With Game of Thrones ending the way that it did and House of the Dragon quickly hurtling towards a brick wall like in one of those crash test dummy videos, you’d think I would have learned my lesson by now. You unfortunately underestimate my ability to eat delicious garbage and I seem to have gone to the ends of the Earth to find this delicacy. I know that it’s a meme to dog on Telltale games but I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for them personally. Yes, I was one of those freaks that would purchase an episode at a time while waiting 8 months in between! As much as I would love to, I’m not here to wax poetic about Telltale as a company right now though. I’d rather save that for a review of one of their games that I actually do enjoy and their little dip into the Game of Thrones universe is definitely not their best. But, I don’t think any of us ever expected it to be anyways??

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, everything in this game is supposed to be canonical in universe, yet everything feels like the worst fanfiction you have ever read. There have been people claiming that this is the worst Telltale game, and I’d probably agree. I wanted so badly for it to be “so bad, it’s good”, but it’s unfortunately “so bad, it’s boring” instead. Sure, there were some funny moments here and there, but it definitely wasn’t intentional and it’s a Telltale game that is painfully rife with all the classic “Telltale-isms”, sometimes pasting the same conflicts and illusions multiple times in the same episodes. It was simultaneously incoherent and tedious at the same time, with very obnoxious name drops and cameos that just amount to the writer’s trying to elbow nudge you constantly. Haha guys, remember the Rains of Castamere? I just feel like bringing it up randomly even though it has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. Oh my gosh, it’s Ramsey Bolton from the hit popular TV show Game of Bones here to negotiate some sort of deal with me. This is awesome, I’m sure this will go well since I know what he’s like in the show. Surely my character will find a way out of this one, gang. thinking emoji

Obviously had I played this game when it came out then I wouldn’t have entered into it with omniscient knowledge like this but even then, it’s so painfully unsubtle where everything leads up as it’s actively happening in front of your face. Let me know if you’ve heard this one before: your cast of protagonists are a family from the North that are desperately trying to defend themselves from a rival house, and you play in the perspective of a bunch of different siblings who are taking part in different roles to ensure the survival of their family. Yeah, every character follows the same exact path as the Stark family from the show so that way each of them can have some tea time with their designated Game of Thrones babysitter for licensed character points. Specifically, Gerald is sent to The Wall so he gets to bro out with The Johnathon Snow and Mira’s trapped in King’s Landing so a child’s Play-Doh rendition of Peter Dinky can try his hand at voice acting again, etc. Their presence in this game adds absolutely nothing and even without knowledge of who they are, you’d still have to be really stupid to think that whatever choices involving them actually have any weight on the narrative of this game’s plot, which makes each episode increasingly more frustrating than the last. There are only so many times that a character will agree to help me and then completely change their mind a day later before I start getting really bored of the story structure. There are only so many instances where my character gets dragged into even more escalated conflict despite them remaining neutral at all times before the story starts to get really excruciating.

None of the plotlines are necessarily good, but Gerald’s has got to take the cake for the worst one. Not even mentioning the fact that the frozen, wildling, magic mumbo jumbo shit is the most BORING part of the show, just re-created in the worst ways possible here. Every character around Gerald is a self-interested moron who keeps pulling him, and ostensibly you, through a railroad track of torture until they eventually fumble their way into success or wherever the plot needs them to be. All of the stories have outcomes similar to this, but I found this one to be the most egregiously “Telltale”. It’s the clearest example of none of your choices mattering because you will always end up on someone’s shit list regardless of anything that happens. There is genuinely zero point to giving the player an option throughout his entire arc, which is infuriating because the game keeps trying to preach how awesome you’d be if you did literally nothing.

“No player, you’re too beautiful to partake in a little bit of killing!! It’s way better to ignore violence instead of spreading it, especially in a universe where violence is happening all the time. You wouldn’t want to make your little sister sad, would you?” Fuck off.

