Licensed games are something typically only fans of the IP play...though there are some that are good solid games regardless of the established franchise. Here's a few. NES Ducktales Ghostbusters 360/PS3/PC Transformers: War For Cybertron Transformers: Fall of Cybertron What're some other ones?
-Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure -DBZ: Hyper Dimension -DBZ Kai: Attack of the Saiyans -Aladdin (SNES) -JoJo's Bizzare Adventure (CPS3/Dreamcast) -Batman (NES) -Most Konami-made licensed beat-em-ups
Goldeneye 007, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Astro Boy: Omega Factor, The Simpsons Arcade Game, the list goes on.
Arkham Asylum/City, Castle of Illusion, T2 the arcade game, the X-Men Genesis games (and the arcade one as well), most Capcom Disney games, The Marvel vs Capcom series if you count that, Star Wars Episode I Racer, Star Trek Elite Force
Surprisingly, the Punisher game for the NES. For a while I did enjoy the Transformers game on the DS, I kept running away in boss fights.
There are some good to excellent licensed games, though of course most are rubbish, since (a) the game's developer often spends so much on the licence that they don't have much money to spend on the game, (b) the game's production often has to be rushed to meet the film's (that the game is based on) release date, or (c) the game's developer is content to let the name/license sell the game, so they don't try too hard to make a good game. To me, Goldeneye on the N64 is still the best licensed game ever. It really is superb, even to this day. Very close, are Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Asylum. Good licensed games include; The World Is Not enough - N64 Batman: Arkham Origins - XBox 360/PS3 Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bad - XBox XIII, which is licensed from a non-English comic book - XBox/PC/Gamecube/PS2 Batman (also known as Batman), even though it has nothing to do with Batman other than the license, the character Batman, and the flimsy story - ZX Spectrum Batman the Caped Crusader - ZX Spectrum Batman the Movie (the game) - ZX Spectrum and lots of other 8 and 16 bit machines of the time The World is Not Enough - N64 (I've heard the Playstation version is different and not as good) Spiderman 2 - XBox/PS2 Ultimate Spiderman - XBox/PS2 Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit (not a great game, but it does have good atmosphere and is good for fans of the (really great) movie) - XBox, and lots of others.
Simpsons Hit and Run Mickey Mousecapade, despite being frustratingly difficult at times EDIT: Also TMNT
I suppose the better question would be: What licensed games would still be good games without the license attached to them? With that in mind, Simpsons/Turtles are both pretty terrible and repetitive imo. No one would give them a second look if they didn't feature the license. Growl on the other hand is awesome
Surprisingly, most of the games ITT would still be good. The Lego games are pretty repetitive and all mostly the same, so they probably wouldn't be much fun to play if they didn't have the licenses. JoJo's All Star Battle has nice presentation for JoJo fans, but the gameplay is fucking awful.
That question is primarily what I was asking about. The games I listed in the OP are games that would have done well regardless of the license. The Transformers games specifically are solid 3rd Person Shooters, with a very indepth multiplayer mode. The studio that developed them are now one of the 3 studios on CODs 3year dev cycle
