The 15 Best Video Games Inspired by Comic Books

There is perhaps no video game subgenre more hit-or-miss than comic book games. There are a ton of them out there, and a large majority of them are bargain-bin schlock, unworthy of the source material that “inspired” them. But some comic book games are genuinely inspired, taking the essence of what makes the books great […]

The post The 15 Best Video Games Inspired by Comic Books appeared first on Den of Geek.

But some comic book games are genuinely inspired, taking the essence of what makes the books great and channeling that into gameplay that’s fun and engaging not just “for a comic book game,” but for a video game, period.

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Before getting into our list, one parameter: We limited entries to only one game per series, but not per franchise. For example, there are plenty of Marvel games on the list, but only one Marvel vs. Capcom title.

With that out of the way, here are Den of Geek’s 15 Best Video Games Inspired By Comic Books.

15. X-Men Arcade (1992)

Some games are simply great games, and others are so great that they become moments in time. Konami’s X-Men arcade game is a vivid, electrifying snapshot of ‘90s X-Men hype. Stepping in front of the gigantic, obnoxiously loud arcade cabinet in the ‘90s, choosing from one of six X-Men on the roster (Colossus, Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and, delightfully, Dazzler) and button mashing through stages filled with classic X-villains and oddly human-sized sentinel grunts alongside five strangers was a sensory overload experience for the ages.

Nailing the visuals in a comic book game is crucial, and Konami certainly does that here with the cartoonish, crude yet stylish designs and environments. But maybe more so than any other game on this list, X-Men delivers in the sound department on a whole other level. The theme song still rocks, the stage themes are unapologetically retro, and the sound effects and voice samples are hilariously over-the-top (Colossus’ “OOOOAAAAHHH!!!” is never not funny).

14. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Sometimes, a licensed game is announced that leaves fans scratching their heads, wondering who asked for a re-skinned rip-off of whatever video game is trending at the moment. And then there are games like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which make all the sense in the world. The 2D beat-’em-up sidescroller was released within days of the Michael Cera-starring film adaptation of the beloved Brian Lee O’Malley graphic novels in 2010. But unlike the live-action film, the game assumes the look of the comics but filtered through a 16/32-bit lens. It captures the angsty comedy of the books and fits snugly into O’Malley’s world.

As a beat-’em-up, the game is deeper than most, with a progressions system and sharp, addictive combat that makes the grind feel less grind-y. When the game really shines, though, is when four players join forces. There’s a special sauce to the four-player mode in this game that for some reason makes it twice as fun to play as a group. The screen devolving into chaos as your crew blazes through waves of enemies is unbelievably fun and easily earns this spunky adaptation a spot on our list.

13. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

While much of the gaming world waits with bated breath for Insomniac’s forthcoming Marvel’s Wolverine, it’s important to remember that Raven Software already made a terrific Wolverine action game in the form of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. A gory, God of War-like game with blistering combat, gritty visuals, and riveting cinematics, it’s something of a unicorn in that it’s much, much, much better than the film on which it’s based.

The game’s combat can become repetitive after hours of play, but what gives the game legs are the visuals and the insanely high gore level, which is more than appropriate considering Logan’s, well, nature. Hugh Jackman reprised his role for the game, which adds a ton of value, especially in a world where Deadpool & Wolverine exists.

12. X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (1994)

It’s not the most popular ‘90s X-Men video game (that title goes to Konami’s arcade classic), but Capcom’s X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is a fuller expression of the ‘90s X-Men phenomenon. The side-scrolling beat-’em-up/platformer let players choose from a roster of five X-Men–Psylocke, Beast, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Gambit–each with their own stages catered to their respective powers and abilities.

Few developers harnessed the power of the SNES hardware as well as Capcom did, and the key to this was that their illustrative art style aligned perfectly with the console’s capabilities. Mutant Apocalypse looks stunning on the system, with big, bold sprites and expressive animation that mimics a comic come to life. The game’s story is great, too, revolving around the island of Genosha, where mutants are kept captive by Apocalypse and his forces, and where Magneto plots to unleash an on-brand, ethically fraught catastrophe.

11. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is a sleeper title in more ways than one. When the game was announced, it seemed like an opportunistic movie tie-in straight away, and many dismissed it as such. But as players got their hands on the game, it began to set in amongst the community that this was anything but a throwaway cash-grab title bound for the bargain bin. Eidos Montreal’s ensemble action adventure is a blast to play, stunning to look at, and riotously entertaining to listen to thanks to the wonderful banter between the Guardians we’ve all come to know and love on the big screen.