There are multiple scenes where you kill in self-defense and you still receive the pain train in response. Heaven forbid you remain neutral while a guy is swinging a sword at your dick, it’ll always just lead to a game over. Meanwhile, a “sympathetic” side character is constantly screaming at you about surrendering peacefully knowing full well that you’ve already lost people at that point, while they have lost absolutely nothing. It’s just a constant onslaught of each protagonist getting shit rubbed in their face for the sake of making some of the most riveting commentary that I’d rather wipe my ass with. The villains are so comically evil because of it, including one that randomly heel turns at the end for nothing other than mustache twirling time. Typical endings where a bunch of useless characters get wiped out no matter what you choose and sequel baiting for a sequel that never comes. There is a lot else wrong with many of these plotlines but I think you get the picture by now.

At the end of the day, none of this matters since Telltale super committed to the whole “your choices actually don’t matter” thing by shutting down before even starting the next season of this game. Which, I take no pleasure in saying. I think that Game of Thrones is just an awful universe to try to attach yourself to, especially since George RR Martin doesn’t even want to touch it anymore himself. We watched the show, we all know it was full of shit the whole time. Had they not been forced to commit to the canon so much, then I’m sure they could have come up with something that didn’t feel so pointless in the end. But of course, big company known for licensed crap loves money more than common sense, so this was like a match made in heaven for them. Considering how my playthrough ended (incredibly bleak), I am genuinely curious how a second season would have even played out but I’m totally fine leaving that on the floor since this was a playthrough that was just meant to feed my curiosity.

drops soapbox

Now I know that I just completely shitted all over this crusty ass Telltale Game, but I should probably take this time to remind everyone about the doom of the digital age. I’m not even one of those physical only people, but I do think they’re onto something. It seems like every day we hear about another game studio getting shut down, which is exactly the same thing that happened to Telltale back in 2018. Even if it was only a temporary shutdown, their entire original staff was laid off while actively working on the final season of The Walking Dead, which I remember quite vividly. I had bought the season pass for it and was almost scammed out of half of that money had Skybound games not come to the rescue. Thanks to that, a lot of things made under Telltale were delisted immediately, including this game. If you have a game on your wishlist that was made by one of the companies who have been shut down recently, I’d encourage you to buy/download it sooner rather than later. Things like Hi-Fi Rush, Rollerdrome, and now anything made by Humble Games just to name a few. There's hundreds at this point. You never know when things will get removed forever and there’s only so much that game preservationists can do while they’re constantly under attack. I know, I know, I’m preaching to the choir here but there is a real potential for disaster later down the line while more companies keep pushing for digital only releases.

I don’t think Telltale’s Game of Thrones fanfiction is good by any stretch of means, but I don’t sit well with the idea that it should be dumped into a trash container left to rot because the executives who pushed for its existence completely fumbled the bag on their end. You can still buy physical copies of this, but not cheap, so I really don’t recommend it. Sure, I wish the game was a lot funnier than it was annoying but I have zero interest in pretending that it never happened. You may have a different, cynical opinion, but I don’t care!! Personally, I never want to be a creative who broke my back making something just to watch it get sucked into a blackhole and never spoken about ever again, even if it was this. I’m glad that I was able to experience it on my own instead of having to watch some random dude play through it on Youtube instead.

“Hey, you remember that goofy ass Game of Thrones game Telltale made?”
Yeah actually, I do! It sucked.

I’m in too deep, far too over my head with this one. I can’t tell if this is rage bait or if I am just atrocious at needle point precision. Please, we already know the answer here and that is: people who grew up with the N64 are psychopaths. I do not make the rules.

Look, I’m allowed to say this because I am not one of these people. I did not grow up on N64 streets and you can tell that I am weaker for it. Seeing something like this in the wild would make me crumble to my knees immediately. With that, there are probably thousands of people who can better attest for Corn Kidz accuracy in trying to replicate that era of video games. From the few games I have tried, I would unconfidently say that it does. If I get attacked for being wrong then I will respond with the nerd emoji for anyone bringing the beef.

