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Craig Beers
PC Video Editor

Now Playing: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX)
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Half-Baked, the Video Game?

"This game puts you in the thick of battle." That's the quote on the box of Gods and Generals, the computer game from Ronald P. Maxwell, the director of the Gods and Generals movie. I have to ask: Did he even play this game? It has the lowest score that GameSpot has ever awarded, and he has his seal of approval right there on the box for the world to see. I guess he's two for two since his movie has gotten poor reviews as well. But the damage has already been done: People who somehow actually enjoyed the movie will buy it because they'll see his endorsement on it. (Hopefully the people who read the novel will avoid both.)

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The worst game ever made?
It's not hard to see that the game was developed as a marketing tool. I certainly can't fault some ad executive who thought of the idea. I think it's a great idea to have simultaneous releases of related media. They complement each other and help boost overall sales of each product. As we've seen with Star Wars merchandise, consumers have the desire to experience a story's universe beyond the initial encounter. The only problem is that the execution of transmedia products is poor in most cases. Games based on other forms of media are obviously something that consumers want, so why do publishers unleash half-assed products on the consumer?

I completely understand that the cost of developing a game like Gods and Generals is minimal, while sales will be relatively high because of the name. For instance, Survivor was released in 2001 to catch the buzz about the reality-TV show. That game was garbage, yet it was released on store shelves and sold fairly well, even though it seemed like the game was rushed to store shelves so that it could be ready for the holiday season.

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A game that was destined to be bad.
Now, one would think that these bad games would reflect poorly on the publisher for future titles. But I don't think that's the case. No one reading this article is going to get Gods and Generals, nor would you even think much about it after seeing the score we gave it. So there's no loss there either.

Is this what we are doomed to suffer as gamers? There was obviously some thought put into releasing Gods and Generals the game along with the movie. But the movie runs for 220 minutes--obviously quite a bit of money was sunk into its production. So why not try to make the game at least worthwhile? Hopefully this trend will end soon with the upcoming Matrix games, set to coincide with the movies. I actually have hopes that those games can be good, or at least will sell even if they're not.

I guess we gamers aren't complete victims though. We have unleashed our fair share of retaliatory strikes against the movie industry. I am ashamed about the Wing Commander and Street Fighter movies, to name a couple. Imagine poor Raul Julia, his last claim to fame being M. Bison in that thing they call a movie. But at least the movie industry tries by putting "good" actors in them. We'll see how the MechWarrior movie turns out. Hey, at least it'll be better than Robot Jox.

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