THE GODFATHER: THE ACTION GAME

Today is Oscar day. I'll be staying up 'til 6 AM to see if La La Land or Moonlight gets the golden statuette (edit: turns out it was a bit of both!) but 44 years ago arguably the 'Best Film of All Time' won; The Godfather. But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to shoot some gangsters in the 1991 video game adaptation by US Gold.

CRITICAL PATH

In 1993 FMV was the future of gaming. Back then any attempt at a cut scene was jaw-dropping but to include actual actors was something else. The problem was that a video stream didn't allow for much in the way of interaction so way before the decade was up the fad died with a reputation as bad as a Pauly Shore movie. Critical Path, according to PC Gamer, was not just one of the worst of its genre but the 9th worst PC Game of all time! Is that dubious honour really justified?

HARDLINE

As someone who proudly calls himself a movie-nerd along with retro-gamer, I find the FMV craze of the mid-90s to be extremely fascinating. The data storage of CD-ROMs allowed for compressed video files to be part of the narrative. Many failed, falling into the trappings B-movies had learned to stay well away from but others had Hollywood in their sights. In 1996, Cryo Interactive took on an ambitious project called Hardline, a bombastic on-rails shooter with minor adventure elements that boasted over 2 hours of footage and 200 special effects.