Game For An Idea

I had the misfortune the other week to watch the Max Payne film, living out a peculiar kind of self-masochism by seeing it out till the end. For those who don’t know, it was originally a video game from a decade ago that wasn't too bad. Though the storyline was clichéd beyond belief at times (man loses wife and child, goes mad, discovers huge conspiracy, goes madder still) the gunplay was fun.

On film, however, it doesn't work. You feel detached from the action and matters aren't helped by the fact that Mark Wahlberg isn't really much of an actor. It’s not the first to fall flat either. Quite how anyone thought Super Mario Bros would work as a film is beyond my ken and the end result would suggest everyone involved was equally confused. Same goes for the Street Fighter effort, which wasn't helped by having actors of the pedigree of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue trying to lift it out of the mire – though I remember seeing an Anime version that took a totally different approach to much more impressive returns.

As an action film, Hitman works fairly well. From the perspective of someone who loved the games, it doesn't, as we despair that Agent 47 engages in shoot outs rather than use stealth. And herein lies the rub: gamers dismiss the film as crap because it’s not like the source material, everyone else has no emotional connection with the characters. No matter – as long as video games are making money, there will always be some lazy arse in the film industry with no decent original ideas who’ll snap up the rights. But wither the Metal Gear game?

From the opposite angle, the film-to-game route is nearly as old as video games themselves. Indeed, when I got my first computer, a much-beloved Sinclair +2 (128k of memory!), it came with a bundle of games called “Screen Heroes”, which was actually mainly dubious versions of TV shows: Miami Vice, Street Hawk and Knight Rider, I recall. But alongside the legendary Daley Thompson’s Super Test and the most baffling game of all time, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, was an incredibly average fighting game built around the-then contemporary Highlander film.

Mercifully, the limits of technology spared us the paradox of a Frenchman playing a Scotsman and a Scotsman playing a Spaniard and instead offered the chance to shuffle around in 2D trying to cut some guy’s head off. But this and others like it set the tone of buying up the license to a current hit film and slapping any old tosh out to try and cash in. One somewhat desperate example was a game for Moore-era Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me being put out over a decade after the fact. Maybe the rights were going for 20p and they needed a title for a mediocre shooter.

Around the end of the last decade, games seemed to be trying with all they had to actually be something they weren't. The term “interactive movie” was bandied around like Billy-o and the Wing Commander series (itself turned into a wretched film) was a forerunner to this. Entering the world in the early 90s, it gave us very enjoyable space shooters with (for the time) a strong storyline and characters. The first two instalments rank up there with some of the best gaming experiences I've had, and then number III came along. Mark Hammill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies and Thomas F Wilson (Biff to you) stood in front of a load of blue screen and tried to keep straight faces, seemingly swallowing up the entire budget in the process, judging by the quality of the actual parts where you had something to do.

Thankfully, we seem to have dropped that particular craze and settled instead for just using the voices of famous thespians, which seems to be a better way of working. Though the technology used in LA Noire, where the actor’s facial movements are recorded may yet have some legs, even if the expressions used by someone who is lying don’t need the skills of Derren Brown to work out. More on that title when I complete it.

To conclude: games are games, films are films, and let’s not try to get them all mixed up. Hollywood, use your noggins and come up with new concepts. That said, I happen to know of one obscure game from the early 90s that I reckon could make for a great film. If any big shot producers want to throw me fifty grand, I reckon I could knock out a script in a couple of months…