Licensed Games Don't Suck

The Nicktoons Unite series is always of a low quality, but surprisingly there was a gem in the most unlikely place.

The GBA version of Battle for Volcano Island is great. It's a 2D platformer made by Halfbrick (an Australian developer that made stuff like Fruit Ninja) and you have four characters (SpongeBob, Danny, Timmy and Patrick), and each has two abilities that will help you progress. For example, Danny can go intangible, which let's him go through purple blocks and stand on green ones, and this is used for some pretty tricky jumping puzzles later in the game. Timmy's ability (launching off rings to get airtime) is also pretty fun. There are bonus Nintendo Hard levels, and getting 100% completion is quite challenging. It also has great music.

Just goes to show you should never dismiss the handheld versions of a multi-console game.

edited 3rd Jun '13 2:36:44 AM by MagcargoMan

That was one hell of a bump!

That said, I skimmed the thread, and I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the licensed games for the latter two Lord of the Rings Films. Or Peter Jackson's King Kong.

All were very good.

Posts 5 & 7.

Probably a big example is Darkwing Duck. The video game itself had excellent gameplay.

I've noticed that most Disney games are fairly good anyway. I obviously don't mean Kingdom Hearts for the purpose of this topic(not saying it's bad, of course).

Even the Beauty and the Beast game, which was fairly hard, was pretty good, imo.

Oh. ...Right.

Well, again, I skimmed.

edited 3rd Jun '13 12:22:36 PM by Ryuhza

LOTR 3 was balls-out awesome.

Spiderman 2 was pretty good, and I loved The Haunted Mansion videogame.

Now that one was a pretty good game on its own merits.

I liked the LEGO licensed games. Well, the Star Wars ones, anyway.

I'm addicted to the Lego games. I swear to Sobek, LEGO games are crack for gamers. They're founded on two basic principles: destroy things, then collect things.

This very simple formula distills the whole of gaming to its barest essence and gives it to you, ready and available to be injected into your body however you so choose. In Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Batman, and other delightful flavors!

edited 3rd Jun '13 1:58:20 PM by TobiasDrake

My little brother likes all of them, specially LEGO Batman 2.

The simplicity certainly helps.

@LOTR games: I remember Battle For Middle Earth being quite fun too.

edited 3rd Jun '13 2:03:02 PM by Naspah

Well, there's Lego games as is(which are either a specific World-Building game, or based upon the regular Legos, I.E. Rock Raiders or whatever), then there's the Lego "Licensed games" like Lego Spider Man, etc.

So, 3 variations. They're all pretty good, imo.

Three Looney Tunes games for the Playstation One and PC come to mind: Sheep Raider, starring Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog; Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time; and its successor, Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but The Bourne Conspiracy was an awesome game that I replayed over and over. Also Iron Man 1 I thought was pretty decent.

There's a trope for this now, incidentally.

Dunno if there was back in 2011 or not, but there is now, anyway.

Irene, you can't mention Darkwing Duck without mentioning Duck Tales. That game had badass music...

I said Disney games in general too. It's covered. I never owned that game, and barely played it. So I don't have a huge opinion on its quality.

Soooo... I'll only post of the one I remember best.

In case nobody said it yet... Star Wars Episode I Racer, dammit.

(Why the red link? ...I'm sure I linked the right article)

edited 3rd Jun '13 6:52:37 PM by NEO

You forgot the Video Game namespace.

I'm seconding Racer. That one was an awesome game.

I'm a fan of the Mickey and Donald games on Sega consoles: Castle, Land and World of Illusion (Legend is so-so); Quackshot, Lucky Dime Caper and Maui Mallard (Deep Duck Trouble is average).

The SNES has a game for each of them that's exclusive to Japan. The Magical Hat Donald game isn't too great, but holy slot car racing, that soundtrack.

The console version of Harry Potterandthe Prisonerof Azkaban and the GBC version of Harry Potterandthe Philosophers Stone were both good games.

Po A actually did the teammate thing down well, allowing you to switch between Harry, Hermione, and Ron in order to solve puzzles, and many of the side quests were well done.

PS was a very standard turned-based RPG, but was still very difficult even if you knew what you were doing.

edited 3rd Jun '13 9:47:18 PM by tclittle

The Chamber of Secrets GBA game was a great RPG. Like really good.

Man, I didn't even notice that the thread was dead for over a year and a half.

Woah.

edited 4th Jun '13 7:17:57 AM by MagcargoMan

The GBA version of Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a fun strategy game. There are campaigns for good and evil, you can choose one of three leaders who'll be in every battle (Good gets Aragorn, Gandalf and Elrond. Evil gets Saruman, the Witch King and the Mouth of Sauron) and most battles let choose from a selection of other heroes, usually two. There are a number of different battles from the books and films, and even a couple What If? scenarios. You must complete different objectives in each battle while battling the opposing army, and your heroes dictate how many soldiers you can move per turn.

I like the Disney Tarzan game on PS One as well. It's an admittedly basic platformer, but it's fun, charming and reasonably challenging. Besides, any game in which BRIAN BLESSED is the Game-Over Man deserves your attention.

I also like Star Wars Battlefront, Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi, the LEGO games and Kingdom Hearts, but they've come up already, so I won't elaborate on them again since other people have already done so.

Star Wars Battlefront 2(pretty obvious)

Lord of the Rings conquest(granted it was a bit of a dissapointment compared to SW Bf2)

One piece: Pirate Warriors 2(this game is awesome)

I liked the Godfather game. The one based on the second movie was absolute shit, though.