The 10 Worst Games Based On TV Shows

pcmag.com:

The world of video games is a tough place, and developers and publishers need to take any advantage they can get. Creating a game based on an existing media franchise—say, a TV show—is often seen as a way to tap into somebody else’s marketing budget and sell a few more units with less risk. But with that often comes a dip in quality, as fans will accept inferior products if they’re devoted enough. At the very end of the scale are games like these, which took TV licenses and transformed them into truly terrible electronic entertainment.

Reality TV is a scourge on the culture, so how could video games based on reality TV shows be any less? Duck Dynasty was a wildly popular program chronicling the bearded exploits of a family of duck hunting supply manufacturers, but critics claimed that their good ol’ boy image was just for show. The 2017 video game lets you play teenage John Luke Robertson as he hunts ducks, drives through swamps, hunts ducks, catches frogs, hunts ducks, and hunts ducks. The narrative is incoherent, the graphics are terrible, the gameplay is bare-bones, and it loves to play scenes from the TV show in poorly encoded video.

J. J. Abrams’ first breakthrough show seems like it would be a perfect candidate for a video game adaptation. Alias was full of twisty plots, hand-to-hand combat, sneaking, and spying. But the poor 2004 tie-in game managed to bungle just about everything. Stealth action was the hotness in video games in the early 00s, but Alias boasted bizarrely inconsistent AI that had enemies spotting you in total darkness, then flailing around helplessly as you punched them to death. When you weren’t contending with the broken sneaking mechanics, Alias had you solving brain-dead logic puzzles and