Welcome back to this week’s Press Start! I hope you all enjoyed the weekend and you’re not working too hard. As you guys know, every week I bring you something fantastically geeky and it is always in the form of video games. This week, I’m going to double the geekyness with games and comics! I want to take a look at some games that spun into comics shortly after and whether this is a good thing or not, and then I’ll ask the all important question of whether the crossover works or not.
First things first – a game turned into a comic is not automatically bad by any stretch of the imagination. We always want more of our favourite games so this is just the perfect answer, especially if you are waiting on the next game. I don’t think I have ever heard of a comic release being shunned or ripped to shreds. That doesn’t mean these comics are necessarily good, however. In fact, I find most game comics quite boring and not enough happens in them. The main reason behind this, of course, is that they don’t want to spoil the next game if that is their plan or else they simply don’t want to waste a good storyline in a comic that could be adapted into a game. So where does this leave the comic buyers?
Let’s take a look at the Tomb Raider comics that bridge the gap between the first game and the second game coming out this November. This comic was essentially released to keep people interested and hyped for the second game. I have bought and read every issue and it is now finished. I liked the comic but it offered absolutely nothing in terms of story. If anybody still wants to read it, then skip past this part of the article as there’s a few spoilers ahead. Basically all that happened was they apparently took home trinkets from the island, and a gang of terrorists noticed and came after them. They then kidnapped Lara’s best friend Sam. Then they ended up in a foreign country where a woman blew powder in Lara’s friend’s face and she went all mad and crazy. After that, she ended up in prison and that was it. Now that sounds like a good bit, but it really isn’t much for 17 comics worth of material. Plus, how does this relate at all to the next game? I played the first fifteen minutes of the upcoming game and it just doesn’t make sense to me how they plan on patching these together. However, as I said, I still really enjoyed the comics. This is why I have come to the conclusion that no game-to-comic is bad because either you like the comic or you don’t. It doesn’t ruin the game for you. You just simply ignore it. Then you pick up the next game and carry on loving it. I also think this is definitely a factor for companies when doing this; they don’t want to tie the world too closely in case it does go downhill.
Now, in saying that, there are a lot of comics out there that have done incredibly well and people love to follow them quite closely with their games such as Halo, Assassins Creed, Borderlands and many other games as well. This just goes to show even more so that you can’t really go wrong with making a comic, especially if your franchise is already well established. I also know a whole host of people who have started reading comics only because their favourite game made one and they started collecting from then on. Even I myself started collecting comics because of the Tomb Raider comics.
Finally, my last point I am going to make is that I think the quality in gaming comics overall definitely needs to be brought up. This is not the case for all comics but unfortunately it is for most of those that I have read. I find most of the comics are a bit boring and not enough is happening and I actually struggle to get through the tiny 24 pages they have. I remember in particular there were two or three issues of Tomb Raider in a row that were so boring I almost stopped buying the comic and the last issue wasn’t a great one either. I know these companies want to make money and that’s perfectly fine but please god at least entertain me for me five euro! So maybe it’s worth giving a shout-out to companies and demanding a little more in terms of content.
Thanks very much for reading this week’s article, guys. Hopefully I will see you all next week! If you have any questions or something is rattling your brain do let me know down in the comments below as usual. Have a great gaming week!
