Comic book based video games

I'll be honest, this is a very spur of the moment idea for a post. I'm not one hundred percent sure of what I'm going to say. Let's find out TOGETHER.


I have plenty to say about comic books. I think I've made that abundantly clear over the last two months (just like last month, I'll take another quick moment just to say thank you for following me, all of you who have seen this blog, and allowing me to feel like I'm doing something when I write these things). What I might not have made as clear, though I can see how you'd make the correlation, is that I also happen to have plenty to say about video games. I'm a little different on video games because I know my tastes are different than most gamers (in that I play a lot, but I spread out between sports, action, Nintendo-franchise, etc.) and I can only quantify what I find fun, not what most people would. I know comics are subjective too, but I feel at least a little more knowledgeable about writing and about comic history and things like that than I do about video games. So I can tell you that I like the Assassin's Creed series because I can deal with lots of repetitive action if it means I get to free run huge environments and dive off buildings seemingly at will. The Spider-Man 2 video game taught me that.

CHECK THAT SEGUE. What I do feel MORE confident talking about, then, are video games adapted from comic books. I have, on my Tumblr pre-blog days, a REALLY long review on the shortcomings of the 2011 game X-Men Destiny. I've also made a couple of references here and on that Tumblr to the way video games translate comic book characters into their world. My aim is to get a little deeper into that here.

"Look guys, just remember how long I've been doing this
and how much we all love America and we'll be good."

First off, let me say that I get it. Video game developers have to come from a place of "I'm developing my own story and I can't expect everyone that plays this game to know everything about the character we're working with." It's just like starting a new series. HOWEVER, and I find this a fault with video gaming anyway, the characters are usually so broken into their basest parts that they lose all semblance of personality. My biggest objection to this is with Captain America. In games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance (1 and 2) and Marvel vs. Capcom, all of Cap's dialogue seems to revolve around "I've been doing this since before you were born!" or "That's the AMERICAN way." As you can probably guess, I totally HATE that style of dialoguing. I hate it ANYWAY, for what it represents and the laziness inherent in that, but I particularly hate it with Cap because I have a thing to blame now for why I have to explain to every non-Cap fan that he's not just a patriotic schill. Of course he SOUNDS like he is if you've just played the games, but let me talk to you about his seventy years (maybe minus the '50s) of history. It just doesn't work very well.

If Spider-Man is in your game and I don't get to
webswing around New York, you've failed.

In that respect, games like Spider-Man 2 broke the mold. Spider-Man felt like Spider-Man (albeit, that game was tied to the blockbuster 2004 movie so the developers had a little more wiggle room in terms of what knowledge the player had coming in) and he played like Spider-Man. He had all the responsibility, he swung around on webs, you could time it to make him swing faster and to feel more fluid, and he would be called by random passersby to assist them, which is EXACTLY how I'd view Spider-Man's day in the comics. The Captain America video game was good about that too. Again, that was probably possible because of his big movie that the game tied into. Instead of just coming in cold, you could expect an audience would understand the character a little more. Yes there are still some force-fed patriotic lines, but at least in the context of World War II (which is when that game takes place) it fits a lot better.

Pretty much all the new Deadpool game has to do

That leads us to the newest real Marvel games that we'll see. One is a Marvel based MMO, it seems like. I have some high-ish hopes for that, just in that it's going to be written by comics pros and will feature scores of characters and not just the ones who can just be boiled down to their bare elements. My "ish" comes in the form of Bendis being one of those comics pros (I swear that guy is doing whatever it takes to get OUT of comics; he signs on to any TV thing he can, movies, games, whatever) and in that I'm not a huge MMO fan. I'm still interested to see how it works and how it runs. The other is Deadpool. I'll be honest, I find it a little hard to screw up a Deadpool game. Everything that I complain about in my recent Deadpool reviews can be thrown out the window in a game. Like I said, the game doesn't have the history of the character bogging it down so much and it can, for better or worse, focus on just making Deadpool out to be a snarky and crazy mercenary who will likely break the fourth wall. There's also the benefit of actually playing as Deadpool instead of just watching him do everything, which is fine when the series is good but is painful when the series is bad. Now, in the right hands, it should just be good.

Look, my point at the end of all this is a little barebones itself. I think it relates more to the gaming industry than to the comics industry. I think there are plenty of games out there that do fine without story. Mobile games, sports games, a lot of shooters, etc. My problem comes if you're making a game based on a character who is all about personality and story and you approach it lazily. Making Cap talk about apple pie and having Tony Stark just mention facts about his armor does not constitute making a game about them, in my opinion. Until game developers can strive to tell meaningful stories with their games, I don't see how gaming can become a relevant story-telling platform, which some creators are aiming to make it. I don't think that's a bad aim, or even a nearly impossible one. I think it's reasonable and within reach. I'd just like to see them strive a little harder for it.



As an addendum, if it's too much to ask to make Cap a little less crazy patriotic in your game, at least have scenes like this one: