Video game movies have been synonymous with shitty movies and for good reasons. They suck. The degree of how much they suck varies of course. For instance, “Street Fighter” or “Bloodrayne” were a god awful movies no matter how you looked at it; “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” managed to land in the realms of mediocrity with ambitious CGI but horrible story telling; and I’m willing to argue that “Resident Evil: Apocalypse”, despite all of its glaring problems, was a decently entertaining zombie flick.

However, at the end of the day, video game movies have yet to define themselves as a genre worth taking seriously. The majority of these film’s directors thus far have been awful, and honestly, who is the genius who selects the video games to make a movie out of? I mean, come on, who genuinely thought that making a “House of the Dead” movie (a video game that doesn’t even attempt to entertain a coherent narrative) was a great idea?

Video games can tell good stories. They have been for years, but it hasn’t been until recently that the suits in Hollywood have realized this. Instead of grabbing any random video game off the shelf and deciding to invest millions of dollars into a film version of it without considering whether there’s a good story there or not to begin with (i.e “Doom”), I can’t help but get the impression that producers have started doing their homework a little before green lighting projects. For better-or-worst, games with actual stories have begun to be selected for the Hollywood treatment. “Bioshock” and “Prince of Persia” are going to become movies soon, and hell, if the trailers are indicative of anything, the new “Max Payne” movie looks as though it’ll remain faithful to the game’s edgy, gritty, and dark storyline.

Here’s a list of video games that should also make the jump from the video game console to the silver screen.

Deus Ex
Movies Already Like It: Blade Runner
What happens when you take bio-augmentation, the wardrobe from the Matrix, huge robots, terrorists, evil corporations, and a plague that is decimating the American populace? Well, you get the hit RPG/FPS hybrid, “Deus Ex”, or you get the premise for an awesome summer blockbuster. With its dystopian, cyber-punk setting and emphasis on badasses killing stuff, “Deus Ex” definitely has the substance to be a pretty awesome sci-fi film. The only problem? Chances are someone like Michael Bay would end up directing it. Instead of focusing on plot and being something more intellectual akin to “Blade Runner”, chances are it would focus on HUGE EXPLOSIONS and end up more like “Robocop.”

Sam and Max
Movies Already Like It: Anything made by Pixar
“Sam and Max” has already been a comic book, a Saturday morning cartoon, and a video game (and they’ve always been awesome in all three forms) so why not a movie? The dynamic, detective duo are cute and fuzzy; have awesome chemistry, great; witty dialog, and churn out great pop-cultural references by the handful. Hollywood seems rather insistent on making CGI flicks starring animals “(Garfield”, “Alvin and the Chipmunks”) so why not give “Sam and Max” a try?

Metal Gear Solid
Movies Already Like It: Escape from New York, The Rock, Rescue Dawn
Terrorist group threatening city? Check. Super soldier badass sent in by himself to neutralize threat? Check. Hot, sassy sidekick? Check. Dorky scientist sidekick? Check. Nuclear weapons? Check. At its most surface level, “Metal Gear Solid” already sounds like a dozen or so Hollywood 90’s action movies (normally starring Wesley Snipes or Steven Seagal). With its lengthy, action packed cut scenes and top-notch voice acting, Metal Gear Solid games already feel more like a cinematic experience than a video game.

Halo
Movies Already Like It: Independence Day, Soldier
The world wants a Halo movie. After teasing us mercilessly with the prospect of such a project only to delay it months later, fans want it more than ever. Halo actually has a surprisingly decent story, and though the characters are rather two dimensional, I’m confident it could still become a worthy sci-fi action flick. The movie doesn’t even have to focus on the Master Chief. Those live-action segments (featuring a fierce skirmish between the Marines and Brutes) produced to advertise Halo 3 looked amazing.

