FMV Which games do you think did it right?
Monday, August 4th, 2008 - 11:21am
I was posting on another thread the other day when it got me thinking of the old Tex Murphy series of Adventure games. They tried to create "Interactive Movies" (basicly FMV games) where you were immersed in an FMV coupled with some grahpics.
I was wondering what games (if any) that used FMV did it right (in your opinion).
Tex Murphy and Gabriel Knight were the only ones that really succeeded as far as I can recall.
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Seconded. Especially Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within was top-notch. It even had its own piece of custom-made opera (the game being about, among other things, hunting down lost Wagner's opera) and it was fantastic. Talk about using the potential of FMV to the fullest.
I also remember that Spycraft: The Great Game was indeed quite entertaining. It was a sort of spy thriller-action movie with good puzzles and story.
Other than the mentioned games, there was really nothing to write home about. Out of the games that had a acting only in the cutscenes I remember Privateer 2 and the first Jedi Knight to have decent acting (Clive Owen in Privateer 2, one of his very first roles I remember).
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The Gabriel Knight series was perhaps the only Sierra adventure series I hadn't played in some form. I'm very tempted to try them out.
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I agree - the Gabriel Knight game did it best (I should really load that up again one of these days).
Spycraft was pretty good too. The X-Files game was pretty good (Technically at least...wasn't much to write home about plot-wise...barely even had Mulder & Scully in it at all). Can't really think of much else.
Stauf7 - Definately try the first two games at least. The third was OK but it had some pretty ridiculous puzzles.
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Command and Conquer!
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Night Trap! If I remember right Warhawk for the PS1 had decent FMV.
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C&C wasn't an 'FMV Game' though. It just had FMV cutscenes between the gameplay as opposed to actually being tied into the gameplay (although I suppose you could argue that the C&C way is actually the best way to use FMV effectively
) .
If any game did it effectively it might have survived.
As it is, all we can say is that some were memorable and most were not. C&C was memorable.
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I hated the FMVs for Command & Conquer. They said it was intentionally "campy" but it just seemed poorly written and acted to me, and just about EVERY FMV I've seen in any game also claims to be "campy." Well, weird thing about me... I don't like camp. I like good writing and good acting. Not bad writing and bad acting that's supposed to be OK because it's ironic.
So no, no one's ever done FMV right, which means they should put more effort into it or just use CG.
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The best FMV game ever, though, is definitely the Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future TV series that could blow up your toys while you played.
Definitely, definitely, definitely, Gabriel Knight2. That game was brilliant. Why they had to go and change the formula and make the third one in 3d....
Weren't Phantasmagoria, the 7th guest and the 11th hour fmv?
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I know no one will agree with me but I really liked the Star Wars games that were based on just FMV (Rebel Assault?).
I was young and we weren't CGI infested yet so they looked awesome and that was enough for me.
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I enjoyed the the way The 7th Guest played with regards to FMV. You solved puzzles and as you did you saw ghosts play out the events that happened before their deaths. You were merely an observer for the most part, which meant that they didn't have to be very interactive.
I also really enjoyed Phantasmagoria. I recall getting it, thinking 7 CDs will make for one long-ass game. I finished it in 3 days.
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I think live action FMVs for games usually doesn't work very well. You can only invest so much in getting both the game produced and also hire a lot of quality actors/actresses for the vast amount of different roles that can appear in a game.
Also, w/o spending tons of money, it is hard for live action FMVs to properly portray the often fantastic settings of a game.
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LobsterMobster wrote:
I agree, I played the heck out of the first Star Wars: Rebel Assault. There wasn't much in the way of real game there but the technology blew me away at the time. The star destroyer run was really visually amazing. I have no doubt if I tried playing them now I'd laugh at how terrible they were but, like you, I was young and hadn't ever seen anything like that before. Heck, I think it was the first PC game I ever popped in when we got our first cd rom drive. That and Megarace
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Perhaps its just me, but perhaps if we hadn’t gotten so many bad FMV titles perhaps we would see it more today. Frankly I don’t see why it cant be done better today with DVD tech and much better processors.
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I was going to go with "None of Them", but wonderpug has a point. The later Wing Commander games did a good job with FMV.
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Oh, you're looking for the really bad ones. Here's just a short list of truly weird ones I remember and have played at least a bit:
Psychic Detective
Angel Devoid
Daedalus Encounter (not that bad in my memory, actually, but that can be due to presence of Tia Carrere)
Iron Helix (I hated it mainly due to the fact that the movie ran in a small box in the upper right corner, the rest 3/4 of a screen has been mostly a static UI)
Critical Path (a predecessor to Daedalus Encounter)
Urban Runner
On the other hand, there was this game Noir that you could classify as an interactive movie. It was heavy on atmosphere due to the use of black&white footage only and as the name suggests, it was a noir detective story. Done by Cyberdreams of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream fame.
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Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster
I will admit to never actually playing this game, but a friend of mine played the clip where Frankenstein first awakens and it was pure cheese glory.
Upon looking at his stitched-together body for the first time, he shouts "My god, I have the hand of a woman! You bastard!"
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Oh, I just remembered: if you also count movies with puppets in FMV, then The Dark Eye was fantastic. Several stories of E. A. Poe played by puppets, and you can take both the place of victim and the killer. With the poem read by William S. Burroughs. Not for the faint of heart, it's dripping with atmosphere and is really horror-y at times.
In a similar vein: The Neverhood Chronicles (claymation FMV). Its soundtrack is still one of my favourites.
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It can't be bad. It had Tim Curry.
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Tim Curry I hear is great in the game. It was merely this clip that made be laugh.
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Wing Commander 3-5 are my favorites, mostly 4.