User blog:The Pikey/About the games...

The main problem I really have about the games of the series isn't the PS2 style graphics or the sheer amount of errors they have, it's really the fact that the games themselves are way too underwhelming to be enjoyable.

I'm well aware that there's a target audience argument here but that doesn't excuse the laziness and general lack of thought that went into them, primarily I'm talking about the main games 'based' on the film, mobile games can get away here since they're mobile games. With the film games, there's more than enough to work with that's already been established in the franchise for any video game developer to come up with something playable and generally just worth the time put into it. The films themselves have a very clear story, a story that really shouldn't be too difficult to translate into a game, so the fact that the games end up being minigame fests with poor controls and numerous other flaws is even more disappointing. Even the second film's game is bad, gameplay that you see on awful games like Superman 64 (flying through rings isn't exactly the first thing that comes to mind when thinking 'hmm, I wonder what game they could make this movie out of...').

It's definitely more than possible for developers to come up with something far better than what is seen in the games, I hate to bring up graphics in an argument like this, but it really shows the laziness involved here. You'd expect the graphics on PS2 or Xbox Original not the recent gen consoles. I wouldn't mind so much either if there wasn't this same cheap effort in every aspect of the game. It's a series that has a lot of potential to have a great game with story involved in, even if the story itself isn't complete, it's still a bad idea to waste what could be some well made, adventure-style games, it's been done in the past so why not this one?

When the last movie comes out, if they do decide to continue making the games, there's no reason why they can't take the opportunity to really use the whole set of films for the story. They haven't actually bothered with the story itself as of yet, so they wouldn't be rehashing anything, as long as the gameplay itself provides a good time, I couldn't care less about the PS2 graphics. Just get some people to really think about how to make the story interactive, it's really not difficult, the scenes themselves (except for the obvious 'moments' scenes) have such potential to be turned into a game. The only thing I really worry about if they do this, is that it will end up being a cutscene frenzy, or simply a bunch of RTEs, neither of which I'm asking for. Hiccup doesn't have to be with Toothless from the very start of the game, have them meet the way they do in the movie, you can have set-ups in a game and have it done well. Such a set-up wouldn't even prove a massive task since there's plenty of action/adventure moments before they meet, so it's not like the developers would have to compensate for any kind of prelude-filler.

Really, the minigames can be an alright thing, but in my opinion, sticking a bunch of cheapo minigames and grinding gameplay under a title of something with a brilliant story is even more disappointing than the game itself.