God of War
Movies Already Like It: The Odyssey, 300
A God of War movie would be badass. Lots of manly shouting, kicking people in the chest, dicing dude’s heads off, and throw in tons of blood, gore and totally unnecessary nudity and you’d have the spiritual sequel to 300. Movies like The Odyssey have shown that films founded in Greek mythology are possible and awesome, so a God of War movie should really be no problem. As long as there’s boobies, blood, giant mythological monsters, decapitations, and possibly impaling a sharp wooden spike through someone’s eye, I’m pretty sure this movie would be incredible.

Army of Two
Movies Already Like It: Bad Boys
While I normally don’t regard Michael Bay as being one of the best directors ever, I can’t deny that he would be awesome directing a movie like Army of Two. Army of Two is a co-op third persons shooter based on two mercenaries who have tons of guns, lots of latent homoerotic tension, and kill tons of people for cash. There isn’t a whole lot plot wise, but just throw in lots of flying bullets, huge explosions, and endless one liners and you’ll have yourself a pretty decent action flick.

The Darkness
Movies Already Like It: The Crow
Based on the comic book of the same name, The Darkness basically is a mob/revenge story mixed with elements of the supernatural. Jackie Estacado is a pissed off ex-hitman who seeks to take revenge on the corrupt police of New York and his Uncle Paulie after they try to assassinate him. The catch? He controls an army of sarcastic, wisecracking, chain-gun wielding demons to do his dirty work. With the right script and director, The Darkness movie could be a unique hybrid of the dark storytelling of The Crow with a touch of the morbid humor of Evil Dead.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Movies Already Like It: Star Wars
It often baffles me why George Lucas insists on churning out more Star Wars prequel garbage (the CGI film was pretty terrible) when there’s a perfectly good Star Wars story just sitting around waiting to be made. Knights of the Old Republic takes place hundreds of years before Star Wars (fortunately eliminating any need for Hayden Christensen and his horrible acting) and has an incredible story and an even better plot twist. The story features Jedi lightsaber battles, epic starship fights, and great characters -pretty much all the elements of Star Wars movie only minus the shitty ones like Jar-Jar Binks and Midi-Chlorians.

Duck Hunt
Movies Already Like It: Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller
Duck Hunt could be an emotional story about an emotional tale of a hunter and his dog as they hunt for a legendary duck. Only the dog, man’s best friend, is a complete asshole and laughs at the hunter every time he misses. What a prick. Guaranteed Academy Award winning material right here.

So what other games would make for awesome movies? Or should Hollywood just leave the video game genre alone? Let me hear your thoughts!

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed has a lot to live up to. The hype generated by the early tech demos and then its impressive trailers has been enormous. But hype is a double edged sword. While it serves the purpose of exciting fans into anticipating its release, it also considerably raises the expectations set for the game. But does Lucas Art’s latest Star Wars title justify the hype, or is this another title doomed to disappoint its fans?

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a third person action game that has you playing as Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, who is tasked with carrying out his dark master’s bidding. Over the course of the game, you will travel a variety of different worlds from Raxus Prime to the Death Star, encounter characters that will be instantly recognizable to fans of the Star Wars universe, and hack and slash your way through tons of enemies while mastering the powers of the dark side.

The combat, obviously, is the most integral part of the game. Most of the time you’re reliant on your lightsaber to murder your way through legions of stormtroopers and aliens, but an important tool of the Jedi is the force. Starkiller can use force push to shove enemies off of cliffs or push in doors, force throw to hurl around enemies like rag dolls, or even force lightening to electrocute your foes. As you decimate whoever stands in your way, you earn experience points which gradually accumulate to unlock even more powerful attacks.

While combat is an important part The Force Unleashed, tragically it is also one of the weaker aspects of the game as well. The enemy AI does do an impressive job of displaying the new euphoria engine, but unfortunately, the implementation of this technology feels more like an aesthetic touch than any actual improvement in the game play department.

The generic grunts serve little more purpose than cannon fodder for you to earn experience and health. You do feel like a complete badass hurtling their bodies into walls, but after the two hundredth time or so, some of the novelty begins to wear off. Instead of something fun to look forward to, fighting can feel more like a chore at times. You can’t skip over them without dying, but at the same time, you may gradually begin to tire of killing the same enemy over and over again.

