Defunct Games vs. Video Game Movies

While House of the Dead is bad from a technical standpoint, BloodRayne is inexcusably awful for no reason at all. It's a movie so pointless, so graphic, so unnecessarily violent that I have to wonder why anybody would make it in the first place. And even if you can get past the plotless script, horrible special effects and all of that violence, you still have to put up with a movie that can't even get the fight scenes right. The direction in this movie is a mess, and you can see it in each and every one of the performances. This is a bad movie, something so awful that it actually has no redeeming qualities to speak of. In fact, just when you think it couldn't be any worse you learn that they hired prostitutes to keep costs down. Even if this is the only thing on your television and you're being held at gun point, you absolutely should not watch this movie. Out of all of the movies on this list, BloodRayne may be the very worst.

If you've never played a Silent Hill game and don't know the story, then there's no reason for you to watch this Christophe Gans directed horror film. It's not going to make any sense, the logic will be puzzling and you'll get frustrated by the movie's gloomy atmosphere. However, if you're a big fan of the games then you may find something to enjoy in this film. Visually the movie is fantastic, full of good art direction and solid special effects. The acting isn't bad, either. Though, the material given to the actors leaves a lot to be desired. But the atmosphere is spot on, it looks and feels exactly like the Silent Hill games. Heck, it even sounds like the Silent Hill games. Yet I can't get over how terrible the story is. Not only is it convoluted to the point of being nonsensical, but it ends on such an absurd note that it's hard to actually like this movie. This is not the kind of movie somebody falls in love with, but I can imagine a lot of Silent Hill fans happy at how closely the movie resembles the game. Perhaps that's enough to see it, perhaps it's not. I didn't like it, but I'm not angry that I sat through it.

There's a scene towards the end of DOA: Dead or Alive where the self destruct timer gets triggered and the whole island fortress blows up. As I sat there watching the movie I wondered why they couldn't have tripped that trigger hours earlier, perhaps at the beginning of the movie so that I wouldn't have had to sit through inane dialog sequences, a force romance and some of the worst fighting ever committed to film. DOA: Dead or Alive is terrible, and yet it feels like everybody in the movie has no idea. At least with Street Fighter you felt like everybody knew how bad the movie was, but here you get a bunch of D-list celebrities acting as if this is going to be their big break. But it's not; instead it's that line in your portfolio that you have to white out. DOA: Dead or Alive may not be worse than the jumbled mess that was Street Fighter, but given the circumstances the filmmakers should have known better than to try this formula again 13 years later.

This third installment of the Resident Evil franchise takes the series to a brand new location, a Las Vegas covered by a mountain of sand. Unfortunately this new setting didn't reinvigorate the writing staff, because what they churned out was just more of the same. Like all of the other Resident Evil movies, Extinction is nothing like the video games. Instead it's an action-packed thrill ride as the characters weave around zombies and perform amazing acrobatic stunts killing their foes. Worst of all, this Resident Evil brings back the whole cloning people storyline that was the death of the Alien franchise. If you're a fan of the other two Resident Evil movies then you'll likely enjoy this, but I didn't even feel it was a fun guilty pleasure. It's certainly not the worst movie on this list, but at the end of the day there's no reason you should ever watch this thing.

For most of the movies on this list I have no problem giving a good or bad score, but I find myself somewhat mixed as to where to put Postal. On one hand it's one of the worst movies ever made, it's a comedy that throws just about everything at the wall hoping to find something that sticks. Then again, the moments that do stick are incredibly clever and show that maybe Uwe Boll is actually getting better. The problem is, for every one thing that works there are at least four things that don't. Plus, there's an extended amount of time where you see all of ex-Kid in the Hall Dave Foley. Those expecting this to be the most offensive movie ever made will be disappointed, it makes a few jabs at political topics (9/11, George Bush, etc.), but it never goes all the way with its humor. The movie could have benefited from simply going all the way and not giving a damn about what people thought. Sadly that's not the movie that Uwe Boll made, so it's no surprise that I can't recommend this. However, part of me does wrestle with suggesting that you see it, but only if it's free (don't pay money to watch this movie).

Let me just get one thing out of the way, Timothy Olyphant should never have been hired to play the role of Agent 47 in Hitman. He's a talented actor and I'm not saying the movie would have been better without him, but the guy doesn't look a thing like the famous video game character. In fact, I would go as far as to say he looks downright silly with a shaven noggin. However, if you can get past laughing every time you see the back of his lumpy head you'll find that this movie stays true to the spirit of the game. This is an uneven action film that doesn't really try to be anything more than what it is, but there are some fun scenes and I appreciate that they decided to go with the hard R. It's not perfect, but you could do a whole lot worse than Hitman.

After so many terrible video game movies in a row, Uwe Boll was bound to get one right. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale isn't a great movie, however it's also not so bad that you can't bring yourself to finish it. The movie isn't terrible, which for Uwe might as well be an Academy Award. Let's face it, the guy is batting zero, so the fact that this movie didn't make me want to strangle a nun is really saying something. The movie does still have some of the same old Uwe problems, include a terrible script and silly effects, but this time around the bad effects are endearing and it actually feels like everybody is trying to make a quality picture. It's clear from the get-go that they didn't have enough money to make the movie they had in their minds, but as a second rate Lord of the Rings knock-off, this isn't half bad. It's probably not worth seeing more than once, but at least that first viewing will keep you entertained. If anything this shows that Uwe Boll is improving as a filmmaker, and isn't that all we can ask?

If we rated these games based on their style over substance, then Max Payne would win in a landslide. Max Payne is a video game movie made by people who never played the game. Not only is the movie's story completely different, but it also stars a guy who readily admits to refusing to play the game or get to know the character. As a result we're left with a depressing action film with little to no substance. There's a lot of style here, but the acting isn't very good, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense, and the cast is all wrong. It's bad enough that Marky Mark is playing the Max Payne character, but did they really need to get That 70s Show's Mila Kunis as an assassin? The rest of the movie is spent watching people take drugs and see fake demons, which looks cool but never really adds anything to the story. By the end of the movie you just feel dirty, which is certainly not how I felt after I completed either of the Max Payne video games.