Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Video game to movie adaptations.

I've always been a fan of movies based on video games no matter how bad they were. It's not easy for a director to try and take something like a video game and translate it into a great hit on the big screen. Directors like Uwe Boll catch a lot of criticism for what they do because people feel they destroyed the game and everything about it, but in reality they are just helping the game live one. Like when Boll directed the House of the Dead, everyone criticized him but it helped a game that had long since been dead get some publicity and in the long run helped out the franchise. I know when I saw Alone in the D ark I went and found a copy of it on the internet so I could play it again. Regardless of what the movie did with the storyline it still helps the game out. Now a lot of people are really critical about movies like this and they think if it doesn't follow the storyline perfectly then it shouldn't have been made, but think about a movie based solely on the original Doom storyline, pretty boring movie. So it takes some original thinking for a director to get the rights to the movie and then put their own spin on it. The other day I was looking for some lists of video games that had been turned into movies to see if I had missed any, and I came across a list someone created and I must say that when I saw that he said Uwe Boll's movies were the three worst movies I was kind of mad. Apparently this guy didn't realize what it takes to turn a game into a movie. I'll let you guys decide who's right on this one.

List of the Worst Movies Based on a Video Game.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's

Haven't posted in quite a while due to some illness in the family, but I just recently purchased Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's, and I must say that while it sucks there is only 30 songs and some of the songs are a little lame, the game definitely has a much higher difficulty than GH2. The first night I bought it I beat the game on hard in about 2-3 hours, five staring all but the last section of the songs. It's funny how a lot of people are saying that this game sucked for this and that, mainly the store aspect. While it is disappointing that Grim is the only unlockable character and the guitars and finished are the same with no unlockable tracks, people need to realize that this isn't the next installment of the series, it was simply a game to hold us over until October, 28th for the release of GH3. This game is definitely worth buying in my eyes, it has a plethora of good songs that are fun to play over and over again. Such songs are Holy Diver, Ballroom Blitz, Wraithchild, Turning Japanese, Nothin' But A Good Time, and quite a few more. There were only one or two songs that I hated having to play, which is a pretty good ratio of good songs vs bad. All in all I'd give this game an 8/10 and a definite buy for any true Guitar Hero fan.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Most important video games of all time.

This is a questions that gets asked a lot. Now when someone thinks about this question, all sorts of stuff pops into their mind. Are we talking absolutely groundbreaking? Start a certain market? Responsible for reviving games at a critical point in time? And among all these questions people still don't have a very widespread list to answer the question; what are the most important games of all time. My own personal experience, I'd have to say games like half-life, final fantasy 7, final fantasy 3, tetris, super mario land for SNES, and there's a bunch more. Each one of these games regardless of what other lists say had a very influential part on all video games at some point or another. This is definitely a topic that will be debated over time and until more and more games come out this will be a very hard topic to choose which games had more influence.

So far this is the list closest to what I would think are the most important games. The list seems to do a good job of balancing popularity, impact on the industry and overall playability of the games.

List of the most important games of all time