What a weird game.
Last year when I got a new phone and with it a new enough Android to run video games, this was one of the first ones that I tried out having heard so much good about it, and for a while, I lost my life to this and Marvel Snap. I even got pretty good at it, though not great, unlocking the secret characters only through cheats after deciding the work needed for them wasn't worth the (personally) precious hours of my life. And then, after a brief but intense love affair, I stopped playing it and soon deleted it full-scale, thinking that that would serve my life better. I didn't regret it.
Seeing my best friend discover it a few weeks ago (now more than two months ago from writing this review …), I was caught up with the bug again, and having witnessed them playing it and feeling the itch, I reinstalled it as well.
My first disappointment was that it had kept none of the saves, despite being on the same phone; it was worse than tears in the rain as it's much less time-consuming to cry than to fully upgrade and unlock everything in this damn game.
But my biggest disappointment was that despite all my knowledge of the game and accumulated skill, I was incapable of surviving much longer than my novice friend. The character just doesn't accumulate enough XP or damage output or health to be able to survive the onslaught past a certain point. It was only after I got a few upgrades, with Amount (giving another projectile) the most important of them (especially with my favourite character, Gennaro, who boasts another extra projectile) that I managed to go far beyond the 15-minute mark and almost hit 30.
Almost.
And that's the thing - how much is doing well at the game really about one's ability and how much is it just upgrades and luck in drops (which can be modified by further upgrades)? There's no denying that skill matters some (I was capable of doing some real daredevil stuff that my friend is still learning to dare, allowing me to progress faster), but if it's virtually impossible to finish a run without upgrades, and the moment you get some good ones you get almost to the end, what is the value of all this accumulated knowledge and reflexes really?
Well, none, of course, it's a silly videogame, after all. But I feel more disappointed now than I did before.
But hey, I still enjoyed my revisit and watching the numbers go up and coasting at the very edge of survivability knowing that's mostly my knowledge of how the game functions, and my daring. Even if I'm unlikely to ever return to the game again.
But hey, I already returned once to this endlessly addicting weird little thing, so who the hell knows?
Even if I haven't picked it up once between writing this review two months ago and posting it now. Go figure.
Last year when I got a new phone and with it a new enough Android to run video games, this was one of the first ones that I tried out having heard so much good about it, and for a while, I lost my life to this and Marvel Snap. I even got pretty good at it, though not great, unlocking the secret characters only through cheats after deciding the work needed for them wasn't worth the (personally) precious hours of my life. And then, after a brief but intense love affair, I stopped playing it and soon deleted it full-scale, thinking that that would serve my life better. I didn't regret it.
Seeing my best friend discover it a few weeks ago (now more than two months ago from writing this review …), I was caught up with the bug again, and having witnessed them playing it and feeling the itch, I reinstalled it as well.
My first disappointment was that it had kept none of the saves, despite being on the same phone; it was worse than tears in the rain as it's much less time-consuming to cry than to fully upgrade and unlock everything in this damn game.
But my biggest disappointment was that despite all my knowledge of the game and accumulated skill, I was incapable of surviving much longer than my novice friend. The character just doesn't accumulate enough XP or damage output or health to be able to survive the onslaught past a certain point. It was only after I got a few upgrades, with Amount (giving another projectile) the most important of them (especially with my favourite character, Gennaro, who boasts another extra projectile) that I managed to go far beyond the 15-minute mark and almost hit 30.
Almost.
And that's the thing - how much is doing well at the game really about one's ability and how much is it just upgrades and luck in drops (which can be modified by further upgrades)? There's no denying that skill matters some (I was capable of doing some real daredevil stuff that my friend is still learning to dare, allowing me to progress faster), but if it's virtually impossible to finish a run without upgrades, and the moment you get some good ones you get almost to the end, what is the value of all this accumulated knowledge and reflexes really?
Well, none, of course, it's a silly videogame, after all. But I feel more disappointed now than I did before.
But hey, I still enjoyed my revisit and watching the numbers go up and coasting at the very edge of survivability knowing that's mostly my knowledge of how the game functions, and my daring. Even if I'm unlikely to ever return to the game again.
But hey, I already returned once to this endlessly addicting weird little thing, so who the hell knows?
Even if I haven't picked it up once between writing this review two months ago and posting it now. Go figure.