Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

So I saw this on Facebook not too terribly long ago, found myself a bit skeptical and then decided to take a few minutes to check it out a bit further. And it appears to be true. The Last of Us is being adapted into a movie. And it's going to follow the plot of the game.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It has been a long time since I saw a movie based on a specific game I actually liked. And The Last of Us, in a lot of ways, certainly lends itself well to the big screen (the infected, particularly clickers and bloaters in a theater? Nightmare fuel…). However, a lot of the emotion, particularly tension, that the game conveys depends on the gameplay part. Namely, when you find a group of infected between you and your goal and you have to get around them, you find yourself asking two questions: 1. How do I try to approach this? and 2. What if I mess this up and find a clicker likes the taste of my neck? And it's worth noting that charging in guns blazing is usually the worst way to go about getting around a bunch of infected, which might not lend itself so well to the big screen. I find myself wondering how they might maintain that kind of tension in a movie.

Done right, it could definitely be pretty good. But I see more than a few opportunities for pitfalls. I am slightly assured, though, that the creative forces at Naughty Dog who were behind the game will be part of the movie team, and can hopefully help keep the movie decently true to the game and resist doing some things that are good for the big screen but don't fit for the game. I mean, of course they're going to have to make some choices in that respect as games and movies are two different mediums, I just hope they make the right ones…whatever those even end up being.

Any thoughts/opinions, on this particularly adaptation or movies being made from games in general?

I typically don't like the whole video game to movie adaptation because they are rarely done well. Most games are at least 8-10 hours or so, and trying to cram that all into an hour and a half movie can make everything feel rushed. I don't write them off until I see them since most of them have potential, but they rarely deliver on captivating people like the games do.

An example is the upcoming World of Warcraft movie. How can they even think that trying to cram 10 years of Warcraft lore into an hour and a half/2 hour movie is a good thing? There just isn't enough time to make people care about the lore like they should, so the movie will fail, regardless of how much money they put into it, or how long the movie might be.

I've never played The Last of Us, and I'm sure it has some potential like most movie games, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. You should be more excited for this:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/27/ ... ystation-4

Yup, heard about that yesterday. While I don't mind enhanced re-releases, I don't play all of them…depends on how much I liked a given game and if I want to replay it (and to be fair, I was all over the Okami HD release on day 1). I'm still playing through TLoU (slowly) but I'm not sure it's going to be one I want to replay, at least not so quickly. We do have a PS4, though, and I imagine we'll get a copy when it's out.

On TLoU movie, I'm taking this approach…see what happens with it. I'm cautiously hopeful, but nothing beyond that until A) it comes to fruition and B) reviews come in.

Plus, believe it or not, I have a slight problem with the PS4 controller. While it's just a tad wider than the PS3 controller, it's just enough of a difference that it's pretty uncomfortable for my small hands and thumbs after more than a few minutes.

I think checking out reviews for the movie would be the best thing to do, but movie reviews are often not a trustable source when they are reviewing movies based on games, since most of the reviewers are movie buffs and will not appreciate the source material. So they will just say the movie sucks and move on.

Reviews will be the best source to turn to, but I also disagree that movie buffs will not appreciate the source material. Of course, some won't. But many will. When I say reviews, I don't mean the big professional reviewers in the big sources like the New York Times (as quite often, I disagree with them). I mean reviews on sites like Reddit, and I would imagine gaming sites will also have reviews, as such places are far more likely to appreciate the source material.

I kind of see some parallels between book-to-movie adaptations and game-to-movie adaptations. No matter how hard you try, you have to take a few shortcuts and make choices on where to take your liberties. It's just how it is. But with care it can be done artfully and respectfully to the source material, and from my perspective, audiences have to realize that. One can't cry foul over everything that's been left out or changed when adapting a game or book to a movie, because it's part of the process. I'd say to this point the latter has had much worse luck than the former on it being done successfully, but it can be done. I have cautious optimism in this case, as again, the creative directors behind the game will be involved in the adaptation process and can help to maintain respect to the source. I think part of the reason the Harry Potter adaptations turned out decently, overall, is because JK Rowling was involved in the process from beginning to end and could help to guide that decision-making. I have hope that Neil Druckmann and the Naughty Dog team can do the same, in addition to the other things they'll be doing. There's still more than enough room for pitfalls, for sure, but there are also, at least to me, reasons for cautious optimism.

My exposure to The Last of Us is limited to watching a few let's play videos, but I think it has potential as a movie. Granted, a lot of stuff will have to be cut out for the time frame, but it could work. My main concern would be that it might not be very original as a film. Honestly, this kind of plot has been done repeatedly in films already. This is not to say that the movie wouldn't be good, but if it's just a rehash of past films, that will take away from the potential.