Multi-player in movie-based games

I was just thinking a few weeks ago that you pretty much never seen any multi-players in videogames based on movies. The reasons are probably obvious: Those games are made on a very tight deadline and mp is an easy option to drop. Plus, they're made on the theory that people want to experience the story of the film (or something tangential to it) and so a solid single-player experience becomes more important. In addition, perhaps, publishers may somewhat cynically realize that interest is often only strong around the movie's release and most of these games won't be played much after a few months, so they don't need a long life like "Halo" or "Call of Duty."

It's a shame, though, because I've seen some movie-based games with solid action mechanics that could have worked well with multi-player combat. "The Bourne Conspiracy," for instance, or "Iron Man."

So color me surprised when we ran a review in Variety this week of the first movie-based game that I've seen with multi-player. And doubly surprised that it's a kids' game: "Kung Fu Panda." Yes, it's only four players and it's offline. But still, there's combat, there's co-op, there's mini-games. That's a big step up from what we're used to from these games. Hopefully this is something more publishers and developers will do, because it should add to the respect for and value of these much derided games, which sometimes get a worse rap than they deserve (and sometimes get exactly the terrible rap they deserve).

Josh was overall pretty impressed with Activision's "Kung Fu Panda," saying its "dynamic action, solid production values and surprisingly robust multiplayer options help it stand above the average family movie tie-in." You can read the whole thing here.

And also don't miss Tom Chick's review of Sega's "The Incredible Hulk,"  which he says has a certain charm, but is basically an inferior knock off of 2005's much praised "Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction."

Update: A reader correctly pointed out to me that the "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" game had four player co-op.