Mad Max, Jurassic World, and more: Grading this summer’s movie-based games

This year’s batch of summer blockbusters took us on quite a trip. We drove through the blood-soaked Fury Road, attended a theme park filled with hungry prehistoric creatures, and traveled with former arcade champions as they defended the world from Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

Now that the summer movie season is over, it’s time to take a look at how well developers captured the stories and action scenes from the big screen. Over the past few months, I watched all the big films (stuffing my face with way too much popcorn) and played the games based on them. Since I’m not sticking to GamesBeat’s usual review guidelines, these are just brief impressions of what each licensed game is like, followed by a simple report card-style scoring system.

Like last year, free-to-play mobile games dominate the list — more than likely because they’re cheaper and faster to make than a console or PC game. But that doesn’t mean every film had a standalone game that released alongside it. That’s why Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, two of the biggest superhero flicks of the year, aren’t on the list (they only had minor tie-ins to existing Marvel games).

Mad Max

How does it tie into Mad Max: Fury Road?

Developer Avalanche Studios’s Mad Max feels like an alternate universe version of Fury Road. The Max Rockatansky you play as looks nothing like actor Tom Hardy (or even the previous Max, Mel Gibson), and Imperator Furiosa is nowhere to be found. But it still takes place in the same world. In the beginning, Max loses his car to a warlord named Scabrous Scrotus who, according to his in-game bio, is one of the many sons of the terrifying Immortan Joe from Fury Road. Scrotus leads his own army of powder-covered War Boys, but unlike Joe’s men, these guys don’t have an obsession with Valhalla and all things shiny and chrome.

Is it worth your time?

It’ll depend on how much you like tinkering with cars — the story focuses on building Max’s new set of wheels. You’ll spend a lot of time exploring the postapocalyptic wasteland to find car parts that’ll make your Magnum Opus vehicle strong enough to withstand the hordes of Scrotus. The car combat isn’t as epic or exciting as the big chase sequences from Fury Road (that might change; I haven’t finished it yet), but driving around is unnerving because War Boys can show up and attack at any time.

Mad Max is at its best when you’re getting to know the strange, dangerous, and sometimes friendly people living in the wasteland, which is something the film could only hint at. (For a different take, you can read GamesBeat writer Aleksander Gilyadov’s full review.)

Grade: B

Kung Fury: Street Rage

How does it tie into Kung Fury?

Kung Fury wasn’t in theaters, but the viral YouTube film (and its short companion game) are too funny not to mention here. Kung Fury: Street Rage (for PlayStation 4, PC, iOS, and Android) takes the ridiculous premise — a warrior cop from the ’80s goes back in time to kill Hitler, the self-proclaimed kung fu master Kung Führer — and boils it down to a two-button beat-’em-up. You fight wave after wave of Nazi soldiers and robots while Triceracop, Hackerman, and Fury’s other friends cheer him on from the sidewalk.

Is it any good?

Street Rage isn’t as crazy and over-the-top as the movie, but it does a fantastic job of channeling another ’80s staple: arcade games. Independent Swedish developer Hello There made it look as if you’re playing on a dimly lit CRT monitor. While the game sounds simple, it requires a bit of strategy. You can’t just mash buttons to get a high score. Some enemies die in one punch, but others are stronger and have distinct fighting patterns you have to exploit.

The challenge is to maintain the longest combo you can without missing or dying (it only takes three hits to kill you). It’s hard to put down.

Grade: A

Lego Jurassic World

How does it tie into Jurassic World?

Lego Jurassic World (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC and other consoles) depicts the events from the latest movie and from the original Jurassic Park trilogy. It feels like a throwback to the licensed games of yore. For Jurassic World, it covers all the major story beats, so if you haven’t seen it yet, you might not want to play this.

It even has dialogue taken directly from the movie. At first, it’s jarring to hear those lines coming from Lego people, but that bizarre contrast fits the farcical tone (the game has plenty of visual gags and jokes) that developer TT Games was going for.

Is it worth your time?

Two words: playable dinosaurs. You can take control of all sorts of creatures, like when you’re helping an Ankylosaurus fight the Indominus Rex, or just causing mayhem in the theme park as a Pachycephalosaurus. The human Legos are fine, too. Beyond the movie’s stars, you can play as The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow — but they’re just a means to an end. Lego Jurassic World is all about growing your collection of awesome dinosaurs.

Grade: A

Inside Out (playset for Disney Infinity 3.0)

How does it tie into Inside Out?

The Inside Out play set is an add-on for the recently released Disney Infinity 3.0 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, PS3, and Xbox 360). It begins with Imagination Land in shambles. Riley briefly saw a clip from a horror film on TV while falling asleep, causing a “subconscious breach”  in her imagination. Her emotions (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust) have to get it back in tip-top shape and recover any lost memory orbs before she wakes up.

The playset only comes with the Joy and Anger figurines, so if you want to play as the other three characters, you have to buy them separately (the play set and the toys came out on August 30).

Is it worth your time?

