Ghajini. A name that’s been in the media spotlight for quite some time now, whether it’s fans swooning over Aamir’s new butch look in the movie or whether its Destructoid that splashed it on the front page much to the chagrin of Indian gamers who were hoping that this one dies a quiet death without being noticed. Based on a Hindi movie, which in turn is based on a Tamil film of the same name, which in turn is “inspired” by Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece “Memento”, Ghajini – The Game is purportedly India’s first 3D game, and joy to the world, it’s based on a Bollywood big-ticket movie! Please, don’t even get me started on the flick, which I consider a blight on Aamir’s acting abilities; a movie on which I wasted two precious hours of my life. I sure wish someone clobbered me over the head with an iron rod so that I would forget everything that happened after I decided to watch the bloody film! But then, this article isn’t about the movie.

Now, as such, as I have little respect for any adaptations that jump from my gaming platform to the movie screen or vice versa, usually choosing to spew acid venom all over it (with a few exceptions like The Chronicles of Riddick or some Star Wars games) but hear me out. As far as I am concerned, I being overly critical simply because of the fact that it’s a shame that development talent gets wasted on a cheap add-on to a movie, which is further pressured by movie execs and production houses that breathe down their neck and throw little more than peanuts in the way of funding when other “proper” development and publishing houses like id, Valve and EA dedicate billions of dollars to creating a quality game.

As far as most movie-to-game adaptations are concerned, it’s usually the producers of the film that end up financing the game as well, and damned if they care about obscure concepts such as gameplay and playability when they’ve already perfected an awe-inspiring script and delivered the Holy Grail of cinema with their creation. Making a game to bring in even more cash into their overflowing coffers shouldn’t take more than a couple of months and a couple of thousand dollars, right? After all, the developers have got their work cut out for them.

And if this happens to be the case for a Hollywood undertaking, things are infinitely worse here in India, where the concept of gaming is just starting to make inroads as far as mainstream entertainment is concerned. Unfortunately, the problem with such an attitude is that it spills over to the developer as well. Why bother wasting effort on a game where you know a lot of people aren’t going to care about it or have anything nice to say about it? The fault lies with both sides, because as a consumer, I’d want my money’s worth. As a publisher or a developer, you want your games to sell more and the only way that’s going to happen is if you make a decent product – it could be The Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for all I care, but if the candies taste like horseshit, no one’s going to give a damn! I’d rather spend my 200 bucks on good food rather than a coaster, thank you very much!

A lot of flak usually gets directed at the penny-pinching accountants at the publishing house, where money and creative avenues are often restricted, but why does a developer agree to work on a project where they aren’t able to bring their creativity or their development abilities to the table? Sure, every company needs to have projects to survive, but a bad project just ends up tarnishing their reputation, making sure they’re gonna have to close shop sooner rather than later. Usually, whenever a developer gets an idea for a game, they spend months creating a “proof of concept” where they envision the game, how it’s going to play out and then pitch it to the publisher – putting forth excellent reasons as to why it should be made. For a company like FXLabs (the creators of Ghajini) that doesn’t have a set publisher or where they end up publishing their own games, why not create a great concept and pitch it to the movie makers to finance? Why not a 3D point-and-click mystery adventure in the vein of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened or And Then There Were None?

Or rather, why not break the stereotype and make something good that isn’t based on a movie or a popular franchise? Not everyone needs a billion dollar budget to make a good game. Whatever happened to learning to walk before you could run? When games like Braid, Everyday Shooter are made by individuals with less-than-stellar budgets, why not concentrate efforts on making something other than a shooter? With Ghajini blatantly ripping out all the things that made Memento (or even Memento Mori, the novel) cool, including the ambiguity and the narrative structure, the apple that is Ghajini – The Game doesn’t fall far from the tree. Borrowing heavily from the Max Payne style of graphic-novel storytelling, complete with dialogue that tries to be film-noir-cool but falls flat on its face, the game throws in random elements borrowed from other games, an inventory borrowed from point-and-click adventures where you are on a scavenger hunt to find all the stuff you need before you can exit an area (for example, the Polaroid camera, photos, etc. from his house), stealth elements where you’re looking at vision cones to figure out how to avoid that fat cop who’s preventing you from getting to where you want to be and a whole lot of stuff that we didn’t really have the patience to sit through. (And no, there are no first/third-person song and dance sequences, not that we’d want to see those ever in a game! Unless it happens to be SingStar or DDR!)

Why FXLabs chose to shove something out the door with terrible graphics, cardiac-arrest inducing gameplay, blatant in-game advertising that borders somewhere between oh-no-they-didn’t and a copyright infringement lawsuit and a presentation style that has all the appeal of a used condom is something that I’ll never figure. And I, for one, don’t really subscribe to the people who say we should go easy on them because they didn’t have a lot of time to work on it or because they didn’t have the requisite budget or the experience. Like I always say, you can’t get a baby in one month by impregnating nine women, so if you know you can’t do something in a certain period of time, don’t take up the bloody project or at least have the sense to be a little less ambitious and loud-mouthed. As for the experience, what can I say, there’s a lot of great talent out there as far as artists and developers are concerned, and if we can bloody well create special effects for movies such as The Lord of the Rings or The Golden Compass, we can bloody well create a game that, if not anything else, doesn’t plain suck. I am not blind and jaded enough to want something like Gears of War or Max Payne or Bioshock to come out of Indian game-devs overnight. I just want a decent game that I’d enjoy from start to finish. Just one. Please? Hello?

SCREENSHOT GALLERY

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• whisperingdeath Says:
  January 8th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

  Damn this fuckers cant work on one decent game…and Ghajini, well, damn.. fuck.

• Parag Says:
  January 9th, 2009 at 10:22 am

  I saw the bloody movie.And that experience was quite enough for me. Although, i have to ask, do i see a PVR in there? Dont tell me they actually have rendered a geographically correct Mumbai. If yes, then atleast that is commendable.

• Suraj Says:
  January 13th, 2009 at 7:25 am

  Hi, where can i buy this game please?

  Thanks

• Censors and ratings be damned… | the ANGRY pixel Says:
  January 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

  [...] Ghajini – The Game: What Went Wrong? [...]

• indimom Says:
  February 5th, 2009 at 6:36 pm

  i think some of the jokers who like that funny oldman srk have reserved all abuses for other heros like amir and others.they want to see stupid love stories tub ne bana di jodi which was s888888 movie of srk and his self acclaimed badshahhood{the floppest movie of his carreer}.ghajini although little bit hard for soft heats but very nice overall.

• aditya Says:
  March 27th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

  can any one help me…..i am having d game and my pc exceeds all the requirements for this game bt still this game is not working….its installation is too complicate….its saying mount the image from crack folder n stuff…….what to do plz……help….give me step by step procedure…..plz