9Game provided: Real Steel: World Robot Boxing is the second mobile action
game based on the Hugh Jackman film, but familiarity with the movie or
with the first game in the nascent franchise aren't necessary to enjoy
or play the game. It's robot boxing, which is about all that you need to
know.
So let's start with that boxing. You control your robot in a 2D boxing slugfest against another robot using a virtual joypad on the bottom left of the screen and action buttons on the bottom right. The controls do a good job of avoiding obscuring the action on screen, although the placement of the special attack button that appears when that attack becomes available is poor as it's hard to see it pop-up when it's behind your thumb. The three regular buttons include the standard trio of light punch, heavy punch, and block. The punches can be further modified by pressing a direction on the d-pad as the punch button is pressed. The fights are your standard affair of timing your strikes, blocks, and counters ' nothing groundbreaking or novel here but the formula is implemented well enough.
While the boxing is fun enough, the overall experience is marred by the fact that the game is a freemium app, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself the problem here is that the game manages to take everything that's annoying about these games to the nth degree. First there's the ads, which pop-up at random continually during play sessions. Then there's the robot upgrades that you'll need to stay competitive beyond the first couple of matches. You can slowly earn the funds needed for these upgrades after each fight, or you can use 'Real Gold' to upgrade quickly. Buy an upgrade and you need to wait for a countdown timer before it's installed ' or you can spend 'Real Gold' to enable it right away. You can only play five fights per game session ' want more then wait for a countdown timer or spend 'Real Gold'. Most egregious, though, is that to advance to the next tier you need to get a friend to play the game and give you a pass to advance ' or you can spend 'Real Gold'. There's a decent game hidden under all of this monetization, but it's not worth subjecting yourself to all of these aggressive attempts for you to put a lot of money into the game. The game's just not good enough to cost so much to enjoy.
Read more at 9game!
So let's start with that boxing. You control your robot in a 2D boxing slugfest against another robot using a virtual joypad on the bottom left of the screen and action buttons on the bottom right. The controls do a good job of avoiding obscuring the action on screen, although the placement of the special attack button that appears when that attack becomes available is poor as it's hard to see it pop-up when it's behind your thumb. The three regular buttons include the standard trio of light punch, heavy punch, and block. The punches can be further modified by pressing a direction on the d-pad as the punch button is pressed. The fights are your standard affair of timing your strikes, blocks, and counters ' nothing groundbreaking or novel here but the formula is implemented well enough.
While the boxing is fun enough, the overall experience is marred by the fact that the game is a freemium app, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself the problem here is that the game manages to take everything that's annoying about these games to the nth degree. First there's the ads, which pop-up at random continually during play sessions. Then there's the robot upgrades that you'll need to stay competitive beyond the first couple of matches. You can slowly earn the funds needed for these upgrades after each fight, or you can use 'Real Gold' to upgrade quickly. Buy an upgrade and you need to wait for a countdown timer before it's installed ' or you can spend 'Real Gold' to enable it right away. You can only play five fights per game session ' want more then wait for a countdown timer or spend 'Real Gold'. Most egregious, though, is that to advance to the next tier you need to get a friend to play the game and give you a pass to advance ' or you can spend 'Real Gold'. There's a decent game hidden under all of this monetization, but it's not worth subjecting yourself to all of these aggressive attempts for you to put a lot of money into the game. The game's just not good enough to cost so much to enjoy.
Read more at 9game!
No comments:
Post a Comment