Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #20632 in Digital Video Games
- Brand: Cyanide Studio
- Model: 40792s - Genesis1
- Released on: 2011-09-29
- Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows XP
- Format: Download
A Game of Thrones - Genesis [Download]
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
71 of 72 people found the following review helpful.
By Rhandhali
One of the first things that strikes me about A Game of Thrones: Genesis is how bland it is. Before even talking about mechanics or gameplay or graphics or anything else that makes a game AGOT:G fails because it doesn't completely embrace the source material it purportedly represents. One gets the impression that the game was designed and then, only after a license was acquired, some flavor text slapped together at the last minute and plugged in. The game is painfully generic in comparison to the rich setting of the novels and television series.The first thing you notice is that there aren't even proper place names. In every level you operate from "feudal home" and move about a map populated by places with such interesting names as "town" or "gold mine". You really can't tell that you are supposed to be playing on a map of Westeros; you could just as well be playing in medieval England, Germany, France or even Greyhawk or Faerûn. The world is completely and utterly generic.You are given units that are major characters from the books but they don't do anything. In the first campaign Nymeria is a unit, for example, but she does nothing. You can select her and she'll spurt the occasional flavor text to remind you of where the game is supposed to be set, but you can't move her, order her or do anything at all with her. She just stands there, fixed and immobile. When you can do anything with the characters it's something like a lame escort mission.Missions include things like conquering named places from Westeros. However, no such places exist anywhere on the map. There is no "Crackclaw Point", only "Feudal Home" and a dozen places named "Town". Even the dragons of the Targaryens, whose names are mentioned dozens of times in the books do not warrant anything other than the name of "Dragon" in this game.The mechanics of the game represent a great idea, and one that works well with the source material. Players spend time building up alliances, undermining each other and gathering resources until war inevitably sets in, at which point it becomes an all out slug fest for control with little room for political maneuvering. I like that, it fits the source material and it's a great idea in its own right. Once the banners are called all bets are off and it's you-win-or-you die with your chances of success largely dependent upon how well you prepared for the inevitable war.Unfortunately the real time implementation of these mechanics turns them into a micromanaging mess. During the game you will be constantly following single units around. Enemy units, even military units, will enter your territory and be promptly ignored by the spies, assassins and soldiers you've hired requiring you to constantly watch for a little red blip on the minimap to show where your peasants are being massacred.The graphics are reminiscent of Warcraft III. They might have been great 5 or 6 years ago, but now they're just kind of bland and unimpressive. When combined with the blandness of the game and the mechanics it just makes the game mediocre, bordering on a failure, on every level.Other points to make, well, your units also can be as dumb as pile of rocks. Literally, they will act like a pile of rocks while enemy units fill them with arrows or start stabbing them. The music also shifts inappropriately at times; it will switch over to dramatic "battle time" music while there is nothing going on. Not a terrible flaw, but it does kind of break immersion a bit. Better no music shifts at all than nonsensical ones.Ultimately, AGOT:G is boring. It is just what anyone would usually expect from a game based on licensed materials; it's slapped together from whatever was on hand and largely fails to make full use of its source material. It didn't seem particularly buggy but neither did it really seem polished at all. The mechanics are like a rough draft for a board game shoehorned into a real-time framework; they weren't finished to begin with and then were applied to something they are totally unsuited for. There is some good to be had, the mechanics certainly represent something that would be great with a little more polish and refinement, but they're overwhelmed by the micromanagement and the utter dullness that permeates this game. It's not insultingly bad, just lazy and rushed, destined to pollute bargain bins across the nation for years to come.There is an upcoming RPG that appears to be developed a little more from the ground up, I can only hope that this means that the minds at Cyanide will put a little more of the source material in the game.
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
By Indiana Customer
First off, this game is not well polished at all. Mods for Mount and Blade Warband, or Medieval Total War that are based on A Song of Ice and Fire are much better then this game. However, this game is not horrible, it is very political, which is what makes it unique. It plays like a RTS game, so you make armies and they clash it out age of empires style (not total war style), lot of your time is spent acquiring towns through envoys (which is very boring since its all automatic), and then sending out spuies to make sure those towns didnt make a secret agreement with the enemy. Then one of your envoys will get assassinated, and you have to send a spy to locate him (this is all horrible graphics RTS btw, its just 1-2 clicks here and there) after spy locates him you hire mercenaries to take him out, which look no different then your main army (like 3 little guys on horseback, its not cool or anything, just a representation of a army). Anyways, I only gave this game 2 stars because of the story, being able to read before each new chapter 1-2 pages of backstory is the only reason I bought this game. I just am a huge fan of story, but def not this game. Even then its heavily outdated, its maybe 30 seconds of reading backstory (no voice reads it to you like most modern games) then 30 mins of a mission... so yeah
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
By Anodionysus
I was looking forward to this game, as the promos for it looked pretty good. I recognized that it was going to be an AoE RTS-type, but I was OK with that because, well, I really like AoE. But this is, amazingly, actually a worse game than AoE, and AoE came out long ago. The game really has nothing to do with the Ice and Fire series other than you are supposedly a Targaryen. And it supposedly takes place in Westeros. The game is buggy, boring, and kind of hard to figure out. It is not fun by any stretch, but is actually somewhat of interest just because it is so astoundingly awful. Worse game I've played since my brother picked up a ColecoVision at a garage sale.
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