Game of Thrones

Unlike the other reviewers so far, I found this game to be great fun. Admittedly, if you are expecting a Skyrim or Mass Effect set in Westeros, you will probably be disappointed, as it does not have anywhere near that scope.

However, the storyline is great, and very much in keeping with the Song of Ice and Fire ethos. As in the book, there are a few straightforward villains who are there to be hated outright, and everyone else as flawed characters doing what they think is right and ending up fighting with each other! I won't say any more than that, there are a fair few surprises in the plot which I think fans of the books/ TV series will appreciate.

All in all, I think it was a good idea to create a new story with new characters so the fans of the book don't know what is going to happen. However the plot develops alongside the happenings of the book in a very convincing way.

The gameplay reminded me of Dragon Age, where you can "pause" the game and assign actions to your character(s) in combat. It is slightly different in that the game is not completely paused but slowed down, which means you can't sit around for ever trying to figure out what you are going to do.

I have never played a completely linear RPG before, and I don't think I'll ever play one again if I can avoid it.

There's not a lot of game in Game of Thrones: the game. RPGs, despite having a scripted storyline as a frame for the overall experience, usually allow the player to make decisions which have consequences, to roam freely in the game world and to develop and play the role in his or her individual fashion. None of these options is available in this game. In Game of Thrones you may travel only where the story needs you to travel and fight whomever the story demands you fight. There is no real role playing involved. This is just an interactive story, one step removed from an audiobook experience, in my opinion.

The one area in which, above all others, you would expect a bit of freedom is combat... but even that is a broken system, seemingly purposely designed to suck any enjoyment and self-expression out of the game and its player. I want to press a button and see my guy swing his sword; anticipate an incoming blow and hit a button in time to block or avoid an incoming attack. Sadly the combat works like this: enemies attack you; you slow down time to bring up a wheel displaying all your character's abilities; you choose 3 abilities to add to a queue; you wait and watch your character perform the attacks/buffs/etc. which you told him to perform... except you don't even get to watch him do that because you have to be choosing the next set of commands while all that's going on. Essentially you spend your battles doing the admin, ordering tasks for somebody else to carry out. It never feels as though you are doing anything for yourself.

The voice acting is dreadful and sounds like words are being read from a page by somebody who doesn't understand the language in which they are written. Place and character names change pronunciation depending on who is actually speaking at the time, even within a single conversation between caharacters. You'd think the makers could have decided on a pronunciation and instructed each "actor" or "actress" to stick to it.

The graphics are even worse than the voice acting and the maximum-of-three-poses-animation used by every single cut-scene character is bizarre. Everyone in Westeros is a little tea pot!

The game also has many bugs such as items you can't ever pick up, solid objects passing through each other, long unexplained freezes, constantly repeated dialogue from background NPCs, items vanishing from your inventory and too many more to mention.

The story itself is quite good but I don't expect the vast majority to plow on through the pitiful mess of this game long enough to discover that.

It took me a while to get used to the game, but once the story really got goings , I was hooked. The game is pretty long as well.