Introduction

It costs money to make games, so when games are free, we know that there’s gonna be something to make money in it, like microtransactions. And we don’t like any of that, but not all of them overdo, but today we’re gonna talk about the ones that do overdo.

Walface

Starting off at number 10, it’s “Warface.” So “Warface” is an MMOFPS with PVP, PVE, you’ve heard it, and a lot of free MMOs do, well, indulge the micro-transactions, so to speak. But this one does something particularly egregious, in that it’s one of those games that just lets you use overpowered pay-to-win weapons for a limited time, to try to get players to buy stuff.

Apparently players that were around when this game began report that it wasn’t always like this, which is, I mean, kind of sad, but over the course of its life, it has added various events with temporary weapons. They also have this really complicated store system that more or less lets you continually buy better guns than are available via any in game currency or by drop.

Apparently some of them are available by loot boxes, but it’s so infrequent that it’s actually extremely likely you will not see any of those weapons out of a loot box. I mean, when people say like, “The game was all right a few years ago before this stuff, but this destroyed the game,” that sucks, because rather than improving the game and attracting a bigger base of players, they took the base of players that liked the game and exploited it.

Curiosity

At number nine was this weird game called “Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube,” which was a game Peter Molyneux made, is summed up as a multi-player social experiment. Basically you were plopped into a white room, and there was a big cube made up of a ton of little cubes with white text, which was topic related and had little messages.

Basically you tapped the cubelets to dig through the surface and reveal the next layer. I mean, the game is called “Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube,” so you probably understand exactly what the point is, to get to the center and figure out what is in the center of the cube. So the game was literally turned into a microtransaction game.

You could click on the cube to remove the spaces from it, or you could buy the ability to destroy more spaces and possibly get to the center of the cube. According to Molyneux, it was some kind of an experiment in monetization. He claims the studio wanted to implement them to see what happened, not necessarily to make money, but considering the simplicity or feigned complexity of the game, depending on whatever you want to pick, it seems like the microtransactions were the main part of the game.

He claimed that it was some kind of an experiment in patience, but like, come on, man, that’s ridiculous. You tried to make a bunch of money off of a dumb, goofy pie in the sky idea, again. Except for this time, like, you didn’t even pretend to be ambitious about it.

Heroes And General

At number eight is “Heroes and Generals.” This basically large scale free-to-play multiplayer FPS, which has a couple of cool sounding features, like having a persistent overworld where all these battles actually make changes.

But, well, let’s just talk about how much it costs for four tanks for one faction. More than $60. If you’re buying all these tanks, you’re paying more than $60. And this is a game where ostensibly, you would just continually get tanks. It’s a war game.

Then make it a ridiculous grind too, and people who don’t understand what’s going on seem to like, just think this game is like incredibly unbalanced, like, “I don’t get it, this other team keeps spawning these incredible tanks, why?” Well, it’s because they bought them. I don’t know why they bought them. They’re, again, ridiculously priced. I’ve seen players say, “$60 isn’t worth every single tank in the entire game, let alone just four.”

But there’s other problems as well, like people talk about how the lobby isn’t necessarily as functional as it should be and there’s pay-to-win stuff in it as well. I mean, it’s not like the game is without its defenders. There are people who are like, “Hey, the grind is like that to keep people from using really big weapons early in the game.” And it’s like, well, no, it’s like that so that people buy the really big weapons and use them early in the game. At least that’s my response there.

Super Bomberman R

At number seven is “Super Bomberman R,” a game that is, well, “Bomberman.” They do have 64 player battle royale, but like it’s still “Bomberman,” it’s a very simple game. It’s not difficult. It doesn’t require a lot of terrain. It’s not gonna blow your brain with originality or anything like that, either. It’s “Bomberman.” It is a simple game that is fun as hell, but it’s not complicated. So having things like season passes and currency that you can’t earn, you have to buy, for what, like some fairly limited powerups?

Again, this is a simple little arcade game, and I’m a huge fan of “Bomberman.” I’ve played “Bomberman” since the 1980s. I am an old bird, but you lock a bunch of people behind the season pass, you, I mean, again, just have season passes in “Bomberman.” It’s ridiculous. But then again, Konami itself is just ridiculous at this point.

Counter-Strike

At number six is “Counter-Strike: Nexon Studio,” which is a free-to-play, basically “Counter-Strike” port of “Counter-Strike Online,” which is a game that was developed jointly between Valve and Nexon for the Asian market. So as you might be able to tell from the fact that you can’t just straightforwardly explain it, it is not a high quality game.

You see, “Counter-Strike Online” is a mobile game, and “Counter-Strike: Nexon Studio” is a port of that mobile game, except you can play it anywhere in the world. Now, the mobile game is obviously aimed at an Asian market, so like all of the characters, all the factions, everything is designed in like anime style, which is really bizarre, and then of course there’s regular “Counter-Strike” assets in there as well, which makes them more bizarre.

