Ah, the licensed video game. Once a collection of underwhelming retellings of big-screen blockbusters, littered with haunting polygonal nightmares (Hagrid, that’s you) and aimless Atari attempts (yes, E.T., that’s you), we’ve seen an uptick in actually good adaptations in recent years, with the upcoming Terminator 2D: No Fate looking like a promising attempt at turning James Cameron’s classic into some enjoyable retro action. So, we thought we’d pick out the best of the bunch.
We do have a few little rules, though, that stop just any old film-adjacent game from making the list. They need to either be:
- A direct translation or adaptation of a feature film
- An official movie sequel or prequel.
- Or a game that attempts to continue the story or provide backstory and additional canonical lore.
So, for example, Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man is not eligible as it takes place in a Marvel universe separate from the movies and is much more rooted in the original comic books, but the PS2’s Spider-Man 2 would be allowed due to it being directly based on the Sam Raimi film of the same name. Make sense? I hope so. Let’s rank the top 10 best licensed games based on movies.
10. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Console launch games come with the power to stun thanks to the leap in technology they inherently are unlocked by. The Xbox 360’s Peter Jackson’s King Kong definitely benefited from this, as the Lord of the Rings’ director’s epic retelling of the classic monster movie made a huge splash at the dawn of gaming’s HD era. With Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil creator Michel Ancel helming it at Ubisoft Montpellier, King Kong felt more than a standard movie tie-in thanks to its many interesting and novel ideas. You had the freedom to explore its vast jungle spaces, which offered an unprecedented sense of cinematic immersion and was a breathtaking contrast against the previous generation’s more limiting, corridor-like spaces. King Kong not only ushered in a whole new generation of hardware but also a new way of thinking about how licensed games could be approached.
9. Scarface: The World is Yours
Scarface: The World is Yours has balls. Not only does a “Balls Meter” fill up as Tony Montana causes mayhem across an open-world ‘80s Miami, allowing for him to slow down time, enter first-person mode, and gain infinite ammo as he guns down as many gang rivals as possible, but it also has an audacity to position itself as a sequel to a film in which its protagonist dies at the end. In this alternative universe, Al Pacino’s antihero coke fiend survives the ambush at his mansion thanks to a certain little friend and escapes out of the back door, free to continue building his drug-running empire. Yes, it’s largely a GTA-clone, as was commonplace in the era — see the also actually quite good The Godfather adaptation for further evidence — but its wild concept alone is enough for it to deserve a place on this list.
8. Rockstar’s The Warriors
In terms of creating immersive worlds and capturing a tone, not many do it quite like Rockstar. The Warriors comes from an era when we’d get more than one game a decade from the developer, and sometimes multiple in one year. A much smaller-scale project than the likes of GTA: San Andreas or Vice City, The Warriors acts as both a prequel and a retelling of the cult ‘70s thriller of the same name, focusing on the titular New York gang. Taking the form of a beat ’em up, it successfully drenches you in the seedy underworld alleyways that its characters inhabit, as Rockstar once again displayed their world-class world-building credentials. And that grimy tone is what The Warriors achieves most successfully, making it an adaptation that shouldn’t be overlooked, even when compared to the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption studio’s other headline-stealing projects.
7. Mad Max
Avalanche Studios’ Mad Max is the perfect example of taking the essence of a film series and turning that into the driving force behind a video game adaptation. In this case, it’s the exhilarating car combat witnessed all the way back in the original 1979 movie, through Road Warrior, and into Fury Road’s landmark action. When Max is on foot in the 2015 game, it’s perfectly good as it apes the successful melee formula concocted by Warner Bros. stablemate Rocksteady for its Batman Arkham series, but it’s when the Australian drifter gets those hands out of raiders’ jawbones and behind the wheel of his iconic Interceptor that it really comes to life. Now a cult favourite, much like the original film that inspires it, Mad Max is one of a kind and a fantastic translation of George Miller’s vision in video game form.
6. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Years before the Rocksteady Batman: Arkham and Insomniac Marvel’s Spider-Man games, the prospect of a successful comic book game was bleak. Even rarer was the thought of a genuinely fun movie tie-in. Treyarch’s Spider-Man 2, based on the Sam Raimi film of the same name, flew in the face of both those ideas. An incredibly detailed New York City (for the time, at least) felt like a revelation to swing around in, and Peter Parker’s web-slinging provided a whole new way to explore the sort of 3D open world that the PS2’s Grand Theft Auto games had pioneered. In a legitimately impressive technical revelation, Treyarch’s Spidey actually attached his webs to buildings rather than empty skyboxes. Flying between skyscrapers and thumping petty criminals was a thrilling sensation back in 2004, and, while it has since been far eclipsed by more modern Peter Parker and Miles Morales adventures, it certainly paved the way for those to exist.
5. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
It’s difficult to think of a movie series that’s had more games to its name than Star Wars. Classics such as TIE Fighter and Rogue Leader were contenders for this pick, but we just think there’s nothing like the fulfillment of the Force fantasy that is delivered by Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Bridging the gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, this 2023 action-adventure is part of the official canon, with references to Order 66 and clashes with Darth Vader fuelling Cal Kestis’ story, but with an originality that doesn’t just lean on Star Wars cliches. An improvement in pretty much every way over its predecessor, Fallen Order, it’s an easy pick for our representative of the most famous of film universes.
4. GoldenEye 007
It may not be the best to play now, but there’s just no denying the impact that GoldenEye 007 had when it arrived in 1997 on the Nintendo 64. Perfect Dark, shortly after, would go on to expand on the ideas established in its campaign, and games like TimeSplitters would borrow from its revolutionary approach to FPS multiplayer, making it so much more than just a movie adaptation. Yes, it featured a whole host of famous James Bond heroes and villains — including a truly broken Oddjob, who takes the term “sharply dressed” to its extreme —- and successfully captured the globetrotting exploits of 007 as much as a console with the limited power of the N64 could at the time, but it also shaped the next three decades of online shooters. This makes it so much more than just a movie tie-in, and something developer Rare should never be forgotten for achieving.
3. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
A video game prequel to the 2000 Vin Diesel vehicle, Pitch Black, has no right to be as good as The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, yet here we are. Taking a heap of Half-Life campaign design and a healthy dose of Thief-like stealth, the Swedish Starbreeze Studios and Vin Diesel’s own Tigon Studios transformed a perfectly decent film series into a genuinely great video game, and one that many believe surpasses its source material. Its smart level design is enhanced by intelligent translations of Riddick’s abilities from the film, such as his trademark “eyeshine”, which lets you see in the dark, and a healthy amount of improvised blunt and sharp weaponry that fits perfectly with the movie’s grimy aesthetic. The plot’s premise — a prison escape — is fundamentally cinematic, but it’s the ways in which Butcher Bay asks you to play intelligently in its world that pushes it beyond the big screen and into a truly great game.
2. Alien Isolation
The original Alien film from 1979 is a haunted house movie in space, with lone survivor of the Nostromo, Ripley, aiming to survive its dark corridors and the roaming Xenomorph threat until the credits hit. As such, it would become a natural inspiration for many survival horror greats, from Dead Space’s infested spaceship, to SOMA’s unnerving futurism, and, of course, Resident Evil 2’s stalking Mr X threat. So, naturally, when the time came for yet another Alien game to be made, survival horror seemed a logical choice for developer Creative Assembly, who would be the next in a long line to take up the challenge of translating the unique atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s original film.
What the studio made was beyond what could have been expected, as it evolved the idea of RE 2’s Tyrant into an ever-present danger that scuttled along the map’s sprawling web of vents. The Xenomorph, and the tech powering it, are the jewel at the centre of Isolation’s crown, and are what make it such a faithful recreation of Alien. By stepping into her daughter’s shoes and sneaking around the Sevastopol, you get as close a feeling as to what it would’ve been like to be Ripley and walk those Nostromo hallways yourself. It may not quite make the number one spot on our list, but it is the entry that most successfully captures the overall tone of its source material, embracing its terror to astonishing effect.
1. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
We wouldn’t have the likes of Tomb Raider or Uncharted without Indiana Jones, and in 2024, the king came back to claim his throne. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle took everything that made the original trilogy of Steven Spielberg films so special and managed to translate it into a lovingly designed video game from Wolfenstein developer MachineGames — perhaps not so coincidentally, a studio formed by former Escape from Butcher Bay developers. Not only is The Great Circle a fantastic, stealthy, puzzle-filled action-adventure that really places an emphasis on the adventure part, but it borrows all of the archaeological intrigue and, crucially, humour that makes the likes of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade so special. So much, in fact, that the story told here would slot in nicely between them and act as a superior third of that trilogy than Temple of Doom ever did.
Throw in a fantastic pitch-perfect Harrison Ford impression from Troy Baker, a suitably swarmy performance from Marios Gavrilis for the villainous Emmerich Voss, and a healthy amount of Nazi punching, whipping, and shovel-smacking, and you’ve got all of the ingredients you need. But it’s so much more than just a playable film, instead grounding itself in flexible immersive-sim-esque gameplay systems that emphasise using brain over brawn. Violence is rarely considered a first option, and gained knowledge is always a much sharper weapon. It makes for a truly fantastic game in its own right, but one that is as referential as it is transformative, and a true-to-life version of what the Indiana Jones character is — a doctor, not a soldier. The Great Circle is as thought-out a licensed game based on a movie as you could wish for, and a perfect fit for the top of our list.
And those are our picks for the best games based on movies. What game that you love didn’t make the cut? Let us know in the comments! And for more licensed games, check out our list of the best Marvel games of all time.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
