This week, while not breaking my hands, I have been mostly considering the question of video game tie-ins. Largely born out of that commercialist need to squeeze every last cent out of a film’s appeal, 99% of what is released to this market isn’t even worth considering, but there are exceptions, and they do – I have come to believe – fall within the merchandise remit. For some reason, despite the easy relationship between gaming and cinema as two immersive, escapist mediums, certain cinephiles will always look unfavorably upon gamers as their sweaty, pasty siblings. Just ask Roger Ebert. That probably has a lot to do with the slap-dash way most tie-ins are put together, and also something to do with the way Hollywood consistently fails to make good films out of games as well. So in the interest of diversity, and because my love of gaming is almost as profound and pronounced as my cinematic obsession, I hereby offer three of the greatest tie-ins every released.

Why Watch? This is the short film version of a headshot. Video games make awful adaptation material because, for some reason, they’re more fun for executives to suck all quality from. They’ve invariably meant for high budgets, but instead of bringing the faithful along for the ride, most productions tend to flip fans the middle finger while destroying any sense of story just in case anyone else wanted to enjoy what they were watching. Not so here. With a small budget and an aim at showcasing action, director Brian Curtin has created a fantastic short based on Half-Life. It could use a bit more in the way of character, but producing such a threatening, obviously villainous group of killers helps us feel for the leads without messy exposition. There are a few low budget problems, but they’re overshadowed by how impressive everything else is. Well shot, interestingly paced, and featuring some stellar production design, this is just engaging as hell. Plus, the ending is truly explosive. I’ve never played the game, so I can’t speak to how close they nailed it, but everything I’ve read seems to praise them for staying faithful. How about it, Half-Life (and/or zombie) fans? Is this the kind of thing you’d like to see expanded into a feature? What does it cost? Just 12 minutes of your time. Check out Beyond Black Mesa for yourself:

Video games Call to Duty and World of Warcraft are lining up to be turned into films. Activision, the creator of the games is looking into adapting the two popular games into motion pictures.

Here is an awesome little piece of fan fun from one of the Watchmen viral marketing sites. Go to Minutemenarcade and you can play an NES style arcade game, featuring Night Owl, Silk Spectre and Molloch.

After months of speculation, Bioware and Lucasarts have announced that a new Star Wars MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) is, indeed, in the works.

The Joker doesn’t really come off as the fighting type, but as you can see in the new Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game… it would be pretty damn fun to play as The Joker.

My first troubling thought though – ‘Will there be fatalities? So will I see Batman get his head cut off or something? Because I don’t know if I could handle that’.

The folks at Empire have debuted a brand new trailer for the upcoming video game Lego Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventure. And according to me, it is worth checking out.

Our SXSW preview continues with a trailer for a doc about making music with you Game Boy. Sweet.

Soul Caliber is one of the most badass fighting games to ever hit consoles. There has been cameo’s by non-original Soul Caliber characters in the past, such as Spawn and Zelda’s Link, but those cameos are nothing compared to who you will get to see in Soul Caliber IV.