Game of Thrones

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The game is a spin off the very popular Game of Thrones series and is one of the rare games which manages to capture the mood of the original book.

Cyanide is a small studio, so don't expect huge open world, or anything technically advanced the game engine is quite old. But I think it is good enough not to distract you from the actual gameplay.

The story revolves around queen Cersei killing off all Robert's bastards, pregnant girl on the run, and two old friends, one of which is bound to kill and another one to protect the future mother.

Don't want to spoil anything, but if you are familiar with Song of Ice and Fire books you know what to expect a lot of gore, nudity, intrigues, plots within plots, backstabbing, torturing and blood of innocence all over the place. Definitely not a game I'd want my kids watch me playing.

I really enjoyed the music and voice acting, which was taken from HBO series and helps you to immerse in (I'd recommend to watch TV show before playing the game, this way a lot of characters and events will make much more sense)

By itself the game is story and character driven. A mix of RPG and Adventure with a fair amount of cut scenes. It is not too long, but will keep you glued to your gaming chair. The story is good enough to be cut&pasted directly into Game of Thrones book. Nuff said.

Graphic engine is a bit outdated, but it works fairly well with just a few minor bugs.

Combat system is original, the active pause (a slow down actually) which allows you to give orders is very well done.

Character abilities are unique and fun to explore. The game really shines at hardest level you are forced to be careful about your development, combat tactics and plot decisions.

Replay values is very low, because when you know how it ends there isn't much sense to replay. I'd say $40 is fair value for the game new in box.

Overall it is highly recommended while you wait for the next HBO season or next book from Martin.

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Well, let's begin with the good.

The story to this game serves as a prequel to the books & subsequently the HBO series. The plot follows two characters, each of whom you control throughout the game. In the first half you switch back and forth at certain intervals in the story until, at length, both heroes come together to finish the final half of the game.

Prior to both heroes' paths merging the story is awkward and sloppy. There are many secondary characters mentioned throughout the conversations you have with other NPC's and most of those mentioned never appear in the game. As such, their constant mention is irritating as it quickly becomes impossible to keep track of who all these people are. Once the two playable characters come together, however, the story arc becomes much simpler and the last half of the game is actually pretty well told.

The music and voiceover work are absolutely astounding. They are easily the most well done part of the entire game.

Now for the bad. The graphics are terrible by modern standards and the characters' movements are awkwardly rendered. The faces especially are flat and unexpressive.

Gameplay is difficult to master though, given time, the combat mechanics due become easier to use. Combat is performed by lining up a queue of character specific skills rather than by actively controlling your character. Three action slots can be filled at one time, assuming you're enough energy to execute them. This is an unusual combat interface and although it does get easier to use over time, I cannot say that I ever reached a point where I enjoyed it.

At certain points in the story you must track down prey and, although one of the principle characters is supposed to be a master tracker, it is his dog that does the heavy lifting here. You must control the dog at multiple places in the story which, though unique, is not particularly enjoyable.

The game's greatest failing overall is the number and length of cinematics. I know that many gamers like to skip over them in any game, thereby missing out on the plot of a game and thereby losing all contexts in which their actions take place. As a writer, I am fascinated by a video games' ability to tell engaging stories and as such never skip cinematics. Usually. Game of Thrones tries so hard to tell an engaging story that it forgets to be a game. Especially in the first half, literally every single battle dumps you directly into another cut scene. The opening scene for your first character in particular is painfully drawn out and most of the dialogue is pointless. Many others follow suite. The entire game feels more like an interactive movie than an actual game. The developers attempt to make the game as epic as the books was a huge mistake, given that the very nature of a game dictates that playability comes before all other considerations. Even for an ardent fan of video game storytelling as myself, Game of Thrones simply tried too hard to cram in content when they should have been more focused on making the game fun.

The game also falls prey to several glitches. In combat, your characters often decide for themselves whom they wish to fight. This becomes a problem when the enemies they target are on the other side of a door while there are four or five right beside you trying to kill them. Although you can easily switch targets during combat, the characters would often just stand there or keep automatically trying to run to the enemies they originally targeted rather than attacking the ones you've just selected.

Also, there is a level I n which you must adorn the armor of a city watchman in order to infiltrate their corrupt ranks. To do this, the quest requires you to obtain each piece of armor separately. Two pieces can be had for free, but the rest must be purchased and they are not cheap. I had to sell all of my equipped gear to buy it and was barely able to afford it at that. And I was being frugal throughout the game. If you haven't the coin, you simply hit a dead end in the game wherein you cannot proceed any further. There is no alternative to solving the puzzle. This is a horrible flaw as it ends the game in a way that cannot be undone by simply reloading an earlier game as you have no idea this part is coming. You would have had to been scrimping and saving every penny from the first mission on. Such built in dead ends are inexcusable.

