Where Are The Marvel Games? Pages 1 2 NEXT | |
We've got the Marvel movies, but where have all the Marvel games gone? | |
Well, there is also a rather neat game called Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, where you control four Marvel supers of your choice to fight baddies and also can create custom teams, which provides certain bonuses to them. There are only 2 major flaws in it for me, specifically that the combat can get repetitive and The Hulk isn't in it. | |
Well there were some games based off the Phase 1 movies - two terrible Iron Man games, a mediocre Thor game (God of War clone) and a passable Captain America game (Arkham ripoff). | |
I vaguely recall the Hulk games being decent, but I think those were before Marvel really established its movie juggernaut status. My concern is that, as you know, developing a game worth playing takes time, so usually you get shitty movie tie-ins because they have to be rushed to meet the film release dates. I'd rather have no game than a bad tie-in. | |
Shamus... shamus no.. shamus pls...STAP! You dont know what youre asking for here... super hero games (kept for one or two mmos) have allmost all the time been HORRIBLE From the days of the snes till today, super hero games based on marvel/DC have been complete shite 9 out of 10 times.. and those who werent shite where only "decent" games. Dont wake up the greedy publisher giants... we allready got enough shovelware super hero games in the last couple of years. | |
Damn, I forgot how fun Hulk: Ultimate Destruction was. I mean, you can slide on wrecked buses, piledrive mechas and destroy buildings by throwing angry tantrums and so much more. | |
The cancelled avengers game pre-release footage looked pretty darn good | |
Considering that the production of any Marvel games going forward would be the domain of Disney now, and Disney shut down their video game publishing arm to focus on Disney Infinity (just in time for Wreck-It Ralph, the one Disney movie that absolutely deserved its own licensed games!), I think we may have our answer. | |
Ahem. Non-comic superhero games: | |
So that's 15 out of 137 (yes I counted from this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_based_on_Marvel_Comics) . The list could be inaccurate cos it listed Men in Black into the Marvel list | |
Well Marvel DID buy Malibu comics, the publisher that did Men in Black. | |
You know what? I am genuinely impressed at the question! So this IS a huge anomaly. | |
The production costs of games in the current generation already rival the film industry. Splitting their resources to make movies and games? That may hurt both. Besides, filmmakers aren't the best people to make games, as they tend to butcher the gameplay quality for the looks and the story. | |
Funnily enough, that's what people said about supehero movies before the MCU happened. That being said, I'm doubtful that the same factors that made the MCU work (whatever they may be) would translate to game development | |
I am actually fine with that. Video games based off of movies rarely turn out okay, and it's painful to watch them try to push them on people. Also, I believe this right here:
might be a clue. I think Marvel carefully stuck their feet in the water at the beginning, before things really took off for their movies, and decided the water wasn't to their liking. I do remember the Captain America game, if only from X-Play. The others, I have no memory of even seeing. And I think that's it. Those games weren't that great. They didn't have the staying power, so I think Marvel went, "Nope. We're done. At least for now," and they never went back to the pool. Why they haven't come back for so long, I have no idea. Maybe they just don't want to ruin a good thing by jinxing it, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those first few games turned them off of the idea. | |
Disney have given up on making games apart from Disney Infinity who sales have fallen for each game while the figure sales have skyrocketed (when you see that Star Wars games have sold $1 billion remember most of that is figures for Disney Infinity). Besides apart from 2 Arkham games (Origins and Knight sucked) most licenced games suck even Activision is choosing not to renew licences for films of games when they end due to how badly they sell. Also Marvel never made any games they sold the licences to Sega who then paid crappy developers to make them quick and cheap (Aliens: colonial marines ring any bells?). | |
Not necessarily. The Spider-Man games were some of my favorites back when I played consoles, and batman games in general have also been very good. I've never played Hulk games, but those have also tended to do well when proper effort is put in. Wolverine hasn't been bad either. Really, if I had to make a guess on why they haven't been made into games yet, is because the people in charge don't think they'd make good games. I can't say I blame them. The spiderman games were good, but they were good for reasons other than being spiderman. Swinging through the city was always fun, and spiderman himself makes for a good brawler game. Combine the two in an open world and you've got good gameplay. Batman did similarly, and worked well similarly. Compare that with, say, Iron Man. As a general rule, modern controls aren't suited well to three-dimensional flight, especially if you're adding combat in. I don't know any game that's ever done it well. Consider it's how Iron Man gets around, I'm not sure how well it'd work. He can't just walk around. Same with Thor. What sort of game and controls match well with him? He's a strong, tough dude with a hammer. Very visually appealing, but doesn't have that gameplay depth to really let him shine. You could likely get away with a decent Captain America game though. But he also runs into "not special" in terms of gameplay. Decent money, but nothing ground-breaking like they're trying to do with their brand. And they know they'd shoot themselves int he foot trying to do a good Avengers game. Yeesh, if getting one control set was hard, try doing the full Avengers. | |
