“Game of Thrones” is, without any doubt at all, the most popular TV show of the 21st century. Its ratings are astronomical and only rivaled by its budget per episode. Practically every single member of its cast has gone on to star in huge Hollywood blockbusters, and as HBO prepares to wrap it all up after the final season next year, they’re all ready to replace it with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different spin-off shows. “Game of Thrones” is no longer just a TV show – it’s a cultural phenomenon that has become ingrained in modern society. Just like how the 80s had “Cheers”, when people look back on the 2010s in a few decades, they’ll undoubtedly remember “Game of Thrones”. With such a powerful, influential show that’s near and dear to the hearts of so many people, you’d think that its very own slot adaptation would be phenomenal. But unfortunately, Microgaming’s “Game of Thrones” slot shows us exactly what it means to be lazy.

The unfortunate part is that it would’ve been so incredibly easy to make a really fun “Game of Thrones” slot! You start off with the TV intro (or, if the budget allows, perhaps modify it a bit to include elements that appear in the slot), alongside that classic theme song. In-game, the player would be greeted by new compositions of classic “Game of Thrones” tunes like “Rains of Castamere” and “The Bear And The Maiden Fair”, to set the mood for what you’re about to delve into. The slots, of course, would bear the likenesses of the characters (or, if Microgaming isn’t able to procure the rights to the actors’ faces, their book counterparts would serve just fine), alongside important objects like the Hand of the King pin serving as scatters or wilds. There would be several bonus games based on the symbols you get – for example, you may play as Tyrion engaging in a verbal duel with someone, and the better he does, the more you win. Or maybe you play as Robb Stark marching his army South and trying to gain the loyalty of his bannermen – the more he gains, the more free spins with a bigger multiplier you obtain.

I could go on and on, but my point is that the design for a slot based on “Game of Thrones” essentially writes itself – the show has a deep enough lore and history to let any slot fan who’s even marginally familiar with it come up with fantastic ideas on how its world can be brought over to the realm of reels and symbols. With that said, how much did Microgaming do in that regard? Not much at all, I’m afraid. The opening credits music blasts ad nauseum over the course of the game, to the point where the slot actually achieved the impossible – it made me hate one of the best main themes in TV history. There are no characters on the reels, just the banners for four of the noble houses involved in the show’s conflict. Those very same banners are used once again, when you trigger the bonus game in which you must randomly select one of them and receive a random number of free spins, to the point where whether you choose Stark or Lannister (two completely opposite factions in the realm of the show) doesn’t even matter.

Ultimately, “Game of Thrones” just comes off as lazy. It kind of feels like the developers grabbed the license and then immediately dressed a random slot in a “Game of Thrones” coat, which, honestly, feels a little bit insulting to us fans. At the end of the day, while not a terrible slot to play, it completely fails as an adaptation on every single level. It’s honestly a little bit sad to think about the many, many possibilities a slot based on the world created by George RR Martin could bring to the table, but alas, it just wasn’t meant to be at this point.

Jurassic Park was truly one of the most groundbreaking movies of the 20th century. It, alongside Terminator 2, helped revolutionize computer-generated special effects in movies, leading to the golden age of CGI that we’re still living in to this day (and, honestly, probably will not be leaving for as long as cinema exists). Similarly, Microgaming’s Jurassic Park slot helped bring about a similar trend, even if it wasn’t one that lasted quite as long. That was one of the biggest licensing deals at the time, and it paved the way for quite a lot more license holders lending their properties to various slot developers for a collaboration or two. Needless to say, Jurassic Park proved to be a gigantic success, in terms of both the movie and the slot. So when a sequel based on the new franchise, Jurassic World, was announced, people were thrilled! Now that the slot has been out for a while and I’ve had the chance to evaluate it, we need to ask the obvious question – was it actually any good, as far as an adaptation goes?

Well… The answer is honestly complicated. Because there are certain things that the slot did extremely well, but at the same time, there’s a really glaring problem with it. Let me get the good out of the way first – one of the best things about the slot is that it was able to keep A LOT of the movie’s visuals intact. It was really refreshing to see the real faces of Chris Pratt (likely for the first and only time in a slot ever) and Bryce Dallas Howard, as well as accurate depictions of the various dinosaurs found in the movie, such as the Indominus Rex. It was truly a sight to behold, but then again, the slot itself looks great. The perspective appears to be from the point of view of someone following the rampage of the dinosaurs on a computer (which makes sense, because in the movie the character most likely to play slots was the guy stuck in the computer room providing support). The screen flickers and refreshes, and sometimes dinosaurs pop up outside of it to freak you out. It’s so cool!

