Can Michael Fassbender's Assassin's Creed save the video game movie?

Will Ubisoft's bloodthirsty romp through history consign previous celluloid terrors to the dustbin of history?

The history of video game-to-film adaptations is littered with the rotting corpses of productions featuring half-arsed storylines, C-grade casting and a distinctly regrettable absence of directorial vision. The famously appalling German director Uwe Boll has made a living from trotting out cheap and nasty films, which usually make their money back thanks to gamers who are fooled into thinking they are about to re-experience their greatest moments spent with a PlayStation or Xbox on the big screen.

The reality is usually rather different. Movies and video games operate under a completely different set of rules, and quite often the extended non-playable sequences in games which most resemble traditional film narrative are the bits gamers click through in boredom after the first dozen times of viewing. Only the Resident Evil movies have achieved successful franchise status, and only then without any particular degree of critical traction, and largely because zombie films will always have their place in the heart of a certain type of filmgoer.