Favorite licensed games?

[Tonberry]

What are your favourite licensed games, and with that I mean games that are based on, or tie-ins of, existing properties. I grew up in the early 2000s, where it seemed like every other game you got was a licensed game, and the quality could range from pretty bad to kind of great. What are your opinions on them? Any favourites?

Some of my favourites include:
The first two Harry Potter games (Mainly the adventure games on PS2, but the GBC versions were neat little JRPGs which was cool)
Simpsons: Hit & Run
Naruto: Rise of a Ninja (I didn't even like Naruto that much but it was so fun running around the world)
King Kong (which actually felt like a real big-budget game for its time)
LotR: The Two Towers
The Hobbit (The PS2 adventure game was sooo good)
Aladdin for the SNES

These kinds of games kinda died out once development costs became so high, and all it took was often just a mobile game tie-in if anything, but I bet lots of people have fond memories of games of this caliber. It felt like the experience from going to the cinema as a kid got a whole new dimension since you could play the stuff you watched in a way.

[Kane99]

Good question, I'd say probably the fist Batman game on the NES is one of my favorite licensed games out there, then again most Batman games are I'd say. Simpsons Hit and Run is great too, along with the many other Simpsons games out there, like Bart Vs the World. 

The Warriors was a really fun game too. Surprised they never remastered it or tried to remake it even. Telltales Walking Dead series is pretty decent as well. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch, but those are just some that I can remember off the top of my head. 

[Shagger]

I think it's important to define what a licence game is because games like the Batman Arkham series and the Spiderman games from Insomniac are NOT licence games in the traditional sense as they are not directly based upon a separate media. They are thier own works within that paricular franchise. 

 

The licence game has been in decline in favour of these what I call "franchise" games and I for one couldn't be happier. It's a good thing that game companies are taking games seriously enough than to expect success out of cash grabs based of flash-in-the-pan movies.

 

There has, obviously, been some good games to come out of licences though. I liked the Spiderman games that came out on the PS2 along with the Toby Maguire movies. I also enjoyed Alladin on the Megadrive/Genesis. Then there's the game that always comes up in these conversations, Goldeneye on the N64. A revolutionary game for it's time.

[killamch89]

1. Simpsons Hit and Run
2. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
3. The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
4. Ghost In The Shell: Standalone Complex
5. Spiderman 2
6. Star Wars Battlefront 1&2

[Empire]

I don't know if you'd call it a game, but Telltale's Game of Thrones is a fantastic extension of the plot. It really captures the tension and depth of the show perfectly.

The Walking Dead is good too, but the first few episodes tried too hard to work in point-and-click elements. It just didn't fit. They seemed to catch their head on that by the end of season 1, though. I haven't played s2 yet.

[killamch89]

14 hours ago, Empire said:

I don't know if you'd call it a game, but Telltale's Game of Thrones is a fantastic extension of the plot. It really captures the tension and depth of the show perfectly.

The Walking Dead is good too, but the first few episodes tried too hard to work in point-and-click elements. It just didn't fit. They seemed to catch their head on that by the end of season 1, though. I haven't played s2 yet.

I do think those are licensed from the original properties so it should count. On another note, I also had a couple more games I wanted to add to the list such as:

1. Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3. DBZ Budokai 1/2/3
4. DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2

[Tonberry]

23 hours ago, Empire said:

I don't know if you'd call it a game, but Telltale's Game of Thrones is a fantastic extension of the plot. It really captures the tension and depth of the show perfectly.

The Walking Dead is good too, but the first few episodes tried too hard to work in point-and-click elements. It just didn't fit. They seemed to catch their head on that by the end of season 1, though. I haven't played s2 yet.

I always wanted to try the GoT game since I got into the series really late (like last year), but hear it's kind of lost media now?

[Akun]

I don't think I've loved that many licensed games (liked them for a short period of time, sure, but not love them) because much like how mobile games are made because they're cheap and profitable, licensed games were made just for a quick cash-grab most of the time. However, there were exceptions.

South Park's two PC games were great fun to me, The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, but only because the original creators, Trey and Matt, were part of the creative process. I've always enjoyed South's Park's humor and superheroes, so TFBW pretty much combined the two (I still think TSoT is the superior game though).

I game Telltale's Games are technically licensed games, but other than The Walking Dead series, I don't think I've been a huge fan of their games or their inability to hide the illusion of choice when they tell you "your choices matter." Other games of similar ilk at least try to hide that illusion better by having three diverging paths at the very end of the game, for example; TWD2 has two choices at the end which don't play a huge role in TWD3. Mass Effect 3 ironically did the "carry your choices forward" far better than TWD in spite of its piss-poor tri-color ending. I know that's because ME3 is a AAA game, but maybe don't lie to your players that "your choices matter" when they don't matter that much in significant ways.

Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 though were big exceptions because Treyarch did a great job with them. They were easily as entertaining as Insomniac's Spider-Man, if not better in some aspects of the games (such as adding extra layer to the plot of the films we never thought about before).