The summer blockbuster season is upon us, and these days big movies get big video games. I find that the most successful movie-based video games are those that don’t try to rehash the film but instead use the celluloid story and setting as inspiration. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (Atari; PC, PS3, Xbox 360; rated mature) is a perfect example.

Released in April, the game is packaged with a high-definition remake of its prequel, the 2004 Xbox game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, which tells the story of Vin Diesel’s character before we meet him in the film Pitch Black. Dark Athena again puts players in the role of the antihero Riddick, as he escapes from prison, only to find himself in the clutches of a vicious mercenary.

Many other recent movie-based games are also set before and after films. Wanted: Weapons of Fate (Warner Bros.; PC, PS3, Xbox 360; rated mature) expands the story of Wanted’s Wesley Gibson, a member of a fraternal order of assassins. In this shooter, which has you moving from cover to cover and distracting enemies in order to flank them, your objective is to take out opponents by using all manner of firearms and bending—yes, bending—the path of your bullets. The game may be based on the film, which itself was adapted from a comic-book series, but it succeeds because it shows what happens to Gibson after the film ends, as well as to his parents after his birth.

Released on May 19, the game adaptation of the latest Terminator film, Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros.; PC, PS3, Xbox 360; rated teen), is similar in that it takes the characters and settings from the movie and tells a different story. Set two years before the events of the film, it’s a shooter that has players fighting Skynet’s Terminators, allowing them to become John Connor while he is a soldier in the resistance. This is a part of Connor’s story we haven’t seen before. Now, we get to play it. Unfortunately, the bare-bones effort isn’t worth the few hours it takes to finish it.

Raven Software developers took a different approach with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Activision Blizzard; DS, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360; rated mature), which came out on May 1. While the game follows the film’s story line closely, it offers more of a plot than the movie. That’s the advantage a 10-hour game has over a two-hour film. Even so, this rampaging game is all about giving players the chance to become Wolverine, the indestructible mutant with retractable claws. And that’s every bit as satisfying as you’d expect. Wolverine’s an antihero too. Call it a trend.

Watchmen: The End Is Nigh (Warner Bros.; PC, PS3, Xbox 360; rated mature) and Star Trek: D-A-C (Paramount; Xbox 360; rated everyone) are arcade-style games that draw inspiration from the films on which they are based. The End Is Nigh, an episodic action game, is set years before the film and puts players in the roles of vigilantes Rorschach and the Nite Owl II. The first episode is a bit thin, but it’s saved somewhat by the fact that after you’ve played as the former character, you can play again as the latter. Their fighting moves are different enough that replaying isn’t tedious.

In Star Trek: D-A-C, released on May 13, it’s the Federation versus the Romulans. The multiplayer game (you can play on your own with the game’s artificial intelligence running the other ships) allows you to choose one of three classes of ship with varying speed, armour, and firepower ratings. After that, it’s a simple matter of piloting your ship using a top-down view, destroying enemy ships, and trying to either defend or capture space stations. If your ship is about to be destroyed, you can use an escape pod to get to an ally’s vessel. There’s no real story to the game; this one is about space battles, pure and simple.

Still to come this summer is the long-awaited Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Atari; DS, PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360; rated teen). Based on the Ghostbusters movie franchise, it’s scheduled for release in North America on June 16, 25 years after the original film debuted. But there have been many delays with this project, so don’t be surprised if that date slips. When we finally get to play the game, we’ll join the four original cast members in ridding New York City of apparitions. The game has been referred to as the third Ghostbusters film because it’s set two years after Ghostbusters II.

Avatar, James Cameron’s upcoming 3-D science-fiction movie, won’t be hitting theatres until the end of the year. But it deserves a mention because the game adaptation, from Ubisoft, is being created not only in tandem with the film but with contributions from Cameron and his filmmaking team. You can say what you want about Cameron, but the guy can use film to tell a story with the best of them, and I expect nothing less from the game.