Films from Games - Always Bad?

I have often thought when playing some new game that this would make an awesome film. Well it seems that those in Hollywood agree, with the announcement from Ubisoft that they are releasing a film version of Splinter Cell staring Tom Hardy as the lead character Sam Fisher. Not only Splinter Cell is getting the silver screen treatment as we can also look forward to an Assassins Creed film with Michael Fassbender starring. We can look forward to both hopefully reaching our screens in 2013.

However exciting and promising news this is for fans of the games who have for years called out for film adaptations, we must remember that this isnt the film industries first foray into film adaptations of games. i mean who doesn't wish they hadn't bothered with the Prince of Persia film! It was about as close to a worthy homage to the original game, as a punch in the face is to a handshake! We can also look at adaptations of board games, with the critically slated Battleships (2012).

Either way we can just only hope that the makers of these films have learnt from the lessons of their predecessors, and we shall judge them on their own merits when they are released.  

Nosh, Signing Out.

Co-Op? Co-Not!

I don’t know if you haven’t noticed, but multiplayer games are a big thing at Hardly HQ. In the world of Youtube it’s difficult to differentiate yourselves from other channels, and we’ve always felt that creating content as a group, and the different and unique dynamics that brings, goes a long way toward making our videos a worthwhile watch. The problem I have though, is that when you play a game in multiplayer, something is inevitably lost from the experience when compared to the singleplayer experience.

Let me break down my criticism into three separate categories, asymmetrical experiences, satellite experiences, and the BFF complex. Now I know you’re probably scratching your head right now, but bear with me, I’m about to explain what the criticisms are, provide examples, and show why I think it doesn’t have to be this way, and how such problems can be overcome. So strap yourselves in, cos this mudafucka’s about to get existential.

The Cylons are here!

For as long as there have been video games and consoles there has been a driving force in  new games to be increasingly more realistic, both in the quality of the worlds the characters inhabit but also the characters themselves. With each successive generation of consoles developers have been given greater and greater resources to create the nirvana of the real world perfectly represented in a game. This can be seen to be reaching dizzying new heights in photorealism in such games as Crysis 3 for spectacular visual surroundings and physics, or LA Noire for facial movement realism to the point where you can tell when a character you’re interacting with is lying to you. This realism of facial expression has been taken to a new level surpassing even that of LA Noire, this has been done by using in depth facial motion capture, as can be seen in the video below.