Who cares about films based on games...nerds....nerds who are too ungainly/uncoordinated to actually play sports and therefore have to stay inside and play games on their computers....
Ha! - I count myself as a 'nerd' and I'm physically fit and healthy... I think...
But a good game translation can be a real pot of gold to the right production company. There is an already founded fanbase, and whilst that could be said for a number of different mediums (Novels, Comics, etc...), the difference with video game adaptations is, of course, games
can provide a far more rounded and immersive experience for the end-user.
Not only that, but, some games have cut scenes as long as a 68 minute film... If memory serves, one of the MGS's had something daft like 5 hours of cut-scenes which in themselves are like little serial films.
But with so much visual stimuli, music, story and plot to take from, it is no wonder that production companies find it hard to produce a worthwhile adaptation of a game. I often think which games would make for best adaptations and I can't think past games which have little or nothing in the way of story (within the game itself). Battleships was of course crap, and it wasn't a game per se, but they had so little to go off, that the world was their oyster.
But rather than stick to a simple story (and style) similar to the game they turned it into some utterly absurd popcorn flick gone wrong- you know, they could have like had a cold war multi-vessel thriller with two players (generals) offing each others boats one-by-one... But nah...
It is a proper interesting sub-genre that will get it right at one point - Disney seem to have the whole film/game game/film adaptation off to a fine art and they've had a few flops, sure, but I would go as far as to say that if any production company would get it 'right', that it would be them... But then, video games and animation go hand-in-hand anyway, so what would be the point?
Aside of all that shit though - I can't help but think that production
and game companies are getting it all wrong. Games like Assasin's Creed, Half Life, Metal Gear Solid (to name a few), should all be serial episodes as oppose to cinema. Only then can they get the genuine feel of the fanbase (over a longer period of time), whilst trying to draw on a new audience.
But yeah, game adaptations up to now have largely been experientially similar to having the galloping trots.
