Okay, I can't do this anymore. Well done, HBO's licensing team: you officially broke me. After literally months of pretending not to see that same goddamn ad for 'Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming. The officially Licensed browser game' I cannot take it anymore, the laws of curiosity dictate that I must ask "What is the Sam Hill is this fresh hellspawn upon our world?" I feel like a failure admitting that. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't manage to shake the clawing paw of morbid fascination creeping up on me in my darkest thoughts. Even when every sane cell in my body was screaming blue bloody murder "This is bait, don't give them attention!" I couldn't resist the temptation to grant them exactly that. Then again, no one actually reads this Blog so I can spare a page or 2 feeding into my lust to natter on about the bizarre.
For those unaware, I was a big fan of Game of Thrones for a good many number of years. I know it sounds like one of those 'hipster brags' but I honestly jumped aboard this show long before it's meteoric rise to stardom. Originally we just saw 'Sean Bean' and thought "Huh, he's a great actor, wonder what his show's like?" What was born from an idle thought ballooned into a red hot obsession that wouldn't just consume me and my entire family, but soon the entire TV watching world. I hardly need to tell you, dear reader, how Thrones-Mania forced it's way into the public consciousness more voraciously than with any other show before. Whatsmore, this new show bought along with it a renewed fascination in a genre that I love but which has gone criminally under appreciated in the public consciousness: Fantasy. Everything was good and dandy for the longest time as the world was tricked into watching the greatest nerdy-fantasy show in the world whilst enjoying all the 'drama' and 'suspense' that Benioff and Weiss's adaptation had drummed up.
Of course, things wouldn't stay great forever, because we're all living in the worst time line, and the show began to waver in quality for the later years until a final season that is sure to go down as one of the worst/most insulting finale's in television history. At this moment the bubble burst and cynicism returned to the world like a falling comet come to cleanse the world of it's optimism. Like waking from a great dream, everyone saw the world once more for the disappointment it was and no one dared to hope ever again: the end. It was around about this time that adverts started popping up all over the web for the 'Game of Thrones browser game' but I didn't take it seriously at the time. Sure, HBO completely dropped the ball by allowing Benioff and Weiss run rampant with poorly written scripts, but there's no way they would officially licence something so crappy looking; would they? No, this must be one of those stupid 'fake jobs' that you see all over the Internet. These sorts of ads made their way onto Youtube somehow, but surely it would only a matter of time before the sane world caught up to them and this obvious mistake was sued out of existence, right?
But here we are in the new year and still we're still subject to the same Youtube ads with the same poor quality, and so one must come to terms with a frighting reality; yes, this is an officially licensed Game of Thrones game and yes, the HBO licencing team truly cared this little about keeping their brand respectable. (I guess there's no point in caring anymore after the showrunners burnt the fanbase to the ground, huh?) What makes this doubly heartbreaking is that news actually leaked early of a licencing job being done for Game of Thrones, only back then the rumour was that Bethesda were set to be the lucky recipients of this contract. This excited folk to no end. Bethesda, kings of the fantasy RPG, working on a GOT game? Who could ask for a better choice? Unfortunately, that year would go on without any official word and would end with the disastrous launch of Fallout 76. (Now no-one even wants Bethesda to touch their own franchises, let alone any others.)
With all this in mind I decided to subject myself to the 'Game of Thrones: Winter is coming' not too long ago and you know what; it's not nearly as bad as the trailers make it look; it is so much more infinitely worse. First off, I couldn't for the life of me find an officially hosting website so I had to get there off of GTarcade's site (Which I'm not proud about using givien the other games they are known for hosting.) The first thing to notice off the bat is that this game runs poorly off the browser, now I'm told that performance can be approved by downloading the game, but I was running X-Com 2 on max settings last night so I plain refuse to accept this as my own responsibility. (Plus I don't want these guy's software on my computer, yuck!)
