Great Film, Bad Game

Our look at lousy movie tie-ins continues. What other monstrosities has Hollywood spawned?

Napoleon Dynamite

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Gosh, they made a handheld game based on 2004's quirky cult-classic? Heck yes they did! Except unlike Pedro, it definitely wasn't a winner. Mysteriously released three years after the film, this collection of bland mini-games was as awkward as its eponymous star, but way less cool. The plot was dumb, the gags were recycled from the movie and the perplexing absence of audio or video ruined all the jokes. They didn't even let you chase down llamas as a Liger. Yeah, it's pretty much the worst Napoleon Dynamite thing ever.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

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With its sweeping, romantic plot, balletic choreography and revolutionary action sequences, Ang Lee's high-flying kung-fu epic seems like a video game no-brainer. And that's exactly the kind of effort Ubisoft put into this kick to the head of a game. Released three years after the film, it featured a relatively decent fighting system but forgot to include relatively interesting opponents. Instead, virtual Li Mu Bais hacked through thousands of incompetent, poorly-rendered dummies in the most undercooked martial arts experience since Gymkata.

The Great Escape

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We're not sure what's worse: Gotham Games' bizarre decision to craft an adventure game based on the greatest escape movie ever made some 40 years after it was culturally relevant, or the broken down, boring mess of a game itself. Wait, we just answered our own question. In the film, an all-star cast of super-cool POWs (including his highness Steve McQueen) create a brilliant, elaborate plan to bust out of a Nazi prison camp and flee Germany altogether. In the game, you sneak around in the dark looking for items, then sneak somewhere else, drop off the items, save your game, and sneak around some more in search of more items. For like, 10 hours. Not cool.

Enter The Matrix

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Atari chased the red pill with some Wachowski-flavored Kool-Aid when they agreed to pump out this buggy tie-in to The Matrix Reloaded. They certainly went big, creating a legitimate side story focusing on the exploits of secondary characters Niobe and Ghost in an effort to complement the plot of The Matrix Reloaded film. A noble concept, to be sure, but good ideas don't mean much when the gameplay sucks, the framerate stutters and all the really cool moves are handled by in-game FMV instead of the players. If this is reality, please plug us back into the machines, thanks.