Games That Should Feature New Zealand

By Sam Leitch

How would our beloved franchises be within a NZ setting?

Anyone that has been to our humble shores, or watched Lord of the Rings, knows that the land of the long white cloud is indeed a special and beautiful place. It seems that the movie industry is cottoning onto this fact (plus that it’s dead cheap to film a movie here), so could the game industry jump on the bandwagon too? Could the New Zealand Story really have been that far ahead of it’s time? Who knows? We sure don’t, so instead, I’ve made a fun list of a couple of big game series that should "do a Hollywood" and digitise parts of our clean and green country for our gaming pleasure.

GTA: Wellington

Ever since GTA went 3D, I have thought that Wellington would be a perfect local. Wellington has varied terrain, a good mix of suburbs outlining the city in close proximity, and most importantly more nooks and crannies in the CBD than you can shake a stick at. Plimmer Steps are just waiting to be ridden up on a chopper . . .

Imagine (but don’t actually do it) screaming down Brooklyn Hill, taking a shortcut through Central Park, making sure to catch lots and lots of air before driving through Civic Square and then up the swirly down-ramp on the James Smith car park. The best bit? Grabbing a mountain bike and taking shortcuts through Wellington’s sweet, sweet networks of single-track to evade the hot fuzz.

Mount Vic alone would be worth it.

Silent Hill: Rotorua

Creeping through the steam, you see a ghostly silhouette. You don’t know if it’s been alerted to your presence yet. You aim for a head shot, carefully watching the figures movements to decide if it’s human. It gets closer sloshing in the mud, either way, it smells like a corpse.

Okay, I may suck at horror writing, but you can’t deny Rotorua would be a cool as Hell location for a survival horror: tramping through mud with steam rising out of everywhere, keeping an eye on both the pools of mud and the edge of the forest for Hell's spawn.

With a deserted town and lots of mist, Rotorua really would be perfect fodder for a location in the next Silent Hill.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Marlborough Sounds Edition

Okay, so many didn’t like the sailing in Wind Waker. I for one thought it was cool. It would be better though if you could see land the whole time though, so why not base it in the Marlborough Sounds? You’d be able to skip along the beaches having something to look at the whole time.

The best bit, though, would be that while there was a lot of water, you’d also have huge landmasses to explore. The games map could be huge, with Link hiking up to the top of mountains and able to look for miles in all directions. The main town area could even be on the Inter-Islander with such popular mini-games as "get to the café before they sell the yummy stuff".

V8 Supercars: Wellington

Okay, so I’m being a bit cheeky with this one. V8 fans and Wellingtonians alike with memories greater than goldfish ought to remember the sad state of affairs that put the brakes on the capital city hosting what would be the best sports even the country had ever seen. Street races really are something special, and Wellington would have been a great venue. Well, it might not be bigger than the Rugby World Cup, but it would certainly have been bigger than Auckland hosting the America’s Cup – and, as seen by the Sevens each year and the Lions Tour, Wellington knows how to throw down a party!

Of course the proposed Wellington track would have also been fantastic to race on in the next V8 Supercars game and would have offered something different to the other tracks in the game.

Now, some of you might be asking why Wellington features twice in this article? Well, I live here, so I’m allowed to be biased. Besides, that’s only the beginning of the possibilities. We would love to hear some of your ideas for game locations. Tell us all about it here in our forums.

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