Will there be any decent movie tie-ins this year?

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On the hunt for one of gaming's rarest beasts

Any chance of it being good?
Probably not. The last one was a duffer remembered solely for its accidental comedy and characters who refused to stay dead, no matter how many times you hit them with a pipe. The trailer for this one features Mad Max-style cars leaping from ramps – must’ve been a deleted scene, that one – though at least it’s more honest about its post-GTA aspirations.


What's it about?
The sixth-form wand-wiggler forgoes the usual bum-fluff beard, bike-shed tomfoolery and Cypress Hill collection for a frankly boring adolescence. Murder, sacrifice, dark destinies and stunning revelations. Yawn.

Any chance of it being good?
You know what? For all that’s said about big publishers and their Hollywood cash-cows, EA’s done a fine job with Potter. With bi-yearly movies and loads of platforms to put them on, it’s made more decent games than bad ones - just. The kids love ‘em, not that they know anything, and there’s even the odd gem in games like GBA’s Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. Alright, just the one. Expect a familiar timetable of Quidditch, potion-mixing, spellcasting and duelling this time, with no shortage of gesturing on Wii. The delay of both game and movie to Summer 2009 shouldn’t do either any harm.

What's it about?
A 2008 movie based on Top Cow’s comic book miniseries, brought to life by Night/Day Watch director Timur Bekmambetov. Wesley Gibson, a desk-jockey with a stress disorder and cheating girlfriend, is sucked into a secret world of near-superhuman assassins.

Any chance of it being good?
Did we call Starbreeze the hardest-working studio in games? Better add fellow Swedes Grin to the list. Confident work on Capcom’s new Bionic Commando and the Rainbow Six franchise has earned it a reputation for top-tier combat – and Wanted’s no exception.

It’s a bit like Stranglehold, a bit like Dark Sector, and a lot like one of those games that electrifies a weekend before fizzling away to the shelf for eternity. You can “bend” bullets, of course, and perform eye-watering kills in some frankly preposterous set-pieces. We’re talking vertical shoot-outs in plummeting planes, as if COD4’s Mile-High Club wasn’t troublesome enough.