But ironically enough, the slot’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness – perspective. At first glance, the game appears to place you firmly in the role of someone doing support and keeping the park in check from the dinosaurs, which is fair enough and a perfectly valid way of presenting the game to us. But then again, if that was the case, why do we keep getting bonuses and free spins related to the dinosaurs? “Well,” I hear you saying, “isn’t that what Jurassic World is all about?” I mean, it is, but again, there’s the problem of perspective. The perspective that Microgaming gave us while playing the slot is that of a human, a person trying to contain the dinosaurs in the park. As such, the dinosaurs should carry negative connotations within the context of the slot, otherwise the immersion is broken. To the slot’s main protagonist, the sudden appearance of the Indominus Rex – the deadly, invisible dinosaur that’s the main antagonist of the film – should be absolutely terrifying and spell certain doom, as it does for so many characters. But within the slot, the Indominus Rex gives you up to 1000 times your bet, so you’re actually pretty ecstatic to see it.

This isn’t something that a lot of people realize, but with slots that follow a particular storyline, it’s really important to keep that storyline consistent. For example, in “The Avengers”, the good guys bring you rewards and the bad guy ends your bonus prematurely. In “Path of the Penguin” and “Kung-Fu Monkey”, two more slots by Microgaming, the objective of the bonus game is to defeat the bad guy and thus earn the bonus cash. But here, half of the bonus features make you play as a human avoiding the dinosaurs, and the other half – as dinosaurs. There’s a bit of an inconsistency there, and it keeps the slot from being an otherwise perfectly stellar adaptation. Does that matter at all when playing the slot? No, obviously not. It doesn’t harm the overall slot experience whatsoever. But as far as the quality of the adaptation itself, I personally think that a little more effort could’ve been placed on reaffirming the slot’s perspective. Because, don’t get me wrong, this slot is really good, it was most of the way there, and it just needed a little bit more attention.

These days, I hear the notion of people being sick of superhero movies quite a lot (even if most of them still rake in hundreds of millions at the box office), but the thing is, that’s not how it always was. Superhero movies were rare in the 2000s, and good superhero movies were even rarer. This changed in 2008, when Christopher Nolan released his revolutionary movie “The Dark Knight”, which proved once and for all that comic book movies didn’t necessarily have to be just for kids. Interestingly enough, it was the other superhero movie that came out that year, which people didn’t pay as much attention to at the time, that eventually flourished. At that point, Marvel finally realized that they had enough money to make their own movie, and boom, out popped “Iron Man”, which kick-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we know and love today.

But the thing is, the MCU didn’t TRULY start off until 2012’s “The Avengers”. Sure, before that there were a couple of different connections (like Tony Stark popping in at the end of “The Incredible Hulk”), but it wasn’t until the Avengers assembled on-screen to fight Loki that the MCU truly began feeling like an interconnected place where anyone could meet anyone. It was, without a doubt, one of the biggest superhero movies – no, one of the biggest movies in general, raking in over $1.5 billion at the box office. With that many tickets sold, it’s no wornder that Playtech would immediately jump at the opportunity to make a cool slot adaptation, especially since, at the time, they were running on their last legs as far as their license to produce Marvel slots went (when Disney bought Marvel, they refused to renew the license and let it expire just a few years later). Given the pressure from all of those factors, PlayTech had two choices – churn out whatever slot they could, knowing that the name alone would be more than enough to carry it, or actually create something worthy of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Fortunately, they chose the latter, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Fair warning, I played this slot quite a lot, so I might be a little bit biased, but then again, why wouldn’t I be? It’s a genuinely good and entertaining slot, and more importantly as far as we’re concerned, it’s a fantastic adaptation. The slot, as well as the movie in general, can be compressed down to one very simple idea: Four completely different heroes come together to form a team in order to save the world. Yes, it’s technically six, but let’s face it, Black Widow and Hawkeye don’t count. It’s an idea that the slot runs with perfectly, and it’s all in the bonus game. That’s not to say that the visuals aren’t really great as well, but I’d like to focus on the bonus round for a bit in particular, since I really feel like that’s where the slot shines the most. Once you trigger it, you get a grid of symbols that you’re able to select from. Getting 3 of the same Avenger triggers his own, individual bonus game, and getting the Loki symbol ends the bonus round. This, alone, already represents that the four heroes are united together against a common foe, since while searching for the symbols you’ll undoubtedly get different heroes popping up. And the fact that you can keep the bonus round going by selecting new symbols after each game also works to the narrative’s favor – it feels like the characters are tagging in and out of combat.