PLAY
Post Script
Can’t beat the real thing
For a long time, licensed games were regarded as things to be treated with caution, if not outright derision. It’s a reputation that can be tracked back a long way, to the games-of-the-films of the 1980s; a time when developers had little chance of creating experiences that resembled their source material in any meaningful way, and publishers often cared more about a quick cash-in than a bona fide classic. That has changed – the sheer quantity of film- and TV-licensed games these days means there are probably more good ones out there than we tend to recall – but still, a quick rack of the brain only yields a handful of top-class results. There’s GoldenEye 007, of course, the Batman:
Arkham
games,
Spider-Man,
some of the many iterations of
Star Wars
perhaps, but after that we’re struggling to name genuine greats.