For starters, the general aesthetic is there without feeling too much like a bunch of filters just layered on top of each other. CRT grain brainrot, 10,000 pound looking polygonal objects, and Saturday morning cartoon ass audio works really well for what they’re going for here. Some real Channel 3 vibes that I definitely fuck with for sure. But, N64 replication also sometimes includes having one of the most betraying cameras of all time and there is also no shortage of that in this game as well. It’s not a constant issue throughout, but whenever the game switches to forced perspectives it has this unforgiving knack for destroying all depth perception, making it hard to wall climb in some areas. The cameraman? He went home I guess. I’ll just let this seizure inducing orb munch my ass while I desperately try to climb this pipe from a point of view that’s 50 feet away.

Corn Kidz is unique for eliminating a double jump entirely. Instead, it’s replaced by a forward dash where you’re meant to bash into any wall, then propel yourself upwards to whatever it is you’re trying to reach. It was weird to get used to at first, but overtime I found it to be rather interesting. You are playing as a goat after all, so his main mechanic will have everything to do with his singular horn on his head. This will eventually lead to you being able to ground pound into any dirt texture and maneuver yourself underneath any obstacles/enemies in the way. I really liked that as a problem solver, but I do wish it was used a bit more often once you’ve found it. For the most part though, the majority of the game’s content is climbing, climbing, climbing. And while I climbed, so did my blood pressure. This game made me tilt more than I would have liked, but I do have the capacity to recognize when something is more my fault than the games so don’t take my hyperbolic attitude as me hating the experience entirely. Like this: I was fucking bald by the time I hit the credits from tearing my hair out.

The platforms and ledges you’re expected to hit require pinpoint accuracy to land, which oftentimes require wall jumping from a weird angle or forward dashing into the correct pixel. It’s satisfying to pull off, but increasingly irritating to mess up often due to the fact that this is a lab grown nightmare made in Hell. You see, they put fall damage in my video game, which means falling from any height greater than my own has the potential to be lethal. It’s funny for an hour since it’s always accompanied by some ACME anvil noise, but holy shit, did I feel my soul slowly leave my body everytime I took multiple hits of damage falling off of a slope and back to the bottom. Thankfully, the game compensates this by providing checkpoints and HP refuels right before any major climb, but that didn’t prevent the multiple heart attacks and triple bypass I still had climbing that fucking tree. The spider and scissor bug guys can get stomped on sight for all I care.

Even though I found it difficult, the climbing challenges are the meat of the game. It’s at its best when you’re slamming your head against the wall and at its worst when you’re left searching for hidden objects. There are doors that are locked by level requirements, meaning that you’ll have to search for collectibles in order to progress eventually. Some of these are pretty obvious to get, with the most egregious ones just throwing a timer on screen and expecting you to figure it out. Hours later, I did find myself just kind of wandering the area forever with literally nothing to show for it. It’s really only an issue once the game is actually finished though. There’s a level 5 door that you probably won’t open naturally so it’ll require a bit more effort after the fact. At a certain point, I just lost steam and gave up. Some feats would net you like 1 solid cube for 10 minutes of work and I just didn’t care for that, personally. You’re in this one area for a long time and after a while, the music just starts to feel like flies are living in your ears. I do sometimes listen to the OST on its own though, that shit rips. Particularly, this song but on a loop? No thank you.

Other than an abrupt ending and stupid dialogue, it’s still a decently challenging game that is fun to learn. Behind that level 5 door is a daunting tower that I can only imagine will kill me in real life, but I would like to get back to it one day when I can. For now, I should probably avoid the stress. This game is perfectly made for people who want to go on a bender for 8 hours though so don’t let my pain deter you from trying it out if it’s on your wishlist.

Someone gifted this to me by the way. I think I should take it as an omen of death.