The play set has an interesting mix of 3D and 2D platforming levels (the latter reminded me a lot of LittleBigPlanet) that gradually become more challenging. Sadly, most of that content is just mindless filler. The levels look so similar to each other that I accidentally replayed some of them because I wasn’t sure if they were new or not.

The game doesn’t expand on the original story in any meaningful way. Changes with the voice cast also didn’t help. Disney wasn’t able to get all the actors from the movie to return for the game, so some of the emotions (especially Joy) sound totally different.

Grade: C

Terminator Genisys: Revolution

How does it tie into Terminator Genisys?

While the movie retconned the long-running franchise for the sole purpose of making new sequels (how else do you explain that ending?), Terminator Genisys: Revolution is about the humans vs. robots war. The iOS and Android shooter from developer Glu Games handles all the movement for you, so you just have to worry about popping out of cover and reloading your weapons. Instead of playing as John Connor, however, you’re a new guy named Alex Lopez. He was a prisoner at one of Skynet’s concentration camps who joined Connor’s resistance group after they broke in and set him free.

Is it worth your time?

Revolution is a decent time killer for the first handful of missions. But after that, it becomes mind-numbingly repetitive, recycling the same types of missions over and over until you unlock a special battle that moves the story along. Then that whole process repeats several times until you can move on to the next city. I spent a lot of time trying to earn money to buy new weapons (necessary to unlock more missions), but they didn’t feel any different or more powerful than the old ones I had.

Revolution also has obtrusive full-screen video ads that seem to pop up every minute. How am I supposed to destroy Skynet when Kate Upton is all up in my face about Game of War?

Grade: D

Pixels Defense

How does it tie into Pixels?

Pixels Defense (iOS and Android) is a free tower defense game loosely based on the events of the Adam Sandler film. All of the “arcader” heroes are playable, even the film version of Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani. After picking two of the characters for battle, you have to defend cities around the world with the help of various weapons and soldiers. You’ll face pixelated monstrosities like the bugs from Centipede, aliens from Space Invaders, and a blue dragon from the fictional game Dojo Quest.

Is it worth your time?

Think about this for a second: Pixels Defense is a game based on a movie about classic video game characters coming to life. On paper, that sounds like a disaster … and in reality, it kind of is. Each city only has two or three paths that enemies funnel through, so I never had to change my strategy that much (upgrading my long-range attack towers was enough to beat most levels). The music is obnoxious. And it didn’t matter which characters I picked because I couldn’t rely on them to kill enemies that were just inches away from them.

On the bright side, Pixels Defense does a good job of illustrating actor Peter Dinklage’s fake mullet.

Grade: D

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

How does it tie into the film?

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (iOS and Android) ignores the characters and most of the storyline from the movie. Instead of playing as perennial hero Ethan Hunt (I imagine it’s expensive to license actor Tom Cruise’s likeness), you’re in the shoes of Trent Kane, another Impossible Missions Force agent. It’s Kane’s job to investigate Hunt’s mysterious disappearance. He also has to take down the Syndicate, the same criminal organization that Hunt was looking for.

Is it worth your time?

Glu Games somewhat redeems itself here. Though Rogue Nation follows the same format of Terminator Genisys: Revolution, I enjoyed the Mission: Impossible shooter a hell of a lot more. Even firing my gun looked and sounded better in Rogue Nation than in the Terminator game. It has more content, including better mission variety, and an upgradeable drone that accompanies you in battle. Kane can also move from different pieces of cover using arrows on the screen. It’s not a major or innovative addition, but that small degree of control made me feel more involved in the fights.

Grade: B

Shear Speed

How does it tie into Shaun the Sheep Movie?

Shear Speed is an endless running game on iOS and Android that features characters from the stop-motion animated movie. Shaun and his sheep pals are running away from Trumper, a vengeful animal control employee.

Is it worth your time?

It’s a simple concept that nails the addictiveness of other endless runner games. You have to jump and roll to avoid different obstacles, like Trumper’s electrified grabbing gun. It rewards you with a cute cameo of another character from the movie whenever you break your previous distance record. Aardman Animations, the animation studio behind Shaun the Sheep Movie, made Shear Speed as well, so it also has that cool claymation look.

Grade: B

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: Mission Berlin

How does it tie into The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?

The film reboot of the classic spy vs. spy TV series shows up on iOS, Android, and your browser as a free open-world action game. It takes place at the beginning of the film, and has the likenesses of actors Henry Cavill (agent Napoleon Solo) and Armie Hammer (agent IlIya Kuryakin). You can play as either one of the handsome heroes and go on simple missions through a strangely empty version of Berlin in the 1960s.

Is it worth your time?

Mission Berlin has no personality. Solo and Kuryakin couldn’t be more different from each other in the film, but in this game, they have the same set of skills. For some inexplicable reason, developer Warner Bros. put aiming and shooting on the same button in the iOS version, making combat a chore. I’m still not sure how I managed to kill anyone in this game.

Missions are just variations of killing guards and collecting intel, a process that repeats ad naseum without much context. It’s so boring that even cheat codes (easily found through Google) like infinite ammo and health aren’t enough to save it.

Grade: F