This isn't really a Marvel exclusive thing, Superhero games in general seem few and far between. You've got Arkham and inFamous, then uhm... Prototype, Saints Row 4, or Sunset Overdrive (Notice its already stretching the terminology). DCU:O, the Lego, Skylander/Disney Infinity ones I wouldn't really count, as they're mainly just a coat of IP paint applied to an existing formula. | |
They ARE making good Marvel games...they're just being aimed at younger kids. Lego Marvel and Disney Infinity are both REALLY good. Both of them also follow the secret of the new Marvel movies: "fun" works better, sells better, and is easier to pull off than "cool". | |
Much as I'd like a Daredevil game, we already have a bunch of Arkham clones and it gets tiresome. I'd rather they come up with a combat system that works in its own rightand break out of the mould. | |
I hadn't thought about this before, but it IS rather strange. Marvel has been keeping a tighter leash on their IPs (the ones they have film right to, anyway) than has usually been the case for comics companies- producing the movies with their own studio, tying them together and keeping them consistent with each other to create a shared continuity. Perhaps they're wary of liscensing out the characters to game developers because the results might clash with the unified, carefully managed universe they've had so much success with? Damage the brand, basicaly? Best I can come up with. | |
Was just about to post something mentioning this. Perhaps the smart idea would be small indie-style budgets with indie developers at the helm. Minimize the risk if these games go south but maximize the potential ideas being made because the indie devs will try something they think fits the character best rather than just do something generic like most triple-A studios would do. Just a thought. | |
With the exception of the final boss fight, the Wolverine Origins game was one of the best Marvel games ever made. But the topic being about Marvel games related to the current MCU... I think Marvel knows that movie tie-in games have a track record of being horrible, broken, buggy messes. So rather than risk money, they just won't make any official games, outside of contributing to those collectible Infinity games. | |
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this: | |
Warhawk, Ace Combat, Crimson Skies, Panzer Dragoon and Rogue Leader all spring to mind as ways it could work in 3d, and in 2D something like Galak-Z would be fantastic.
Give it to Platinum, and give them more than a few months. Bayonetta/Devil May Cry gameplay with the Thor license? Can't fail. | |
Well if we seperate the games from the movies it should be a totally grand medium. The only question is which developers or studios they should acquire/hire to do the work for them. | |
This topic also made me remember the Marvel arcade games Captain America and the Avengers beat-em-up arcade game: It was average, the Punisher beatemup was much better: | |
I think the main problem is that they have to divorce them from the MCU to work. Some of my favorite Marvel games (I am talking about games like Marvel vs Capcom or Ultimate Alliance) work a lot better if they don't have to worry about continuity or adapting from a different medium. Ultimate Alliance in particular felt like they throw everything but the kitchen sink at you: one level you were fighting Galactus in the Skrulls homeworld, the other had you fighting Namor in Atlantis, passing though the Mandarin, the X-Men mansion, Mephisto, the Executioner, Fin Fang Foom, the Frost giants and a big etc. Now imagine this game with the MCU hooks: having to work through the licences, characters lookalikes, not conflicting with the stories and characters used or planned to be used... It would have felt a lot more restricted and a lot less inventive. | |
Well, thing is though, they just licensed them out to Sega instead of doing publishing and quality control themselves. I mean come on. Lego Marvel Super Heroes was awesome (then again so are most Lego games by TT). | |
None of those are really 3d controls. They work by eliminating one axis (usually the one going into the screen) so you can control the other two well. Great for when you're going fast over large distances, but terribly for someone like iron man who's trying to fly in a small area much of the time.
Possibly. Though the tone of their games doesn't seem like it'd fit Thor's tone. | |
I can see it working for heroes like Iron Man where suit upgrades could be considered progression but you would still be grounded by what you can actually do. most others though would either make you play a hero so OP you would be bored or would have to invent some abritrary limitations that just end up annoying.
you do know spiderman games still get made, right? they are so horrible they rival the recent Tony Hawk game. That being said i would LOVE for there to be Prototype 3, always loved those games. | |
I think they were also happy with Lego Marvel. That game was pretty good, and distant enough from the film universe to not damage the brand, but close enough to it to be a little treat for the fans. | |
Spiderman 2. And that is all I shall offer in response. | |
And your point is? Yeah, there were Spider-Man games based off the last two movies and yeah, they sucked, just like the source material, but my point was that it IS possible to make good Spidey games like the ones I mentioned above. | |
my point is that holding up a game from two decades ago as some shining example when the series went down to make one of the worst games out there is a bit delusional. Is it possible? maybe. will they do it for next spiderman game? sure as hell not. | |
| Pages 1 2 NEXT | |