Top 10 Games Based On Movies

Dune

Developer: Cryo Interactive
Platform: PC, Amiga, Sega CD
Year: 1992

Dune is a bit of an iffy title to include in this list admittedly because it isn’t strictly based on the film and more closely follows the novel which was also made into a film...but whatever, it’s still a great game. It’s a lot closer to the plot of either Frank Herbert’s story or David Lynch’s film than Dune II: Battle for Arrakis at least.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, which is the only place where the valuable space-bending spice melange can be found, players are dropped into the boots of Paul Artreides. House Artreides has come to manage Arrakis and is completely unaware that it’s being plotted against by both the rival House Harkonnen and the Emperor of the Universe.

In gameplay terms Dune is a unique mix of adventure game and RTS conventions, with the start of the game focusing on the former and the closing acts moving towards the latter. As the story opens, Paul explores areas surrounding the palace, getting slowly introduced to groups of the Fremen who are native to the hostile planet and acting as an ambassador for his family. As the gameplay goes on though more and more elements of economic management and battle planning start to enter into the game and before you know it you’ll be launching raids, trading with smugglers and negotiating tribute with the Emperor.


Judged on its own merits Dune may not seem a stand-out title, but it’s worth comparing it to virtually every other attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s epic series to another medium. Films, TV shows, spin-off books and a glut of other games; none of them have as close to realising the world of Dune as this has.

Blade Runner

Developer: Westwood Studios
Platform: PC exclusive
Year: 1997

Much like Dune, Blade Runner (which is based on Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is one of those much-loved franchises which has had difficult time of breaking into other mediums. While Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is undoubtedly a classic it’s schismed into so many different cuts and interpretations about whether or not the android-hunting Deckard is a replicant himself that the series has become strangely entangled in itself.

It’s probably for that reason that Westwood’s interpretation of the series starts afresh, with a new character. Players instead step into the shoes of Ray McCoy, a blade runner who’s assigned the case of hunting down a group of replicants who’ve come to the heavily polluted and grossly industrialised LA.

While some combat does creep into the game at certain points, Blade Runner is mostly a point and click adventure game set around the various crime scenes and interviews that McCoy has to cross-examine in order to track down his quarry.

Really though, the gameplay isn’t the standout feature of Blade Runner. It’s the mood, which is magnificently handled and presents the world for what it is – a dark, dirty and depressing mirror of modern life. Everything feels manufactured, false and shallow – but in a way that strengthens the game as a whole and makes it worth playing through again and again in order to reach each of the 13 different endings.