The Brands of Fate

Recent history proves it: games based on movies, comics, and TV can rock. We’ve got ideas for five more that are predestined to be massive hits.

Soured on licensed games? Think movie tie-ins are a guaranteed suck? You’re wrong…and we’ve got Ghostbusters, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena to prove it. All three of these recent games packed an interactive experience that rivaled — and in those last two examples, kicked the holy hell out of — what we saw on the big screen.

With fresh evidence that licensed games can work, we want more of ’em! To that end, we put our industrious heads together and concocted blueprints for five more incredibly cool tie-ins. All we need now is some publishers to pony up the dough!

Shaun of the Dead: The Game

Snapshot Pitch: Action! Stealth! Uh, Friendship! Experience terror, drama, and romance in the middle of the zombie apocalypse!

Features: Story mode allows you to be one of four characters — main hero Shaun, best friend Ed, girlfriend Liz, or Liz’s flatmate Dianne — and play through a pioneering multi-angled storyline with Shaun’s stepdad, mother, and Liz’s other fl atmate, David. (Hint: None of the multi-angles end well, really.) Enjoy four-player co-op through an action-focused campaign that moves from Liz’s apartment complex to the Winchester pub for the ultimate zombie showdown fueled by incomprehensible odds and limited ammo. Experience breakneck driving sequences with one player driving a car through hordes of zombies, while up to three friends battle your undead stepdad in the backseat! Sneak through labyrinthine backyards to reach safety while avoiding any infectious “surprises”! And then the mini-games! Test your accuracy in a vinyl-throwing shooting gallery to access new music tracks (Prince! New Order! Sade!)! Play as zombified Ed in a special, unlockable epilogue featurette — or as the mysterious “girl in the garden” Mary for a lore-rich, fan-service prequel segment! (Hint: This doesn’t end well, either.)

Ideal Developer: Valve for humor, tech, and quality. There’s a PC mod for Left 4 Dead in the works called Left 4 Winchester; hire that team!

Superman: Son of Krypton

Snapshot Pitch: A Superman game that lets you travel the galaxy, using his amazing powers in extraordinary new places and fascinating new ways.

Features: On Xbox, Superman’s mainly been tethered to Metropolis — he’s been more overpowered beat cop protecting the Earth than an alien from the shattered planet Krypton. So why not expand his universe, letting him be a truly intergalactic hero and explore space? The flight dynamic would be similar to that in EA’s Superman Returns (it was the game’s best feature, after all), and you’d have adjustable speed. Earth could be his hub, but from there he’d be able to fl y all around the galaxy — hurling enemies into the sun; racing through comets and Saturn’s rings; battling spaceships; and best of all, landing on various planets, asteroids, and satellites and encountering new races and civilizations. With the latter, Superman would use his powers not just in combat, but also to assist populations (moving mountains, cooling planetary cores, rescuing ships from oceans, and more). You could even ape Superman: The Movie and have him fly around Earth to reverse time!

Ideal Developer: With Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Origins: Wolverine to their name, Raven Software clearly understands superhero games. Given proper time to build this open-world/flight-sim combo, they’d excel.

Battlestar Galactica

Snapshot Pitch: A realistic first-person space-combat game emulating the SCI FI series’ (not the original show’s!) awesome space battles, using real-world physics to dramatic effect.

Features: The series is uncompromising and gritty; the game should reflect the same attitude in its simulation-focused design. This game would be the polar opposite of XBLA’s arcadey space shooters, giving Galactica fans and lovers of “hard” sci-fi authentic interstellar combat. A Crackdown-style tube sequence would fling your fighter into space; once there, you’d be struck by its cold, harsh silence (punctuated by music and intership communications, of course). As one fighter in a large squadron, you’d have the constant sense of surrounding allies ready to aid you in massive dogfights and exploratory missions. Zero gravity and real-space physics — e.g., exerting force in one direction to move in another — would challenge you to think like a real pilot, and 360-degree engines would let you fly in (and attack from) any direction. For added coolness, you could even have pilots eject into space, then figure out how to avoid dying in the inky void.

Ideal Developer: Some of the folks who worked on epic PC space shooter FreeSpace 2 are still at Volition, so they’d be an inspired choice. Lawrence Holland’s Totally Games (X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter) would also be a safe bet.

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