Oddly enough, almost as if to rectify this glaring problem, the developers toss a myriad of enemies who are immune to your force attacks. What this means is that you can’t use the force to toss them off the nearest cliff. I can only assume that this was implemented to add variety. However, while one might assume the developers were attempting to encourage gamers to experiment with new tactics, there’s really no creative means of killing them and end up just being artificially difficult to defeat. They establish a division between easy enemies and hard to kill enemies, and far from creating a balanced game play experience, they serve to only frustrate and annoy.

My final complaints about the game play are the bosses and the quick-time sequences. The boss fights don’t feel very satisfying. Whether dueling with a rival Jedi or taking down an AT-ST, you never quite feel like you have actually accomplished anything once you emerge victorious. And the quick time sequences? Enough already. They are already the biggest cliché in gaming, and it is tragic that The Force Unleashed felt the unfortunate need to follow this awful trend.

One thing that The Force Unleashed does do correctly is its story. Acknowledged by George Lucas as an official part of the Star Wars canon, The Force Unleashed tells a genuinely compelling and complex narrative that ties in well with the rest of the Star Wars universe. Some of the more hardcore fans will be skeptical about some of plot elements that radically alter the Star Wars lore and, admittedly, there are times when the story tries a little too hard to establish itself as a significant part of the canonical time line. Still, The Force Unleashed is definitely considerably better than some of the other stuff by George Lucas.

Midi-Chlorians? Jar-Jar Binks? Jengo Fett? I don’t like sand? Are you serious, Lucas?

Whether you’re a fan or not of the changes that The Force Unleashed make to the official Star Wars storyline, the game’s story definitely serves its purpose. It fills in some of the gaps in between Episodes III and IV, and it gives gamers an incentive to keep playing.

Graphically the game looks great –from the character models to the effects to the level design to the cut scenes; being a badass Jedi has never looked better. The soundtrack adds that needed atmosphere to your stormtrooper murdering escapades, and its voice acting (which stars Sam Witwer as Starkiller and Nathalie Cox as Juno Eclipse) is also impressive and well casted.

I loath to condemn The Force Unleashed for its myriad of game play flaws, but simultaneously hesitant to give it praises either. The Force Unleashed is not the Jedi Knight III that many were hoping for -it lacks the balance, the game play variety, or really the polish that a game like Jedi Knight II had.

Regardless, if you enjoy action adventure games, there’s still a whole lot of fun to be had. Though it has its problems and ultimately fails to live up to its hype, the story is great; the graphics are amazing; and the combat, though flawed, is still enjoyable.

With no multiplayer and few reasons to replay through the game again, The Force Unleashed may not be a must buy title, but I can confidentially still say that for ardent Star Wars fans, it is still a must play title.

I’m back in Chicago now and while it’s sort of nice to be back home (not really) it’s hard to believe that the wild days of playing the latest games, getting trashed in the coolest of bars, and meeting the most awesome of people are already over. The Penny-Arcade guys did a phenomenal job of creating PAX into the next E3 -a video game convention that is truly run by gamers for gamers. From the panels, to the awesome demonstrations, to the contests, to the concerts -everything about the convention was so impressive that I can barely wait until it rolls around next year. Congratulations, Penny-Arcade! You’ve taken a webcomic and somehow transformed it into one of the most widely attended (an estimated 60,000 gamers showed up for the festivities) and most kick-ass video game conventions ever created.

I Met Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh from the hit web series The Guild. They were awesome and super nice. Also briefly met the guys (and gal) from Screw Attack (Stuttering Craig is super cool) and got a quick picture of Adam Sessler who had been a panelist at PAX’s Video Games and Politics panel. Oh, and Jonathan Coulton! God, I love that guy! Oh, and cosplay and booth babes!

There’s not too much else to write, so I’ll just post pictures instead.