What's the story? Sick of knocking about the City of Destruction, Christian decides to set off for the Celestial City, where everything is pretty much non-stop great. On his journey he makes friends, wins power-ups and fights monsters. When Christian succeeds, his wife Christiana has to do it all over again to tie up the loose plot threads. Right, cause you thought Resident Evil 2 invented that gambit.
Above: The middle page of The Pilgrim's Progress
How might the game look? Fight the twin giants Pope and Pagan! Free prisoners from Doubting Castle! Battle Appolyon, a demon-dragon that hurls darts as thick as hail! Frankly, it's embarrassing to live in a world where a Pilgrim's Progress survival-horror action game doesn't exist.
Above: Bunyan's Slough of Despond didn't have crocodiles in it, but if someone suggested it, it might've
Until then... Take the structure of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, add blistering Devil May Cry battle mechanics, find a reason for Christian not to own a single shirt, and you've got the year's biggest action title. In the meantime you'll have to pretend like Maximo wasn't quite such a crushing torrent of Okay.
2. For Whom the Bell Tolls
What's the story? When today's educated lad feels like thumbing his nose at injustice, he changes his Twitter icon green for a week. In Hemingway's day, they headed to where injustice lived and blew its damn house up. For Whom the Bell Tolls' Spanish Civil War is an awesome place to seek adventure, but also a horrifying example of man's inhumanity to man. Much like Xbox Live on both counts, then.
How might the game look? The game would be a non-WW2 period shooter, which would be gravy. Publicity for the game would be considerably more epic: just as Papa Hemingway only wrote about war after he himself had fought in one, the For Whom the Bell Tolls dev crew would, one hopes, learn the terrible thrill of bleeding a man out on the end of your bayonet before they wrote a line of code.
Until then... Put the nearest ER on speed dial. Mix up a generous amount of Hemingway Daiquiris (basically a sugarless daiquiri with double rum). Boot up the Spanish Civil War expansion for Shadows of War, downing a Hemingway every time you shoot someone. Repeat this process until the writing seems brilliant and/or you need to go to hospital.
