If you’re anything like we of The A.V. Club, dear reader, then you need no excuse to fritter away some time playing a silly browser-based video game. “Oh, I’ll spend five minutes playing this,” you might lie say to yourself, “just for a little mental break.” Suddenly three hours have gone by and you’re still playing as the rats in the walls and whoops, weren’t you supposed to have filed that story by now?
So despite the fact that this is obviously a promotion for Netflix, we’re of course going to write about the “browser-based, top-down, beat ‘em up videogame” they’ve released to celebrate The Old Guard, the streamer’s new action movie starring Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne. (We liked it!) And while we are not covering it because the game comes with the chance to win an “immortal” Netflix subscription, we’re also not going to underplay that part, because if you’re going to accidentally spend an afternoon playing a game you meant to play for five minutes tops, you may as well have a shot at being rewarded for your choices.
The reason for the gimmick is simple enough: The Old Guard are a group of covert operatives who also happen to be immortal. In the film, Theron plays Andy, or Andromache of Scythia; in the game, that’s you, wielding her trusty Labrys (a giant ax). If you die, that’s okay! Like Andy and the members of Chumbawamba, you get knocked down, but you get up again. In the game, death only slows you down slightly.
Now, Netflix can’t actually give you an immortal subscription because that supposes that Netflix will never die, and everything dies, okay? Instead, the winner will essentially get free Netflix for the majority of their mortal life, which is still probably a pretty solid prize (assuming the world lasts for at least a few more years). But there is, of course, a catch: it’s a one-weekend-only deal, July 17–19. Whoever has the highest score at the end of the weekend wins the prize.
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