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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2020 23:54:54 GMT -5
I thought it might be interesting to talk about licensed games we enjoy. Video games are a really nice way to interact with the worlds we know and bring beloved characters to life. However, licensed games have held a reputation for being rushed and low quality often due to a need for a timely release. So what are the licensed games that we actually like?
I think the important things to consider are: how good is the game in it's own right, how well does it bring the license to life and how the license enhances the game (unique gameplay elements, tone, humour etc).
So lately I've been replaying Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I think does a great job of making Batman feel like the comic book character. The movements of gliding and using the grapplehook feel so natural, Batman can stealthily take out enemies, the combat system does a good job of reflecting the characters ability to deal with seemingly overwhelming odds with relative ease. Then of course there's the puzzles which put us in the mind of the detective. It really seems Rocksteady went to great lengths to recreate Batmans abilities in the game through the gameplay, with several of these points unique at the time.
What the game really gains from the license is the setting and the benefit of Batman's rogues gallery. Of course the insanity of Joker and Harley Quinn is on display. Using The Riddler to create puzzles or Scarecrow to cause Batman to hallucinate are ideas that seem like they wouldn't have been explored without the source material.
So whilst I find the game to be fantastic, I'm not sure a game like this that brought so many elements together along with fantastic tone and characters would have happened without the licenses influence.
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Post by mainpatr on Sept 16, 2020 1:10:58 GMT -5
Robots for PS2\GCN\PC
Fun game,with good Ratchet and Clank style gameplay.
Actually,most Eurocom games are good.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2020 11:12:54 GMT -5
Robots for PS2\GCN\PC Fun game,with good Ratchet and Clank style gameplay. Actually,most Eurocom games are good. I wasn't aware the Robots game was made by Eurocom never mind that it was any good. To be fair, I've never seen the film so I'm not familiar with the license. You are spot on about Eurocom though, and they worked on a bunch of licensed properties. I was playing their James Bond Nightfire game last year and it had some nice driving missions in particular.
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Post by windfisch on Sept 16, 2020 11:40:26 GMT -5
Star Wars Arcade (1983) To me it almost perfectly captures the feel of the Death Star battle. Granted, it applies some game-logic, like the ability to counter enemy *fireballs* by shooting them. Naturally enemies themselves have no chance dodging the player's lasers. But gameplay-wise these aspects just add to the fun. A nice touch is that you can attack Darth Vader's ship, but never destroy it. I think it is canon that his TIE ship has shields as opposed to the regular fighters, neatly ensuring that he won't die in the game and thus saving us all from a time paradox with potentially disastrous consequences. There are also a couple of speech samples from the movie, greatly adding to the atmosphere. And while primitive by todays standards, the elegant wireframe-aesthetics have aged remarkably well, plus they stylistically also resemble the movie's targeting computer and the Death Star briefing animation.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Sept 16, 2020 12:11:44 GMT -5
I posted about Spider-Man 2 (PS2, 2004) when I was about 2/3 of the way through elsewhere so I can post that here as it is pretty solid, beat it today: "The web swinging pretty much makes the game (pulling/throwing bad guys with the web is also fun), with very satisfying movement and just the right amount of complexity to it. While it's in the sandbox genre, they let you buy movement and combat abilities and upgrades with points gained from missions and challenges, and a couple of them are required to progress.
It's not quite a classic; the camera and hit detection have a couple of nagging issues (with some practice you can do some crazy stunts like wallsprinting up a skyscraper but this always feels like one small mistake will completely screw up what you're trying to do), there's no dive move from mid-air so you tend to lose momentum from using the exaggerated charge jumps, and the presentation is uneven with kind of bland side missions where NPCs' faces don't even animate and what happens isn't weaved into the overarching story or fleshed out on its own at all. Missions are also kind of repetitive so far (chapter 9) besides a couple of them, so hopefully it improves later on."
Well the side missions didn't change much, but the story ones do get pretty cool at times including the final showdown, some encounters with Mysterio and the fights with Shocker. There are also a ton of combo moves you can buy, and though most of them aren't that useful it's pretty fun to slam enemies grabbed with web repeatedly into walls/ground or do piledrivers while grappling them and jumping. However when facing groups of enemies you tend to have to play more defensively (there's a spider-sense cue around SM's head letting you know when to dodge which usually works alright though I would've liked to map its button differently) or use more cheesy and repetitive tactics until there's just a few of them or you get crushed.
Story and aesthetics-wise it loosely mimicks the movie and they got Tobey Maguire to voice SM, so if you like him you'll probably like him here. There are some actually funny moments here, but the more dramatic or romantic scenes don't tend to fare so well, and in a few spots during side missions there are overlapping voice clips. So to sum up, the swinging and acrobatics make the game, the combat is pretty fun overall even if it doesn't compare to a dedicated brawler, and the rest is fine.
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Post by toei on Sept 16, 2020 16:49:07 GMT -5
Oh, there are quite a few, even if it's true that a large proportion of them are trash. Going back to the '80s and '90s, whatever publishers got the license would subcontract the game to a lesser, little-known outfit most of the time, with a reduced budget and development span, which often resulted in crappy games. By contrast, most of the good retro licensed games were developed internally by the established companies who got the license, and they put as much effort into them as any other game. Sega, Capcom and Konami are good examples of companies who adopted this practice. And then you have companies like Treasure that tried to make a good game regardless of the circumstances, which is how we ended up with a decent McDonald's platformer for the Genesis.
