Sunday, April 28, 2019

Game Of Thrones Telltale Games (Xbox 360) Review



Game of Thrones is a graphical adventure game developed and released by Telltale Games in December 2014 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, iOS, Android, Microsoft Windows, and OS X. This game is based upon the HBO show Game Of Thrones which is originally based upon George R.R. Martin's book series called A Song of Ice and Fire.
THE GOOD





This game will be familiar to you if you've played previous Telltale Games such as The Wolf Among Us, Borderlands, or Batman. As far as the setting goes, if you don't know the books or the TV show you may get lost as you jump right into Westeros. Of course the characters created for this game are introduced but characters that are from the TV show aren't so if you play this before watching the show or reading the book you'll be a bit confused.



The cast of this game includes Tyrion Lannister (played by Peter Dinkage), Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), Ramsey Bolton (Iwan Rheon), Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer), and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). As you can see it is an all-star cast, granted lots of these actors became famous for being in Game Of Thrones.




Game Of Thrones was released as six episodes at five dollars each or the whole game for twenty dollars. This games setting is between the end of the third season up to the fifth season so I would watch through the fifth season before playing this game as you'll have a better understanding of what's going on, plus it's a great show so you have nothing to lose by watching.



The beginning of each episode opens with a title crawl that looks and sounds just like the TV show. The graphics aren't nearly as good but I like how the map goes over the locations featured in the game including Ironrath.



You'll play as one of five characters from House Forrester, a northern family based out of fortress Ironrath in the Wolfswood forest. Their power comes from the Ironwood trees inside of Wolfswood forest which are highly regarded for military use making whoever controls the Wolfswood forest an important family. While this family is not in the HBO TV show it is mentioned in the books.



Through the five Forrester characters you'll visit locations familiar including King's Landing, The Wall, and Essos as well as new locations in the Wolfswood forest. The locations we've seen in the show look very similar to how they look on TV, the Telltale engine barely keeps this game on the rails trying to make the world look realistic. This game also has some graphic violence, it is Game Of Thrones, so this game isn't for young kids.



I won't give away much of the story but I will say that I enjoyed this game and would pay to play in this world again, more on this later. While in the long run of the TV show House Forrester isn't important enough to be on the show, the story  of the Forrester's is faithful to the TV show and goes to show that Game of Thrones games don't have to end with huge battles like the Battle Of The Bastards. Don't get me wrong, there is combat, just not hundreds or thousands of troops battling at the same time.



Compared to other Telltale games, this one has a lot of combat that can quickly kill you. In the other games there isn't much combat and what there is isn't very dangerous. Also, to the best of my knowledge, Telltale has a game that you can skip the combat if it's too hard for you. Game Of Thrones is much more involved, not hard, just more involved. If you do make an error that gets your character killed the game will bring you back to your wrong decision so you can change it.

One feature that is lacking in this game, compared to the TV show, is the sex. Unlike all the sexy time in the HBO show, this game has none of that and I'm OK with their decision. Usually having sex in a video game is mostly a joke unless you're thirteen so I'm glad they passed. Now that I think of it I would probably have fun playing a Game Of Thrones sex scene in a Telltale game. Press X to thrust, press Y to change position etc. Hell, you could probably make a game with sex but the characters keep their clothes on like network television. This sounds like a great idea to me, look out for Sexy Time the game, cumming soon!

THE BAD

Oh boy, here we go. Where do I start? This game is based upon one of my favorite book and TV series by a game company that have produced games that I like so you think, where could they go wrong? As far as story and game play Game Of Thrones is fine, it's everything else that is broken.



First off the amount of lag in this game is hands down the worst I've ever played. The music starts many seconds before you see any video. Characters in the cut scene appear and disappear all the time. You get the classic Telltale mouths moving out of sync with the audio. The video freezes up every time the angle changes. Punches and kicks do not land where they are suppose to. If you added up the time you spent waiting for the next scene to load you could probably fit in another game to play while you wait. This game is the biggest pile of garbage I've ever played, especially with a huge IP like Game Of Thrones. I just don't know what they were thinking.



Similar to when I played A Wolf Among Us for the Xbox 360, in the last episode of Game Of Thrones about a minute of gameplay went by where characters were talking, this is the last episode so it's important talk, but there was no sound and no subtitles so I have no clue what they were talking about. I did my best and I can say without a doubt that the decisions I made were just about the worst choices I could make but I had fun.

THE REST

If I based this review off the Good parts and skip the bad parts I would recommend this game. The story is good, Game Of Thrones is a great property, and I like Telltale and the games they produce. I'm guessing there was a time crunch near launch and unfortunately this game suffers for it. Game Of Thrones was suppose to have a sequel to this game but now that Telltale Games has gone under the sequel will not be coming. The sequel was setup in the last episode but in the end it was all for naught.



I haven't played the Xbox One version, or any other version for that matter, but for the Xbox 360 it's bad. Due to all the reasons I've stated I'd rate this game a 5 out of 10. It's a good game with a good story and if they had released this game in a better state it would be great. What a shame.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...