There are so many franchise games being put out there these days. So many.

Hollywood and Video Game makers are similar in that regard; they are ever on the lookout for remakes and adaptations they can make because its cheaper to run off of an existing fan-base than to advertize a new idea. Sometimes it works (Batman: Arkham Asylum) and sometimes it fails horribly (Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game). And despite those failures, we keep buying in, time and time again, for the hope that this time we'll see our heroes done right.

After all, there's nothing more fun than being, say, Spider-Man, without having to worry about all of that 'Great Responsibility' bullshit.

But, despite the hundreds of sequels and franchise games being pumped out month after month, there are some real missed opportunities out there. There are properties with rabid, built-in fan bases that would be the perfect cornerstone of a viral marketing campaign, that are largely untouched by the game world. Or, even worse, they had a game but something went horribly awry, and the game was unfinished, or maybe even a complete piece of garbage when it DID finally come out.

I present to you now, five great game ideas that have been overlooked, criminally, for years. Lets hope someone's paying attention out there...

Dr. Strange- Straight from the pages of your favorite comic, presented in the Mighty Marvel Manner!

Doc Strange has been in a couple games before, but never his own title. In fact, out of the Ultimate Alliance series, Strange has been relegated to a side character, or a plot device in a cut-scene at best. Marvel's failure to develop an on-going series or a movie for this character is sadly matched by the gaming world.

But what a game the Doctor could have! As a brilliant neurosurgeon turned sorcerer, the game could have a dash of Trauma Center for dramatic effect, and the rest of the game could be new types of mystical action that push the boundaries of what your gaming system. Not only could you do battle with some of Marvel's nastiest, and most frighting villains, but you could spend time flying through tremendous, alien, 3-D dimensions, battling monsters that wish to conquer the 616 Earth.

I picked Dr. Strange as a front runner, as magic itself is sorely misrepresented in games so far. The energy blasting, flying, future reading, reality warping possibilities of magic could make for some really tricky action/puzzle play, and lead to an adventure that is psychedelic and mind-bending. And what do we get? All the magicians we ever see in video games are relegated to firing energy beams; they're so generic. Magician Lord was awesome back on the Neo Geo, guys, but its 20-years later. Lets see what you can do.

The Dungeons and Dragons series is a good start for Wizards, but one read through the early Dr. Strange comics of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee will show you the boundless possibilities of magic done right.

Cthulhu Mythos- This property had a game come out, but sadly it was not well received. But when I think of Mythos games, I don't tend to think of Dark Corners of the Earth, rather, I think of Eternal Darkness.

ED was arguably the best game on the Gamecube, but also under-appreciated. This game was the forerunner M-rated game on an otherwise very juvenile system, and it was a rough transition. those who took the time to find a copy have never forgotten the terror and mystery, the literal madness, of Eternal Darkness.

With Horror games having cinched a major spot in video gaming, with titles like FEAR and Resident Evil, its remarkable no one else has tried to take the reigns of the Mythos monsters, created by H P Lovecraft, and make horrific and entertaining video games from them. Though he wasn't a prolific writer by the standards of some of today's writers, the concepts Lovecraft came up with are still pushing the boundaries of the human imagination, and in creative hands, could be the most frightening games ever! You see many of his ideas bleed over, inspiring other series, Afraid of the Dark coming to mind first, but stories themselves are untapped and boundless resources.

Bone- Bone is a property that has been left sadly untouched since its original creation, a comic book from acclaimed writer Jeff Smith. But recently, Bone was reprinted in a series of hardback, easy to read digests. Bone's kid-friendly content caught the eye of Scholastic, who has been putting them in school libraries all over. Now the kids in the libraries are taking time to read them in schools all across America. Its taken ages for Bone to circulate properly, but now its in the hands of the youth, building that fanbase. The comic series was a runaway hit when it came out in the '90s, and this new resurgence in the hands of a fresh generation are bringing back whispers of an animated film.

And why not? Bone is easily one of the best comics ever printed, a real masterwork. It features the 3 Bone cousins, who make, at first, comical characters, lost in the woods, racing cows, and fighting off Rat-men at every corner. As the story progresses though, it becomes more and more epic, and soon Bone is taking up arms to fight a horde of monsters something like that of Sauron's army from Lord of the Rings.

