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Essays 04 November 2019, 20:00

The Breathtaking Keanu Reeves and Co. - Top Movie Stars and Celebrities in Video Games

Keanu Reeves, who charmed the viewers during E3, was not the first actor to perform in the games. Or the last one. In Death Stranding we will meet at least a few stars in the lead roles. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

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Vin Diesel – Wheelman

Genre: Car action game

Developer: Tigon Studios

Platforms: PC, PS3, X360

Vin Diesel went through a phase of intense romance with the world of video games. His most famous approach is the successful, quasi-stealth Chronicles of Riddick, but it's not the only production he's starred in.

Tigon Studios obviously envied Ubisoft's Driver series, even if it became rather underwhelming at some point, and released a game based on very similar assumptions. It was called Wheelman (which is just another name for Driver), and contained a significant dose of Vin Diesel, i.e. Steeve McQueen on steroids. This guy had already been a star of action cinema, especially car movies – he's one of the key figures of the Fast and Furious franchise, the longest series of family car comedies in the history of Western cinema.

Here, he's kicking ass just as well, talks in prison slang with gangsters and the police – although officially, he's just a driver. Wheelman wasn't a groundbreaking game, although had a very nice atmosphere of a B-class movie, and players really rooted for the protagonist. We would prefer to forget the walking sequences of that game, but when the virtual Vin Diesel sat behind the wheel, the game really showed teeth. And that's a duo we want to remember – speeding Vin Diesel and his muscle car.

Erika Eleniak – Panic in the Dark

Hey, dinosaurs, remember her? - The Godlike Keanu Reeves and Company – Movie Stars in the Games - dokument - 2019-11-04
Hey, dinosaurs, remember her?

Genre: Adventure

Developer: WarnerActive

Platforms: PC

When Baywatch was among the most popular TV series, every video game developer wanted their own adventure game. It was the year 1995 – and we bring up the legendary series starring Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff for a good reason. Another character from that show appeared in adventure games such as Panic in the Dark – it was Erika Eleniak, another girl from Baywatch. The way she ran in Baywatch...

The cover in the style of a 1960 romance. Only Kojima does this sort of thing today. And Star Wars. - The Godlike Keanu Reeves and Company – Movie Stars in the Games - dokument - 2019-11-04
The cover in the style of a 1960 romance. Only Kojima does this sort of thing today. And Star Wars.

In Panic in the Dark, she played the dual role of twin sisters, the good and the bad. The first sister, Jamie, wanted to save an amusement park from becoming a big parking lot, which Janie, a bad corporate lawyer, wanted to achieve. And we played a journalist who tried to help the first one to save the place.

It played like Myst – a typical point'n'click with static backgrounds, only crazier and funnier. The double creation of Eleniak, with how flamboyant and exaggerated in the media she was – was a perfect match for the vibrant game.

Hubert Sosnowski

Hubert Sosnowski

He joined GRYOnline.pl in 2017, as an author of texts about games and movies. He's currently the head of the film department and the Filmomaniak.pl website. Learned how to write articles while working for the Dzika Banda portal. His texts were published on kawerna.pl, film.onet.pl, zwierciadlo.pl, and in the Polish Playboy. Has published stories in the monthly Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror magazine, as well as in the first volume of the Antologii Wolsung. Lives for "middle cinema" and meaty entertainment, but he won't despise any experiment or Fast and Furious. In games, looks for a good story. Loves Baldur's Gate 2, but when he sees Unreal Tournament, Doom, or a good race game, the inner child wakes up. In love with sheds and thrash metal. Since 2012, has been playing and creating live action role-playing, both within the framework of the Bialystok Larp Club Zywia, and commercial ventures in the style of Witcher School.

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