The second thing to note is that almost every single character in this game is a poorly drawn, even more poorly animated, sprite that is based on the likeness of the characters from the show. You start off by being shown Melisandre pulsating in front of your face with just enough effort put in for you to recognise who she is but not enough so that you're even slightly impressed. Immediately, the first words you hear will piss you off if you even care a little bit about the GOT lore. (Which, apparently, I still inexplicably do.) "My Lord" she says for some reason, "The army of the dead are approaching, we need to stop them at Winterfell". Okay then; so why the hell am I in charge of King's Landing then? That's on the other bloody side of Westeros, it'll take months to mount any sort of defence for the North from here, the absolute southern-most part on the entire damn continent! So right away you should be pretty aware how few craps were given to the conception of this title.
You might find yourself wondering something very essential, especially after all the vague and contradictory adverts that only look marginally better than Mafia City's marketing; what the heck is the game even about? Well the answer to that is relatively simple; have you ever played one of those 'city building' games on the Mobile before? This is essentially just that with a Game of Thrones skin. Yep, that means the entire gameplay loop revolves around building and upgrading structures, training troops and basically doing all the clerical work that no one else wants to do. Then you are treated to a long-ass timer that counts down in real time and cannot be circumvented unless you're willing to fork out on the in-game currency 'Diamonds' which are limited and can only be supplemented by buying the premium currency 'Black Diamonds' in turn. (I think I'm starting to understand why HBO were on board with this licensing job...)
As I'm certain you've cottoned onto by know; this is a game that exists purely to sell crappy microtransaction gimmicks to you at every single possible opportunity. That is the only aspect of this game to which any real effort has been put behind with everything else, even basic stuff, falling to the wayside. The 'buy stuff' menu is forever shoved in your unsuspecting face whilst you try to do literally anything else, every single item is discounted with 'limited time' offers and each time you close a shop window there's another window hiding behind it. (It's like being in adware hell.) Compare that with the on-the-ground 'tactical' combat which is supposed to be the inciting gameplay that moves forward the story, and you are met with battles that are entirely auto fought. And I mean entirely, not only are you not given any choice in tactical composition, layout, or even bog-standard turn-based stuff; there's not even any animations for the battling, you just take your army over to the battle site (which can take anywhere from 10-30 minutes to do) and click on the fight; the bigger army wins.
Now, there is a more hands-on tactical battling system, but that is entirely separate from the main campaign (What little there is) and can only be accessed by clicking the Weirwood tree in the Red Keep. (Why that's the case I'll never know.) These matches are just 'sceanrio' affairs with no story connecting them but they at least boast a 3D battle happening in the background. (Likely solely to circumvent false advertising laws) Although the prospect of interactivity is almost entirely illusionary as all of these matches are so simple that most can be won without interacting at all. In fact, I'm fairly certain that interacting (which in this mode merely means telling your armies when to do a special move) does absolutely nothing for the outcome of these battles and they are just a complete waste of time.
At this point I think that you get the point, however I'm treating this as a review so I might as well be clear about this. Verdict: 'Game of Thrones: Winter is coming. The officially licensed browser Game' is a total piece of crap with the bare minimum amount of effort put into every part of it's production. It is lazily exploitative, poorly constructed and often grammatically incorrect in it's menus. (What are "Citys"?) If morbid curiosity has you wondering about this title, let me save you an aneurysm by telling you that this is not worth your freetime. You'd make better use of your time by watching reruns of 'The Bachelorette', and would probably enjoy yourself a lot more doing so. I would say that Youzu interactive should be ashamed in themselves for slapping this crap together and calling it a game, but these are the guys that bought 'League of Angels' into the world, so I doubt they possess the self awareness for any emotion even remotely as advanced as 'Shame'. Now I've only played 1.5 hours of this game, so there's sure to be more that I cannot stomach playing to, although I will revisit this topic if ever I grow the constitution to or if I'm asked to. (Luckily no one actually reads these so I think I'm safe for that latter one.) Until then, just take my advice and ignore this game like the plague, your sanity will thank you.
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