I've had. I mean, I've absolutely had it. I can't take this anymore.

In the last year, I've played a number of games that have either been well-intentioned but spectacular misfires or so grotesquely bad that I consider them to be an assault on the senses. All of them have shared one common trait: they were based on movies and television shows.

Slide Show!

Fight Club; The Godfather; Jaws Unleashed; Scarface: The World is Yours; Peter Jackson's King Kong. The list goes on. But the worst offender since the ill-fated Atari 2600 game E.T. has to be "Reservoir Dogs." Published by Eidos and developed by Volatile Games, Reservoir Dogs is awful material from start to finish. Where do I begin? The game design is weak and cartoonish; the game play is clunky; the combat features, such as hostage-taking, crowd control and "bullet festival" attack (a silly "bullet time" feature) are unoriginal and unexciting; the car chase segments are similarly tired and pointless; and you can finish the game in a day. It's a short, pointless game that would be completely unremarkable without the Reservoir Dogs name.

I suppose that's where my biggest complaint lies: the source material isn't treated with respect. Whether you like the film or not, "Reservoir Dogs" is considered a cult classic. What Eidos and Volatile have done is reduced a film that prided itself on dialogue, character and a tense plot to a bloodbath of a video game that can be summed up as shooting lots and lots of cops and maybe a few innocent bystanders.

I never felt like the developers took the movie seriously. For example, during the car chase sequences, the characters engage in colourful stories from their past, but the dialogue is awful and the whole thing just comes off like a joke that's meant to mock one of the treasures of the original film. Good grief, the voice acting is terrible, too. Even Michael Madsen, who was the only original cast member to lend his voice, fails at his task as Mr. Blonde.

Speaking of "Reservoir Dogs" the movie, the thing that drew me to the game was that it was supposed to fill in the gaps and back story regarding the infamous bank robbery. It was an intriguing premise, and I was eager to see what Eidos and Volatile could come up with. In short, the final product is nothing more than a bunch of exaggerated, over-the-top action sequences that simple don't mesh with the movie. In fact, the game never attempts to show what happened in the bank, and there are no new story angles, plot twists or character development. And we wonder why games based on movies have usually failed.

Reservoir Dogs is an ugly experience, and I'm not the only one that things so, either. A number of game reviewers have given Reservoir Dogs extremely low ratings. Still, it's amazing to me that some gaming sites and magazines have given Reservoir Dogs above average or better scores. I'm not sure if they played the same game as I did, and if indeed they did, I'm not sure they understand what a quality game truly is. About the only thing that's good about Reservoir Dogs is the music; the game features several songs from the movie's soundtrack, such as "Stuck in the Middle with You" and "Little Green Bag." But that's it. And it isn't nearly enough to save a truly awful game.

Why have games like Reservoir Dogs been such agonizing experiences? It may have something to do with game publishers looking to cash in on popular brands. Perhaps they believed that even a crappy game would go gold if it had the title of a popular film or T.V. show. But that's only part of it. Another factor is that game developers haven't quite figured out how to construct a compelling narrative that features storylines with depth and rich character interaction.