5 best celebrity-endorsed games

Okay, it’s hard to actually recommend a celebrity-endorsed game. They don’t exactly live up to the triple-A standard as some of the big blockbuster movies the actors star in, but there are a few that made for a fun adventure and deserve a shout-out.

The Wheelman

With Vin Diesel currently racking up some serious records at the box office with Furious 7, the self-proclaimed video game nerd also appeared in 2009’s Wheelman, which was developed by Diesel’s own Tigon Studios.

The game was a run-of-the-mill vehicular combat game, but it did have the hook of being able to leap off your car and jack another while in motion.The premise, action and physics were absolutely ridiculous, and we loved every second of it.

The Wheelman is fairly absurd, but it’s better that way.

Rise to Honor

Those in the PS2 heydays may have played Rise to Honor, which featured the likeness and voice talent of martial arts star Jet Li. The game was an interesting beat-and-shoot-’em-up which boasted some clever ideas, such as a combat system which relied solely on the analogue-sticks.

The game was innovative, fun, and did the legacy of Jet Li justice. It’s the cheesy Sleeping Dogs for the old-generation.

Rise-to-Honor rose to the occasion (cheesy much)

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

It’s hard to attribute 50 Cent with anything worthwhile, but the rapper did feature in two games. Once of which we’ll not mention, but the sequel, Blood on the Sand, was actually pretty fun, given how stupid it was.

The game featured a decent co-op campaign, where your buddy was relegated to playing as Lloyd Banks or another of the G-Unit crew (sigh), but it didn’t really matter, as each character could’ve been a blob of goo. What makes it fun is the relentless onslaught you unleash on the generic terrorists who stole 50 Cent’s diamond skill (that’s right), while listening to classics like “In da Club” and “Piggy Bank”.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand was dumb; it was fun too.

Stranglehold

Jet Li did a good job kicking guys in the face and looking cool while doing it, but if anyone is going to fly through the air while shooting two guns, it’s Chow Yun-Fat. The Hard Boiled actor starred in the 2007 third-person shooter, Strangehold, which was essentially an homage to the John Woo-inspired action sequences of the ’90s.

The game featured destructible environments, slow-motion gunplay and some great set-pieces which let you surf down a dinosaur skeleton while filling enemies with lead. It was great.

We played 90% of Stranglehold in bullet time

Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker

Anyone who visited arcades in the early ’90s should have sunk a few hundred tokens into Moonwalker – Michael Jackson’s side-scrolling beat-’em-up.

The game eventually made its way to the Sega Mega Drive, and as a result, we couldn’t stop playing. Co-op, impressive graphics for its time and an 8-bit soundtrack featuring “Beat It” – there wasn’t much Moonwalker didn’t deliver. It even allowed you to destroy robots, henchmen and zombies with nothing but some slick dancing kill-moves.

Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker; it’s a weird game this one.

Are there any that we’re missing, you tell us.

Article originally published on MenStuff.co.za.