The Boys wrapped up its fourth season earlier this month and continues to paint a prophetic picture of modern America. We don’t have superཧheroes in reality, but everything else is on the nose, so much so that the finale centred on a presidential assassination came with an episode title it had to hastily ditch in response to recent events.
As much as it cleverly satirises the rise of far-right politics, rainbow capitalism, and a laundry list of🦋 other hard-hitting themes, it is also a gross-out show about sex, violence, and corrupt superheroes. A mixture that would work in any era, so long as it poked at the right bears and wasn’t afraid to pull any punches. It also reminds me of a simpler time in video games when licensed games for television shows were all the rage. Nowadays, we just don’t see them.
Everything About The Boys Is Perfect For A Video Game Adaptation
If The Boys was turned into a video game for the PS5 and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series X I bet it would end up attached to a major developer with a massive budget and a singular vision, likely putting us through a narrative blockbuster with defined characters and mechanics. I have no doubt it would impress, but it would also be incredibly predictable in ways I honestly don&rsq⛦uo;t care for.
But what if The Boys was released back in 2005 when the PS2, Xbox 360, and GameCube still ruled the roost, and licensed games of this ilk were a dime a dozen and often little more than mediocre attempts at either recapturing a popular property or doing whatever it thought would work in the gaming world? It was two decades ago and developers were still figuri🐟ng out what worked and what didn’t, while budgets were small enough and production times short enough that experimentation could be the core identity of certain projects.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Predator: Concrete Jungle from Eurocom isn’t a good game by any stretch, but it took the legendary license and had a clear respect for its history through films and comics, aiming to tell its own story across different time periods as the player was set loose with far too many weapons and mechanics. The experience quickly became bloated, but it’s memorable in part because of its mediocrity. It wasn’t trying to be hyper-polished and seamless, and while the finished product is buggy, scrappy, and just not that good, I'm sure glad it exists.
But It Would Hit Different If It Came Out Two Decades Ago
On the flipside you have The Warriors from Rockstar, which is based on the classic film, yet also takes it so much further with gameplay mechanics and mission design that picks up the concept of old school New York gangs and turns them into what you’d expect a video game of that calibre to be. You complete missions, explore huge levels, and even have a base you can return to in order to train, take on missions, and communicate with familiar characters. It bol🌳dly put its own spin on things, and we saw the same with games like The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, The Godfather, and several others. They were licensed games, but I don’t think they ever wanted to tell an existing story or be held back by their inspiration.
Now imagine if The Boys was the same, and took the surface level premise of stopping the forces of Vought and Homelander but was🎉 willing to tell an original story with a huge cast of playable characters, each with distinct abilities. They wouldn’t need to feel polished to play or even look that great, so long as they were fun and understood the show’s core identity. And it’s not exactly subtle either, so ✅I can see this translating to a semi-open world, level-based outing where you try your best to outsmart The Seven while doing battle with supe grunts.
Licensed games of the PS2 generation weren’t viewed as triple-A juggernauts in the majority of cases, and were often pumped out in a relativelyꦦ short time period because they sold well, using existing brand recognition either hot or nostalgic in a medium that had yet to evolve to an unsustainable wreck. Our standards as players were lower too, so we would appreciate a game which understood the source material, but weren’t afraid to stretch that into a game that bent the truth, just so we could have fun. The Boys could take any form and still be a blast if it was done right, and in the modern day, I don’t see that being the case.
