10 Obscure Video Game Movie Tie-Ins You Had No Idea Existed
Nothing says 'Jurassic Park' like a kung-fu kicking T-Rex.
The humble video game movie tie-in doesn't get a lot of respect; often with good reason. These games are usually churned out to cash in on a hot new movie, with little thought going into details like quality, presentation or playability. There have, of course, been notable exceptions like GoldenEye or The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay but the rule often holds true; anybody who’s played the Batman Forever game will know this.
They have such a bad rep, most fans tend to avoid them sight unseen, and even Marvel famously decided to ditch big-budget tie-ins altogether after the negative reviews for their Thor: God Of Thunder and Iron Man 2 games. So, it’s no surprise a lot of these games slip into obscurity, where even hardcore fans might not realise they exist.
Fascinating curios in their own way, especially when the designers had to bend over backwards to make something out of a decidedly non game-friendly movie, you might be better off not knowing they ever happened, but let's find out...
10. Ju-On: The Grudge
The Grudge was one of the movie's responsible for the J-horror craze, that reached its peak with the Sarah Michelle Gellar remake in 2004. The first couple of entries were genuinely tense and creepy, but after milking something close to ten movies out of the thin idea of random people walking around a haunted house and meeting a ghost with a sore throat, it got old real quick.
Still, given the episodic nature of the franchise, there was the seed of a game idea in there, and if the developers could manage to import the tense atmosphere of the movies over it could have been great. Sadly they lost that battle and created what’s essentially a torch simulator for the Wii, where the player wonders aimlessly around inspired environments like an empty warehouse and an empty apartment building.
The flashlight you have drains batteries at a maddeningly fast pace, and while the game has a mildly creepy atmosphere and a few decent jump scares, overall it's really shoddy stuff.