From ultimate boss battles to the risks of open-world bloat, TV and movie can be taught so much from video video games | Video games

It had begun to really feel like an endurance take a look at by the tip, however nonetheless, just like the sucker I’m, I watched the Stranger Things finale final week. And spoiler warning: I’m going to speak about it normally phrases on this publication. Because roughly 80% of the ultimate season comprised twentysomething “teenagers” explaining issues to one another whereas utilizing random Eighties objects as an example convoluted plans and plot factors, my expectations weren’t excessive. After an interminable hour, lastly, one thing enjoyable occurs, because the not-kids arm themselves with machine weapons and molotovs and face off in opposition to a monstrously gigantic demon-crab. Aha, I believed – the ultimate boss battle!

The struggle was like one thing out of Monster Hunter, all scale and spectacle with a contact of desperation. For a really very long time, video video games sought to mimic cinema. Now cinema (and TV) usually looks like a online game. The construction of Stranger Things’ ultimate season jogged my memory a variety of Resident Evil: lengthy intervals of strolling slowly by way of corridors, with characters exchanging plot data aloud on their technique to the motion, and occasional explosions of gunfire, screeching monsters or automotive chases. Those lengthy intervals of relative inaction are far more tolerable if you’ve bought a controller in your arms. I’m all for TV and movie embracing the joy, spectacle and dynamism of video video games, however have they got to embrace the pointless side-quests and open-world bloat, too?

The reciprocally influential relationship between video games, TV and movie has developed so much in the previous couple of years. A technology of gen X and elder-millennial avid gamers have lately aged into artistic and commissioning energy in these industries. That’s why we’re getting individuals corresponding to Jonathan Nolan heading up a wonderful Fallout TV present, and certainly why all video-game-to-screen variations have turn out to be dramatically much less horrible previously 5 years or so. It additionally inevitably signifies that the boundaries between interactive and non-interactive leisure have gotten extra porous: the place beforehand game-makers had been closely influenced by movie (primarily however not completely Alien/s and Star Wars), now that relationship works each methods. Most Marvel films appear and feel like a online game to me, and never simply because they’re all stuffed with computer-generated graphics. It’s the temper and tempo of them.

Edge of Tomorrow stays essentially the most video-game-ish film I’ve ever seen: its premise revolves round dying and respawning, attempting out various things on every run. It’s a sci-fi roguelike of a movie. I needed to play Mad Max: Fury Road the complete time I used to be watching it, and John Wick 4 was actually a fighting-game boss rush. When movie critics say {that a} movie looks like a online game, they usually imply it disparagingly; a variety of cinephiles nonetheless see video games because the decrease kind. When I say a film looks like a online game, it’s a praise – until it looks like a boring online game.

This was the issue, for me, with Stranger Things: each episode felt like loading up an open-world recreation that I hadn’t performed for a number of months. More and extra characters stored showing, and I didn’t bear in mind or care who most of them had been. Between the Upside Down, Vecna’s mindscape, real-world Hawkins and a wholly new dimension launched within the final couple of episodes, there have been too many areas to maintain monitor of. Every episode introduced on the delicate despair I really feel after I assume I’m close to the tip of an overlong recreation, solely to find one more totally new space to discover. The painfully lengthy epilogue, in the meantime, was rivalled solely by Red Dead Redemption 2’s interminable post-game hours. Please, simply let it finish already!

Of course, in fashionable popular culture, nothing is ever allowed to finish correctly, not if it’s nonetheless making a living. I’m shocked there’s been no phrase of an official Stranger Things online game tie-in (outdoors of a retro-style smartphone beat-em-up from 2019). Come to consider it, we don’t see many of those sorts of licensed video games any extra: again within the 00s and 2010s, most main films and TV reveals launched with an interactive accompaniment. Presumably that is due to the spiralling value of recreation growth – you possibly can’t knock out a mediocre PlayStation 2 recreation in 9 months any extra – but additionally, when TV reveals really feel a lot like video games, do we actually want an adaptation anyway?

What to play

The first recreation I’ve completed in 2026 is Indika, a surreal and mildly horrible recreation a few younger nun questioning her religion and having conversations with the satan as she goes on a particularly unusual journey by way of bleak, snow-covered villages and deserted factories with an escaped convict. There are much-needed flashes of humour in right here, but additionally stuff about faith, management and sexuality that I haven’t seen in a online game earlier than. It’s additionally a part of a small wave of video games (see Baby Steps) that mocks gamer mentality: there are factors, however they’re pointless; discover off the overwhelmed path and you will discover one thing ineffective and inconsequential quite than a secret or one thing enjoyable. And that’s if you happen to discover something in any respect.

Available on: PC, PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Estimated playtime: 5 hours

What to learn

• David Rosen, the co-founder of Sega and an influential determine within the historical past of arcade video video games, died on Christmas Day at 95. Keith Stuart writes about his very fascinating life.

• Hollow Knight: Silksong has picked up a game-of-the-year trophy in PC video games storefront Steam’s publicly voted awards. The Sit Back and Relax award was gained by one thing I’ve by no means heard of: RV There Yet. I’ve purchased it out of curiosity.

• My e-book about Nintendo is out subsequent month! It’s known as Super Nintendo and it’s a vigorous cultural historical past of essentially the most beloved firm in video games, primarily based on 20 years of interviews (and 30 years as a participant). You can help the Guardian by ordering it by way of the Guardian Bookshop, and I’ll even be doing launch events across the UK all through February.

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Question Block

In a current Pushing Buttons, Keza talked about that video games have consolidated into 5 established mega-franchises and I used to be attempting to work out which franchises these are? I guessed GTA, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Minecraft and EA FC, however don’t have big confidence in that!

You’re not far off. According to information from Circana, the highest 5 most performed video games on PlayStation 5 this yr had been precisely the identical as final yr: Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 5 (together with Online), Roblox and Minecraft. All of those video games are 5 to 10-plus years outdated. This stagnation on the prime is why each large writer has spent hundreds of thousands within the final decade attempting to create live-service video games, and why most of them have flopped. Last yr on Steam, in the meantime, solely 14% of all playtime was spent on new video games launched in 2025. Any developer releasing one thing new, be they blockbuster or indie, is competing for a sliver of a sliver of gamers’ money and time. These stats clarify so much about why the video games business is the place it’s proper now, and why there’s such a bleak temper amongst many builders.