Story-telling like this naturally lends itself to video games. This is the kind of tale video game writers try to grasp constantly, and often fail at. Fun, quirky, comical, the early stages of the tale are fun and light and make you fall in love with the characters, so much so that at the end, you can feel every hit your characters take, and their mission feels important in your hands. Imagine a game that feels like Mario at the beginning, fun and whimsical, battling silly monsters and finding treasures and hidden jokes along the way, but as you progress, the world grows darker, and the fight more deadly and serious.

If you want a good basis for a game, companies need to look no further than the adventures of Phone Bone and his battle with the Locust King.

Dr. Who- The Doctor, that nameless, immortal, time-traveling hero from the end of existence would make the perfect video game hero. There was an effort to make a game of him a few years ago, but it came out as a lame PC card-game program. Travesty. Dr Who is the Superbowl of Sci-fi, being easily the highest rated British TV show ever, and its episodes from 1980's 'City of Death' arc remain the highest rated fiction shows in the UK to this day. The Doctor deserves better than he's gotten.

The possibilities are literally endless. The Doctor's TARDIS (a time machine disguised as a Police Box) can travel anywhere in space and time, guiding him where he's needed. If you want to battle the Aztecs over a cursed gem, you've got it. Robot Men come to the present from another world to destroy mankind? The Doctor is on it. How about a trip to another world that lies in the far future on the edge of a dying star, and you need to save the inhabitants. Literally, if you can think it, the Doctor can do it; its the perfect set-up!

Dr. Who would be a thinking man's game for sure. The Doctor doesn't use guns, only his sonic screw-driver. At best, he MAYBE punches a bitch. That said, the Doctor's games would rely on puzzle solving, creative thinking, and quick-witted reflexes to survive. If anything, that's probably been the greatest challenge for game designers in putting together a Who game, they have to set aside their reliance on blowing shit to ribbons with guns as the answer to any scenario.

Having the ability to alter and visit different time-lines, ala Chrono Trigger, would make for great in-game Easter Eggs, too!

Captain N: The Game Master- Ah, a lost treasure from my youth. Captain N was on Saturday mornings in the halcyon days of the old NES entertainment system. This cartoon featured Kevin, a typical high school guy who's sucked into his TV, and to the land of Nintendo, where he finds that all the games on the NES co-exist peacefully in this same place... except for that bitch Mother Brain, of course, which Kevin has to fight on a weekly basis.

The best part of the show was the mix of video game characters at its disposal. Its pretty rare to see companies loaning out licenses so freely, but then, it was a different time back then. You had Mega Man, Simon Belmont, Kid Icarus, Link, Bayou Billy, Donkey Kong, King Hippo, all of these classic characters crammed into one show! A lot of the plots seem fairly silly now, but there's a good number of 8-bit Nintendo gags thrown in there, and at the time it was just great to be able to watch a show with friends and share in your revelry for those early games.

Just think about seeing that kind of franchise interaction in one game. Each character, Link, Mega Man, Simon, would need your help in ridding their world of Mother Brain's influence; choose who to help and when, and find yourself playing through their world. A player could find themselves fighting Dr. Wily's robots one moment, and in the middle of Castlevania the next, maybe top it off with a Zelda-style 3-D dungeon crawl. And in each of these levels, you'd find not just your usual bad guys, but a host of deadly enemies from any and all of the video game worlds. Robots popping up in Castlevania or aliens invading Donkey Kong Country! It would be the greatest tribute to that golden age of Nintendo.

Sadly, despite Smash Brothers and its success, it seems unlikely all these characters will ever be able to get together under one roof. The paperwork and licensing of what have become multi-million dollar characters is far too complex anymore. But if Capcom and Konami are ever able to agree to it, maybe we can see a few of these classics together again on the screen. We got Freddy Vs Jason, didn't we? Anything can happen. 

There's still a few great ideas left out there, and I'm sure these five are just the tip of the iceberg. What kind of things do you want to see? The great thing about video games are the endless possibilities for adventure.