Lastly, there is a level that requires you to use the dog to navigate a dungeon maze. The level forces you to solve it in a very specific way; and offers no instruction on how to achieve this goal. The order things must be done are not clearly defined and without a walkthrough to guide me I would never had figured it out. Fortunately by this time I was so fed up with the game as a whole that I had no compunction about cheating.

Overall, Game of Thrones is a horribly designed mess. Though the story is engaging (in the second half, anyway), it is simply not enough to justify the hours of gameplay or rather scant minutes of gameplay followed by hours of cut scenes required to complete it. If you absolutely love all things "Game of Thrones" related, then rent this if you must. But I can't recommend buying it. It is a poor attempt at cashing in on a popular franchise and is, quite frankly, not even worth the price of the rental. Despite multiple possible outcomes; the game's clumsy construction makes the replay value low. One would not, I imagine, torture themselves to suffer through this game twice. I barely managed to plow through it the first time.

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Game of Thrones for the PS3 is billed as a prequel to the HBO series. What it really is is a prequel to a fully finished game.

We adore the Game of Throne series on TV as well as the books. We've seen the series many times. We were enthusiastically looking forward to the game release. We were disappointed with what the game provided.

The game starts out seeming interesting. There are two characters that you go back and forth playing, one being a Night's Watch brother and the other being a Red Priest. You get some small amount of configuration for each you can choose one of three basic battle techniques. These then affect your "attack tree" for building experience. The priest gets magic, and the fighter gets a dog to take over with.

You find various items along the way of your quests, mostly junk you just sell, but occasionally you do hit a useful item. There's an arena mini-game to hone your battle skills, and you bet on them as well. You can even bet against yourself and throw a fight. You do get some decisions along the way, and they affect how certain characters react to you later on.

Gameplay is frustrating. The game will auto-save when you head into a section, and if it's long and convoluted, you're sent all the way back to that spot. This issue then trains you to have to save after every single action which is tedious. Loading times are quite slow as well. By the end of the game it seemed like one was doing the same thing over and over again.

Graphics and sound were OK. Not stunning, but not atrocious either.

All in all, the game was not so awful that we gave up part way through, but it didn't leave us thrilled with the experience when we finished. It could have been so much more. The bar was set high by the novel and the actors in the series. The game doesn't rise up to those standards.

Rating: 6/10

We purchased this game with our own funds in order to do this review.

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Okay, I'll be completely honest. I'm not the biggest RPG fan when it comes to video games... but, I do love Game of Thrones, so I figured I'd give this game a try. The sad thing is, there could have been something really great here. George RR Martin has created a very intense and intricate world that could really have allowed game developers to do almost anything with it. And it seems that these game developers had that in mind when they created this game. They took the liberty of designing new characters, opening up the realm to more than just the few worlds we've read about or seen in the HBO series, and introducing more about certain characters we already recognize.

Unfortunately, this game falls flat on its face.

I think the thing that drove me the most crazy was the controls. They were hard to understand, clunky, and all-around a pain in the ass to use. I'm still not exactly sure how I got through half the battles, considering I found myself just hitting "X" a couple hundred times and hoping for the best. I think this game could have been more successful if it followed a combat system more like the Assassin's Creed series, with alternating weapons easily accessible (rather than having to keep opening your inventory and figuring out how to equip something). Also, the smoothness of how Assassin's Creed operates in battle would have been ten times more pleasing.

Additionally, there are times when you have to pick-up certain items that have been dropped. I found myself slapping my controller for 10+ minutes (you're supposed to just hit the "X" button when near the item to pick it up) and running in circles around the item trying to grab it before the system would recognize that there was something there to grab. Considering that some of these items were necessary to continuing the game, it was wildly annoying.

On top of this, the graphics were disappointing. In a time where games have become so life-like, the graphics in parts of this seemed half-assed. There were a lot of glitches I noticed in different parts of the landscape. Some faces seemed more developed than others. Overall, just slightly off compared to what I was used to. Granted, I could easily enjoy a game with so-so graphics if the rest of the game is solid, but this was not the case. Just an additional annoyance to add.

I will say this... the developers actually created an interesting story. It's just over-shadowed by a frustrating system. I would love to see another attempt for a GoT game on the PS3 in the future, because it's absolutely one of my favorite stories of all time. Just something that has a little more staying power than this.

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The story in the game was very intriguing but the first few battles were so hard to get through that I gave up and traded it in. I really wanted to be able to play this game badly, but it was just too hard.