The game isn’t directly based on the MCU films, though the team’s dynamic and the material’s comedic tone are unmistakably taken straight from the films. In this sense, the game’s grand scale serves as one of its greatest virtues–because you’re spending so much time with this iteration of the Guardians, the comparisons to the MCU counterparts gradually fade away and the game’s story takes on a shape and identity of its own.

10. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006)

No matter the medium, the commercial appeal of Marvel is the thrill of the mega-crossover. There has always been something indulgent and satisfying about seeing all of your favorite characters team up and fight alongside one another, and no games capture this better than the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series. All of them are great in their own right (including the X-Men Legends games), but Marvel Ultimate Alliance strikes the best balance across the board.

The game boasts a deep roster of fan favorites, with perks applied for partnering up characters classically aligned in the comics. It’s ARPG features like this that lent the game just the right amount of depth without compromising the visceral enjoyment of playing a top-down button-masher. All of the MUA games are a blast to play, but after Marvel Ultimate Alliance, they all felt somewhat iterative.

9. Injustice 2 (2017)

The precursor to the Injustice series, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, was a bizarre, gimmicky mash-up of two properties that shouldn’t work well together…and kinda didn’t. It was a serviceable fighting game, but the tone compromise that left the game glaringly bereft of the signature Mortal Kombat gore and fatalities made the whole package feel half-baked.

Subsequent sequels Injustice: Gods Among Us and and Injustice 2 benefitted from disconnecting from the Mortal Kombat milieu, delivering a more cohesive vision of a dark DC Universe with iconic DC superheroes and supervillains clashing in an epic story that, despite all of the moving pieces, actually comes together quite well. What’s most notable about Injustice 2 is that the fighting mechanics are impressively well balanced and fun, to the point where the game is more conducive to serious competitive play than most MK-rooted games have been in the past.

8. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (2005)

Back in 2005, comic book games had a bad rap. Most of them were generic, conventional, mid-budget efforts with only a superficial connection to the source material. Out of this pool of mediocrity, however, rose The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, a game that let players feel the awesome power of the green guy in the palms of their hands, though not in the way you’d expect.

Yes, it is fun to smash stuff in the game. From using giant structures as impromptu bowling balls to thunderclapping gigantic mech suits to pieces, laying waste to the game’s enemies and destructible environments is crazy entertaining. But what makes the fun truly endless is the movement and traversal controls. Hulk has a palpable sense of speed, weight, and momentum as he bounds and slides around the game world. Leaping hundreds of feet across chasms or from building top to building top is exhilarating, and leaving a path of rubble in your wake makes it even sweeter. Something that makes the game extra impressive is that it was released on the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube, systems one wouldn’t think would be able to handle this level of mayhem.

7. The Wolf Among Us (2013)

For some reason, Fables never took off in the mainstream the way it seemed poised to do in the early aughts. The graphic novel series was something of a phenomenon in the comics space for years, and while the concept of fairy tale characters living among us made its way to the big and small screens in subsequent years, a true adaptation never materialized. Thankfully, Telltale Games applied their talents to the Fables universe in 2015 with The Wolf Among Us, an episodic adventure game very much in the mode of the studio’s other narrative-driven titles.

While the Telltale engine didn’t exactly age well as time went on, it’s perfectly suited for the inky, neo-noir atmosphere of Bigby Wolf’s adventures, set in the mid-’80s before the events of the books. Of all the Telltale Games, this one is perhaps the most faithful to the source material in tone and style, and the upcoming sequel has got fans of the original game and the graphic novels hungry for more Bigby tales and pieces of lore to expand the Fables canon.

6. LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes (2012)

LEGO video games are often misunderstood by gamers who haven’t given them a try. Are they kids’ games? Yes, they’re great for kids. But there’s a lot more depth to them than the brightly-colored, approachable cover art would lead you to believe. They’re chock-full of content and collectibles, the puzzle and exploration mechanics are thoughtfully designed, and the campaigns are genuinely funny and entertaining, with an irreverent voice unique to the franchise.

All of the LEGO Batman games are worth playing, but it’s LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes that ushered in the era of the overachieving LEGO game. It features a bustling open world filled with, yes, countless collectibles, but also some seriously entertaining interactions between Batman and a slew of characters from across the DC Universe. Like many games on this list, LEGO Batman 2 does right by its comic book roots but carves a niche out for itself and expands the Batman universe on its own terms.

