Ironically enough, there was a film released this past year that DID successfully play with the visual language of game play but in a cinematic form. This film deserves credit for being one of the best examples of someone re-purposing the rhythms of video games into movies.That film was Chronicle. Chronicle is a much, much better video game movie than pretty much any real video game movie. While Chronicle wasnt based off of a video game, the found footage aesthetic perfectly captured the look and feel of a video game. And more than that, the films structure very much recalled the gradual escalation of video game difficulty curves. Three teenagers get superpowers. Each one takes a turn holding the camera (becoming the viewer/controller/gamer) and experimenting with said powers, using their powers in an open-world setting. Each teen develops a specialty. They then continue to train, becoming more and more powerful and passing a series of challenges and actions that put their powers to the test. Once completed, they are even more powerful than before (leveling up). Finally, once all the missions and tasks have been completed, theres a massive fight between the hero and Big Bad that climaxes the story. After the fight, a brief postscript reveals the hero embarking on a new mission. Another film that recreated the experience of gaming was Cloverfield. Theres a set-up establishing all of your teammates. Then the monster shows up. And the team is given a mission. And from there Cloverfield becomes a series of levels followed by calm moments for exposition, followed by a next level. Characters get trapped between army and the monster. Then they sit in the subway and discuss whats happened to them. Then theres a subway monster chase level. Then theres another scene of the characters discussing what has happened. And on and on. Hell, Cloverfield even tips its hat to the notion of re-spawning. At one point the person holding the camera dies, but then another character picks it up and continues. What these films, and other good found footage films, do is successfully merge the needs of one genre with the visual style of another. The characters are developed and drive the action forward, but the paths they take are built around similar patterns of video games. Click "next" below for the final part, "Can Video Game Movies Work";