactly glowing- quite atrocious actually, but at least they got the Hemsworth to voice for it. And Tom Hiddleston! And the music of Inon Zur? (I need to stop reading the Wiki before I end up playing the thing.) For my money the best of that era, at least within the confines of the MCU was Ang Lee's Hulk the movie the game. Not as iconic as Ultimate Destruction, but a competant little smash 'em up action game with a totally unique narrative set after the film that touched on areas of Hulk lore I've not seen addressed outside of a comic since. Ravange, Madman, Flux- when the last time you heard any of their names?
Of course there are some genuinely good tie-in games. The King Kong game was way better than it had any right to be, presenting itself as half a semi-horror shooter game where you have to survive the mutant monstrosities of Skull Island, and the other-half a third person Kong fighting game. And then there's the king of movie licence games, a game so good it set an example that similar games tried to top over the next 14 years- Spiderman 2. What can anyone say about Spiderman 2 that hasn't already been sung from the rooftops? It was freeing, fantasy encapsulating, graphically pretty, mechanically sound, stuffed full of memorable encounters and moments, and accompanied by one of the best Super Hero movies ever made. So if you want evidence against the existence of a curse at all- those will be your best bet. Alongside Golden Eye, I guess?
But lo, just recently this very month we had ourselves a movie tie in title in 'A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead'- a first person survival game that appears to fancy itself a 'survival horror' despite featuring no significant resource management. (Are there no standards to genre picking anymore? Simply having to survive being murdered does not itself warrant the 'survival' addendum, else Until Dawn would be a 'survival Horror' now wouldn't it?) The Road Ahead is actually half decent, kind of borrowing the vibe of Alien Isolation to a small degree it mimics the core conceit of keeping super quiet by jacking into your computer mic and listening in on your breathing. (After you allow it to, of course.) All under a goofy little storyline that believes itself to be more dramatic than it honestly is. (Love a little silly horror plot now and then.) I would commend the game for slapping down the curse... but what movie release is this supposed to coincide with exactly? Day One? That movie dropped in June! (Eh, it's close enough, I suppose.)
Of course there are also movie franchise tie-ins, that are connected to a particular movie but rather a cinematic brand. Actually, there aren't many games like that because there aren't many cinematic brands that can survive past a few entries. I recall a pretty lacklustre VR John Wick game which just got a lot of people back into playing Payday 2, because that was what it played like. And more famously there was the sure-hit certain-success product Avengers which managed to bomb under the utterly moronic direction of the team who made it. Having recently actually tried to play the thing myself I can say first hand how desperately the game buckles under the weight of level gating and side content bloat it just doesn't need! Any designer worth a fraction of their paycheck would have been able to spot that giant flaw in the game's makeup, and if they failed to get that actioned upon then they failed in their role. And in doing so, Avengers failed despite all around it.
In fact, you might say the tie-in curse seems to hit Marvel the worst off. Any Marvel game that isn't directly tied to Spiderman has an inordinate chance of bombing despite the apparent permeability of the Marvel fandom and it genuinely astounds me. Perhaps it's the cynicism surrounding the very apparent over-extension of the brand- or maybe just none of these games really nailing the fantasy that people are searching for. Even Midnight Suns, which I figured to be a pretty decent game, didn't quite capture the heroism it was shooting for and ended up feeling like a half-step away from the XCOM style the studio was known for an a half-step towards something entirely different they weren't confident enough to commit to. Whatever the case- it bombed with all the others.
But could it be considered as bad as, say, Street Fighter the movie the game? Yeah, you read that right. Street Fighter the movie, an adaptation of Street Fighter 2, was adapted into a video game. And you might think- "how does that work"? Cast your mind back to Mortal Kombat and you might remember the stop-frame picture animation work which defined the bizarre style of that original game- which Street Fighter neatly avoided thanks to it's gorgeous animation work. Well the movie game took us back to that Mortal Kombat style only with pictures derived from the movie counterparts of these characters. Yes, it is visually repulsive to witness- and apparently the game plays pretty stiffly as well- which is astounding for an adaptation of a movie of one of the most responsive fighting games of all time.
The movie game curse is a warning that art is nothing to be trifled with, and that the work of making a video game cannot be condensed into the cycle of film development. It truly was born from a superiority complex that games were a lesser form easily squeezed into a Hollywood marketing schedule and it's the pig headed stubbornness of that industry which kept this sordid tradition alive for as long as it did. Maybe video games growing to such a size that they neatly eclipse films what was put an end to this. Why the potential lost revenue of a bag guy far eclipses what an entire movie marketing team can afford to commission- who is going to give them the time of day? At least nowadays those that make the plunge do so with their priorities in check and the power-balance tilted the right direction.