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Great comics beget bad movies which beget even worse games? Where did it all go wrong? Ishaan examines the fall of comic book games.

The comic industry has come a long way since its supposed "Golden Age" during the 1930's and 40's. Whereas once upon a time, comics sported relatively simple art, flat colors and were drawn on cheap paper, they are now a more mainstream form of entertainment boasting a variety of art styles ranging from stylized to life-like, printed on glossy sheets of paper with fancy, colorful covers and are arguably even written better now - but let's leave that debate alone for the sake of my personal safety!

At the very least, it's safe to say that comics are more complex now. Not necessarily in terms of plot, but in the way of character development, expressiveness, thought processes etc. Gone are the days when simply killing off a character was considered risky. Now you have them turning against their entire country and rebelling against the same government they've been trying to protect for half their lives while dealing with shaky marriages and pregnancies. And that's just one example.

However, comics aren't the only medium of entertainment that have come a long way since the days of old. The game industry has made several advances over the years as well, as is apparent.

As a result, games based upon comic books have also progressed alongside comics, although; in different ways than one would expect. The evolution of comic-based games has, sadly enough, been aesthetic for the most part. While comics have become increasingly complex over the years in terms of dialogue, presentation and development, comic-based games seem to be stuck at the same point they were years ago.

Let's not kid ourselves. Licensed games make a ton of money regardless of how good or bad they may be. Spider-Man 3 sucked harder than a black hole, but it still sold reasonably well. Perhaps this is the reason comic-based games aren't evolving nearly as fast as they need to - because there's nothing to encourage developers to evolve them beyond their current state.

The trend of games based on the Marvel universe, in particular, has been around for a fairly long time. It started with games like Spider-Man & the X-Men in: Arcade's Revenge on the SNES and Genesis. While that game was a fairly simple side-scrolling platformer, future games like Separation Anxiety and X-Men 2: Clone Wars improved upon the formula in small ways until finally, Capcom decided to take the effort in an entirely different direction with the release of X-Men: Children of the Atom.

Children of the Atom was the first in a series of many fighting games based on the Marvel characters. The game featured a deep, complex and tough to master combat system, which relied on a cast of extremely well-balanced and varied characters to show off its highly polished gameplay mechanics. It was succeeded by Marvel Super Heroes (still one of the best arcade games ever in my opinion), X-Men vs Streetfighter, Marvel vs Capcom and other iterations that altered the formula slightly, but never significantly.

Although X-Men: Mutant Academy 1 & 2 were good games, they could never really hope to compete with Capcom's beast of a franchise. It wasn't until Activision released Spider-Man on the PlayStation One that a superhero game was realized in full 3D with a cohesive plot and a fair amount of replay value backing it. While Spider-Man wasn't perfect, it was a very good start and laid the framework for future games like the Spider-Man: The Movie videogame series.

However, once again, these games were relatively simple in terms of writing, plot presentation and twists. In fact, there were no plot twists to speak of. While Spider-Man relied on solid gameplay and a healthy dose of fan service, the movie-based games tried expanding on the plot of the movie, which - needless to say - didn't work very well.

Then, along came games like Fantastic Four, X-Men: The Official Game, Marvel: Nemesis and Ghost Rider that have sent the entire concept of comic book games to hell. I swear to God, if I have to put up with one... just one more crappy game based in the Marvel universe (not that DC is doing any better with Superman and Batman), I will kill someone. I hear Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer is pretty shitty, so that can't be helped.

But I'm not being fair. Among the plethora of crappy superhero games, there have been some good ones of late, namely; X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. These three games not only took the comic book superheros in a completely new direction in terms of gameplay, they also set the standard for future games based in the same universe and had reasonably good plots backing up their gameplay.

However, "reasonably good" just doesn't cut it anymore. In a day and age where Marvel is arguably the market leader in the comic industry and is taking so many risks, dealing with so many different characters and creating so many opportunities for new stories to be told, it is practically unforgivable to create games based in the Marvel universe without good, deep writing.

Couple this with the fact that Marvel is home to some of the best writers in the industry and it truly is a mind-boggling situation.

Really, what prevents anyone developing a Marvel game from asking Brian Bendis or Ed Brubaker or hell, even Joss Whedon to throw together a good script for it? You'd think Marvel would jump at the opportunity to attract a larger fanbase through videogames. Their comics are already littered with Xbox 360 game ads.

Why is it so impossible to create an epic superhero game with good character development, a well-written and well thought out plot, good music and great gameplay? All of these elements have been achieved separately in comics, movies and games respectively. Why can they not be brought together in one single game?

There is no lack of space constraints with the advent of Blu-ray and HD-DVD. There is no lack of powerful hardware. There is no lack of crazy, innovative control schemes. No lack of online connectivity. Most importantly, there is absolutely no lack of a target audience.

Why, then, has this not been done?

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