The last several years have seen the emergence of the blockbuster video game, a game usually influenced strongly by the notion of cinematic presentation of story.  This line between video games and film will continue to blur, especially with the imminent release of Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, which, judging by early reviews, is shaping up to be an emotional roller coaster that entangles the player.  Thinking Heavy Rain is meant for anything other than a niche audience is naïve, contrary to whatever hopes both QD and Sony may have for the title.  However, in terms of blockbusters, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Modern Warfare 2 instantly spring to mind.  What interests me most is the execution of both games in terms of action set pieces and how they add up to vastly different experiences, at least in terms of satisfaction.  I’ll save the instant gratification people a read: Uncharted 2 stomps all over Modern Warfare 2 in how it handles the action the player experiences, and is the stronger of the two games because of it.

First, allow me to backtrack / cover my ass.  These two games have predecessors that I enjoy far too much.  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Uncharted both rank near the top of my personal favorites from this console cycle.  I share this to show that I didn’t wander into the successors with unreasonable or inexperienced expectations.  Once the dust settled, I preferred Uncharted 2 to Uncharted, but ended disappointed in Modern Warfare 2 as it fell short of the near perfection for a run-and-gun FPS established in CoD4.   Upon further examination, I found it was the incorporation of the action pieces, those moments where the game excels its normal gameplay formula, that affected my overall opinion of the games.  Specifically, the motivation of these moments.

Both games drop the players in a variety of adrenaline pumping situations, from the scaling of a train car over the side of a cliff to an attempt to reclaim the White House from an enemy army.  However, the moments in Uncharted 2 feel, in my opinion, motivated by the game’s story, while Modern Warfare 2 feels more like a string of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas generated at an Infinity Ward meeting.  Yes, it is easy to imagine that all great gameplay moments spring from those ideas, but actually incorporating them into the story takes skill, and both these developers have that skill.

   Call of Duty 4 worked as a whole because all the events contained within felt like they were working towards a greater story goal; namely, the prevention of a full blown war.  Modern Warfare 2 eschews this build towards a climax by having an unstoppable enemy force invade the U.S. in the comfort of a cutscene.  This moment in the plot is justified by my actions a few levels before, in which I participated in a terrorist act.  These moments, one of which feels like a more intimate (in terms of character / player relations) and personal moment (in case you’re curious, I am talking about the airport shooting) and follows it with an impersonal full blown assault throughout suburbia.  However, the first doesn’t feel sufficiently powerful enough to justify the second, thus leaving the player (in my experience) scratching their head and feeling unstatisfied.  Compare this to the moment in Call of Duty 4 when you are storming the bunkers and see the missiles launch.  It is such a heart pounding moment, since you’ve been working the whole game to prevent this moment, yet you’ve possibly failed.  That affects me more than random engagements set in historical locales.

Uncharted 2, on the other hand, makes you strive for payoff.  The game makes you want to progress, because you’ll be damned if all the events you’ve suffered through were in vain.  While you want to stop Makarov and the “surprise” villain in Modern Warfare 2 on the simple grounds that they’re “bad”, Uncharted 2 makes it personal by compounding hellhole upon hellhole, an almost unyielding build to a climax that you feel that you’re always progressing towards.  I’m actually trying to strive away from examples in order to avoid spoiling any moment of gameplay or story, which I feel is hurting my argument (though, if you haven’t played Uncharted or Uncharted 2 and you own a PS3, there is no excuse).  

In my experience with narrative driven games, the more you make the player feel like they’re interacting and experiencing the world and adventure of the character, the better the game.  Modern Warfare 2 is a fantastic FPS, but one I ultimately found disappointing.  Maybe it was because I played it immediately after Uncharted 2, or maybe it was because the sense of importance in my actions from the first game was so good.  There should never be a moment where the player questions why they’re doing what they’re doing in the story.  This isn’t to say that a game shouldn’t have questions in its plot, but I shouldn’t wonder why I’ve gone from one level to another that the game is telling me are directly related.  This moment never occurs in Uncharted 2, which brings to mind George Mallory’s response to the question of why he climbed Everest: “Because it is there.”  Uncharted 2 forces the player towards many mountains (some actual mountains), and I climbed them because they were there.