Here are a few that come to mind: Spellcaster & Mystic Defender (Kujaku-Ou), Magic Knight Rayheart Saturn, an excellent ARPG by the creators of Phantasy Star IV, Konami's TMNT beat-'em-ups, particularly Turtles in Time, and their X-Men, Capcom's The Punisher (my favorite Capcom beat-'em-up) - Warriors of Fate (it's based on a manga) and Cadillacs N Dinosaurs are also good, Natsume's 3D Hokuto no Ken beat-'em-up on the PSX (though the SNES HNK fighters are some of the worst licensed games ever), there are various good fighters based on Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho (including Treasure's) and probably other big shonen franchises, Hissatsu! on the Saturn, Die Hard Arcade (greatest 3d beat-'em-up), the Game Gear Zenki game is one of the best on the platform... I'm definitely forgetting a bunch.
Other well-liked examples I don't care about include Sunsoft's NES Batman games (I really hate the first one, personally), all 3 Aladdin games - Genesis, SNES, and the little-known Master System/GG game by SIMS (I did enjoy that one), most of the 16-bit Disney games by Sega or Capcom, the Master System Asterix, etc. etc. Oh, GoldenEye was one of the biggest N64 games.
EDIT - Oh yeah, Parasite Eve is basically a licensed series, as the first game (which is the one I like) is a sequel to a Japanese novel of the same name.
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Post by JoeQ on Sept 16, 2020 17:25:46 GMT -5
Astro Boy: Omega Factor Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay Most of the old LucasArts Star Wars and Indiana Jones games
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Post by spanky on Sept 16, 2020 18:35:10 GMT -5
The Capcom Disney games all come to mind. Simple, fun games with kids in mind that have stellar production values - just like the works they are based on.
For something a little out of left field...I really enjoy the True Lies game for the SNES. A pretty fun (and gory for the era) top down shooter.
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Post by blackdrazon on Sept 16, 2020 21:21:13 GMT -5
Oh, there are quite a few, even if it's true that a large proportion of them are trash. That's just the thing, isn't it? It's Sturgeon's Law. Even if 90% of licensed games are trash, look how many licensed games there are!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2020 0:27:16 GMT -5
windfisch - great call on Star Wars Arcade. The scaling is really impressive. I have to wonder though, how many times the Death Star Assault has been recreated. Another really nice interpretation I thought was Factor 5's Rogue Squadron II which still looks fantastic today on Gamecube. Of course I enjoyed all the battles from the films in that game, the other missions not so much. ommadawnyawn2 - I'd seen your other post about Spider-Man 2, glad you had a good time with it overall. I really enjoyed the movement but felt the combat was a bit sloppy back in the day. toei - that's a great list. Some of those I had no idea were licensed properties. JoeQ - I loved Astro Boy Omega Factor, of course pretty much anything by Treasure is great. Yeah there are quite a few licensed games that are good. I think it was more around the PS1 era where games started to become more complicated to make they became rarer, and at the other end nowadays I don't think a poor quality licensed game would sell outside of free to play stuff, so there tends to be more effort.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2020 0:43:22 GMT -5
The Capcom Disney games all come to mind. Simple, fun games with kids in mind that have stellar production values - just like the works they are based on. For something a little out of left field...I really enjoy the True Lies game for the SNES. A pretty fun (and gory for the era) top down shooter. Specifically the Disney games from Capcom I enjoyed were: Aladdin - Yeah this really brought parts of the film to life. I always preferred it to the Mega Drive game. Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers - was this the first game that allowed you to pick up and throw your co-op partner? It was a great time in 2 player and so many plays would devolve into trying to get one another killed. Goof Troop - Another really great co-op game Disney's Magical Quest - I liked the outfits you could unlock in this. Also quite a nice looking game back in the day.
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Post by dsparil on Sept 17, 2020 4:48:34 GMT -5
I think it'a mainly timely movie tie-ins that give licensed games a bad name since they're usually done so quickly and cheaply. There are of course exceptions like the console version of Spider-man 2; for some reason the PC one is a different game and not good.
The Traveller's Tales Lego games are fairly uniform in quality. The Star Wars ones are still my favorites. The Force Awakens has some great Star Fox style vehicle sections, and the upcoming one that covers the 9 main movies looks like it's making some substantial changes to the formula. Lego Jurassic World was pretty good since it covered the earlier movies too and lets you play as a dinosaur. Lego City Undercover is a good GTA clone with a crazy final level. That one might actually be the best since it gives you a fully developed city instead of a beefed up hub.
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Post by spanky on Sept 17, 2020 8:16:26 GMT -5
I know Konami's TMNT games are kind of a mixed bag in regards to overall quality, but they are beloved for a reason. The SNES port of Turtles in Time is really excellent and you could probably make a pretty strong case for it being the best beat-em up on the SNES. The SNES version of Tournament Fighters is a great fighting game as well. Definitely the best licensed fighter on the system and probably the best one not based on an existing arcade game? The developers wisely just pretty much ripped off the "feel" of Street Fighter II and tacked on some extras like those crazy super moves and it works out great!
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Post by kaoru on Sept 17, 2020 8:41:54 GMT -5
The games by Telltale. The Witcher games, Nightmare before Christmas on GBA, Kaiju-Oh Godziall on GB. Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei is decent, too.
Technically there's also a ton of belvoed D&D-adapted RPGs, tho I know little about any myself.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Sept 17, 2020 9:01:01 GMT -5
ommadawnyawn2 - I'd seen your other post about Spider-Man 2, glad you had a good time with it overall. I really enjoyed the movement but felt the combat was a bit sloppy back in the day. It could've been better for sure. For example being able to string more moves together and some later moves being more useful, or changing how some enemies block all your attacks but also don't attack often so the flow just kinda stops if you try to wait and perform a counter attack after dodging. Another good one that I happen to be playing is Shaman King (GBA), which is apparently anime-based. I don't know how well it does in terms of representing that world, but it is a good Igavania clone (Aria specifically) with a hub map structure.
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