Will there be any decent movie tie-ins this year?

Any chance of it being good?
It’s smiles all round, it seems, as Grin takes on another 2009 tie-in. Chances of it being the best Terminator game yet seem high, not least because the competition includes a gun game, a botched deathmatch shooter, and several middling actioners. (The Amiga version of T2 was fun, but then so were SodaStream makers and Inspector Gadget.)

Grin’s game will have to inject plenty of cutting-edge tech into its robot skeletons, especially if they’re to rise above the perennial torrent of loud and lumbering action games. A good job, then, that that’s a company speciality. Screens and info should be stepping through the portal any time now.

What’s it about?
Here’s a twist: the game comes first, to be adapted into a movie. Both star Vin Diesel as getaway driver extraordinaire Milo Burik, who’s chased by the US mafia to the backstreets of Barcelona. The Transporter, basically, minus the ridiculous accent.

Any chance of it being good?
Mr Diesel likes his games, and he’s surrounded himself with enough top names to ensure that Wheelman hits every intended screen as promised. But what’s this? An ambitious open world driving game full of destructible scenery, stopping en route for some on-foot gunplay? Let’s hope it’s more like Driver 4 than Drivers 2 and 3. Let’s also hope that Midway’s current financial problems don’t pile the game into a wall.

There haven’t been many Unreal Engine 3-powered driving games, either, so let’s further hope for a better one than Fatal Inertia. 31 story missions and 105 side missions suggest it could be.

What’s it about?
A retrospective reboot that hopes to prove there is life after the shambolic X-Men: The Last Stand. Back we go to the pre-adamantium days of Logan/Wolverine, focusing on his rivalry with fellow soldier Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth).

Any chance of it being good?
This much is for sure: developer Raven Software has made a lot more good games than bad ones, its Marvel and X-Men titles among the best. Others include successful sequels to Jedi Knight, and classics like Heretic and Hexen. Despite being a spin-off designed to create even more spin-offs, the movie doesn’t look too shabby, either.

Inspirations for the game are said to include God Of War and Devil May Cry – not Barbie Horse Adventures, then – its action preferring simple attacks to monotonous combo-strings. Activision’s practice of releasing on every platform under the sun could cause an upset, though what could be worse than 2006’s X-Men: The Official Game?

Jan 09, 2009

Forget making Blox go boom - this is what we want

Silver screen snapshots against GTA's digital recreations

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