A lot of servers don’t work, and although there are some modes that are exclusive to this game, like soccer, or a kind of “Minecraft”-ish mode where you build stuff, which yeah, doesn’t make any sense for “Counter-Strike,” is not really worth the fact that it is pay-to-win. And a lot of the time, the microtransactions don’t even work, particularly for players in various regions, like Ukrainian players apparently have lots of trouble, technically speaking, buying anything for this game, which I don’t know why they’re doing that, but yeah.

theHunter

At number five is “theHunter Classic,” which we have to immediately say there is actually a saving grace before we even get into why it’s bad. There is a new version of this game that is a paid version of the game, but doesn’t contain microtransactions of any kind.

Now, as you might expect, “theHunter” is a game where you hunt various game. You are a hunter, that’s the point, but in the old classic version, which is still available on steam, you have to buy licenses in order to hunt certain animals, which is ridiculous. You’re out in the wilderness, and you can’t do anything about a certain animal because you didn’t buy a license?

While in real life, I mean, you could do something illegal, but in “theHunter Classic,” you can just fork over a couple bucks to Avalanche Studios. And that adds up. No, I’d highly recommend simply buying “theHunter” if you think that this is a good game, and just to be completely clear, in terms of mechanics, I think it is a good game.

Digimon Masters Online

At number four is “Digimon Masters Online,” which I mean, it’s a “Digimon” MMO. Where “Pokemon” his done a lot remaining relatively singular in its vision, “Digimon” has tried a lot of different things, and this is, I mean, it’s an MMORPG.

I don’t really want to characterize it as anything more than that. Well, perhaps just not good. I mean, this is a game that is based almost entirely on loot boxes. You are stuck behind so many loot boxes playing to try to unlock things that allow you to progress.

And a lot of skins. I mean, you get a lot of skins. You don’t need ’em either, but you get ’em. You want to just buy items, guess what? They cost way more than they should. Although you can trade them, which I guess is not terrible. But unless you got like a bot or something to farm items and cheat, the game’s really not worth it. Meaning it’s not worth it, at all. Don’t play this.

APB Reloaded

At number three is “APB Reloaded.” I mean, when this first came out, it was actually an okay action RPG as an MMO, I’m not gonna call this, like, something that was great and then ruined by microtransactions, but it certainly was better at one point. I don’t actually want to highlight the microtransactions as the worst element of it.

I mean, they certainly have brought the game down, but what sucks so much about “APB Reloaded” is that it just feels like a really incomplete game with some degree of promise, but like that promise was never fulfilled. They haven’t gone down that path at all.

They’ve never developed it. Instead they’ve just added microtransactions in a manner that, I mean, that’s obviously the priority. The game shouldn’t even still be around, to be frank. It’s obviously not going to become a better game. It’s fun, but like, if you really want to put in time, it’s not worth it.

You’re gonna have to pay to get anywhere in it, and you’re paying a lot, considering the fact it’s such an old game that isn’t going to become what it should have been.

Modern Combat 5

At number two is “Modern Combat 5,” which obviously conjures the idea of “Modern Warfare” and “Mortal Kombat,” except there is obviously nothing involving mortal combat. It’s really just a Gameloft “Call of Duty” rip-off that was $7 on iPhone when it came out, but they knew better on the PC.

This is not a game that is worth any money. It’s just basically “Call of Duty” multiplayer, but much, much worse. I mean, it really plays like a game that came off of the phone and went to PC. I don’t understand why you would do that, unless it was like for an experiment or something, and you actually didn’t put microtransactions into it, but did release it for free because you knew, you knew what you were doing.

That’s not, that’s not what they did here. I mean, they, I assume that they knew that they released this game for free with microtransactions in it, so they probably did know what they were doing anyways, but they also knew that this was not worth money.

I refuse to believe otherwise. Just, if you want to be pissed off, and play it and try it, it’s bad.

Star Trek Timelines

And finally at number one is “Star Trek Timelines.” Now, I do not know why this game exists. A lot of these games we’ve said things like, “Hey, if this wasn’t riddled with microtransactions, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, maybe not the best.”

I mean, we didn’t really cover any dynamite, amazing games this video, but “Star Trek Timelines” is basically just a cookie clicker, and a cookie clicker with microtransactions. I don’t get it.

Why make this? You know people aren’t going to like it. You know they’re gonna notice how long the timers are. You know, people are gonna notice when in order to reset, they have to pay real world money. And there is not much more to the game than that, so why make it?

All you’re going to do is just generate people who complain about it because they’re “Star Trek” fans who got duped into buying a crappy game—an uncomplicated, nothing to it, crappy game that costs them money to do what? Really nothing. A cookie clicker is fun because it’s free.

They’re little time wasters that, you know, might provide some little smidge of satisfaction because you decided you wanted to waste some time. This is that plus “Star Trek,” minus your cash. And that’s all for today.

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