10 Movies That Directly Influenced Gaming
1. Aliens
Games Influenced: Doom, Halo, Gears Of War, System Shock, Metroid, Contra, all games with aliens, space marines and futuristic horror.
No film has truly inspired gaming more than Aliens. The H.R Giger designed environments and terrifying protagonists were perfect for changing up the usual grass level/castle level/future levels that players had grown accustomed to, introducing nightmarish biological and insect-like creations adorned by game worlds and game villains alike.
The industrial hallways in Doom, the generic future marine look in Gears Of War, the ammo counter on the AR’s in Halo, and the Xenomorphs in, well, Xenomorph. Even Ripley herself was apparently the inspiration for Metroid’s Samus Aran.
The influence continues in games you probably wouldn't even associate with such horrors, like Echo The Dolphin's Vortex Queen who has obvious, well, echos of the grotesque movie antagonists.
System Shock, Dead Space, Contra, Prey, and many, many more owe a debt to James Cameron’s sequel. So bless you, Aliens, for creating pretty much every sci-fi horror and gun blasting action moment we have ever played.
But also screw you for Alien 3 & 4, AVP 1 & 2, Prometheus, Covenant, and Colonel Marines. Game over man, game over.