Some harsher critics might think poorly of certain seasons of the show, or the over-saturation of its spin-offs, but Survival Instinct is still the low point for the entire franchise. The game featured Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker reprising their roles of Daryl and Merle, struggling through the early days of the series’ zombie outbreak. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct was a prequel to the show, centered on the Dixon brothers. Several games have been released based on The Walking Dead franchise, including some adaptations of the original comic book series instead of the AMC television series. Perhaps the developers depended on gaming fans enjoying the absurdity of Breaking Bad being presented as a cookie-cutter mobile game, but ironic enjoyment did not keep Criminal Elements afloat.
Seeing pivotal moments from the series recreated in a crude animatic style added little to the experience.
Reducing Breaking Bad to an exercise in the mechanics of building a drug empire does not do justice to the impeccable character arc of Walter White. It could be seen as another harmless mobile time-waster title, but a landmark series like Breaking Bad deserved better. Its stylized graphics, reminiscent of recent Sims games, also hold up well, but it did nothing to set itself apart from other mobile cash grabs.Ĭriminal Elements closed the year after it was released. Compared to other flawed adaptations of beloved shows, Criminal Elements is less egregious, offering a fairly standard free-to-play base building game supported by microtransactions. In 2019, six years after the show’s conclusion, Breaking Bad: Criminal Elements released on mobile platforms. Dexter: New Blood brought the character back onto the small screen, but gaming success evaded Harry’s trained monster.Īmong the ranks of Prestige TV series, Breaking Bad stands near the top by many metrics, but its transition to a video game was less successful than its surprisingly poignant prequel, Better Call Saul. The pattern of shadowing targets and covertly slaying them was broken up with simulations of Dexter’s job as a police forensic scientist or his domestic life with Rita. The ugly character models might have looked acceptable on a mobile device, but played on a PC screen, the quality was unacceptable for a release close to 2010. Some critics gave the Dexter game leeway in judging it by mobile game standards, but it is a far cry from being among the best stealth video games. Dexter: the Game loyally followed the show’s rubric but forgot to make it fun or interesting. The titular character stalks targets who may also be killers, gathering evidence to confirm their misdeeds, and then whisks them away to a pre-prepared kill room. Dexter’s typical episode formula does offer more suggestions of gameplay structure than many shows, and the video game attempted to follow it. This iPhone game was ported to PC but was released as a physical disk only, so it is not currently available on platforms like Steam. The serial killer show Dexter was adapted as Dexter: the Game. Prestige TV series often fueled water cooler conversations at the time of their release, but many of their game adaptations were largely forgotten, which in some cases is for the best, given their poor production values. It seems obvious that a rushed, cash-grab product might harm a show’s good reputation, but that has not prevented some strange missteps.
Many well-regarded TV series deal with subject matter that might be difficult to adapt to most conventional video game formats. The video games based on these licenses do not always have the same standards as their source material, unfortunately.Ī few fortunate Prestige TV shows have had a relatively smooth transition to the gaming medium, like Telltale’s Game of Thrones adaptation. Like Elevated Horror, the exact definition of what makes a Prestige TV series is a matter of debate, but there are certainly shows that have aspired to tell meaningful stories and uphold a high standard of quality. Licensed video games have been a fixture of the medium since its inception, but there have been some truly bizarre adaptations released for PC, consoles, and mobile platforms, particularly the games based on Prestige TV series that fail to live up to their inspirations.