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (2022)

There have been a lot of great TMNT side-scrollers over the years, with all of them following roughly the same arcade beat-’em-up formula. There is a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in these titles, particularly the older ones (Konami’s TMNT arcade, Turtles In Time). But it’s Tribute Games’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge that is the ultimate version of the tried-and-true TMNT formula. The snappy combat from the legacy titles is preserved and improved upon here, with loads of new mechanics and features that don’t get in the way of the arcade-style accessibility.

The decision by the devs to stick with the 16-bit visuals of the classic games while souping them up by optimizing performance and embellishing graphical elements that the older machines couldn’t embellish has the effect of the game looking both delightfully retro and dazzlingly modern. The level of refinement here is so high that the game transcends the realm of homage and stands at the pinnacle of the TMNT gaming mountain.

4. The Walking Dead (2012)

Yes, Telltale Games’ episodic The Walking Dead series released at the height of The Walking Dead’s popularity on TV and in comic shops, but it was anything but a half-hearted cash grab. The open-ended adventure game following Lee Everett and his young, unlikely companion Clementine is one of the most affecting stories of a gaming generation, no matter which path the player chooses to take.

It’s the elegant, nuanced way the relationship between Lee and Clementine develops that makes the game so enduring. Subsequent sequels and spinoffs do well to carry on the legacy of this first season of content, but it was the initial run that set the tone and led to Telltale Games flooding the market with licensed games in the same style.

3. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000)

Every Marvel vs. Capcom game brings something to the table, but Marvel vs. Capcom 2: Age of New Heroes is the best of the bunch. It’s arguably the pinnacle of Capcom’s 2D fighting game visuals, particularly from a sheer onscreen insanity standpoint. The ability to assemble a three-character team results in chaotic battles and encourages experimentation, which the enormous, 56-character roster supports handily. Combat is dizzyingly frenetic thanks to the “Variable System,” which allows for dynamic tag-ins and switches that can completely change the momentum of a fight.

While the arcade version of the game is the version most remember, it’s the Dreamcast release that cemented the game as an all-time favorite for so many. When the game was released in the early 2000s, home consoles weren’t as powerful as most arcades, which made great console ports of arcade titles incredibly uncommon and coveted. The Dreamcast version of MvC2 was an extraordinarily good port of the arcade version, which made playing the game at home a rare treat.

2. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023)

In their purest form, comic book games should be story-driven for the simple fact that comic books themselves are story-driven. Insomniac’s Spider-Man games are rich, multi-faceted, fully-featured games filled to the brim with missions and various open-world tasks, but it’s the stories that make them a cut above the rest. The characters are three-dimensional and develop over time, the dialogue sounds considerably more naturalistic and less awkward than most modern games (even some AAA titles), and like the best superhero comics, the overarching narrative has something meaningful to say.

What makes Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 the best of the three titles is that it’s a culmination and amplification of all of the best things Marvel’s Spider-Man and Miles Morales had going for them. The continued refinement of the series’ formula and Insomniac’s uncanny ability to, in an age of painfully long development cycles, crank out ridiculously polished games in rapid succession (Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 all released within three years) speaks to the studio’s greatness, and Peter and Miles’ epic tag-team adventure is a top-tier showcase for current-gen console gaming.

1. Batman: Arkham Knight (2015)

As video games become increasingly complex and robust over time, particularly in the big-budget, AAA realm, it becomes more difficult for them to click on all levels and feel immaculate like the near-perfect classics of earlier console and PC generations. Batman: Arkham Knight is one of those rare modern masterpieces that approaches perfection. It almost feels redundant at this point to talk about how great this game is from top to bottom, but the fact that most new open-world games still can’t hold a candle to it ten years later speaks volumes.

Arkham Knight does justice to the legacy of Batman comics by telling a modern, gothic tale that stands on its own rather than follow an arc from the books beat for beat. The characters are spectacularly brought to life by the artists and voice actors, and the game’s climax, centered on Bruce and Alfred’s “Knightfall Protocol,” is flat-out breathtaking. With Rockstar reportedly working on a new entry in the Arkham series, we could be in store for yet another rousing chapter in the ongoing saga. But until then, Arkham Knight is well worth revisiting time and time again.

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