Heroes and Generals (PC) Review

 

Heroes and Generals is sometimes being described as a mix of Planetside and Battlefield. It was a FPS set in a WW2 scenario with huge battlefields and a strategic world map, similar to Planetside. The comparisons therefore don't seem too far fetched.

You should however not expect gunplay in the same quality as in Planetside or the Battlefield games. It was not as smooth as in a polished AAA game. Nonetheless, the HnG movement and gunplay overall felt pretty decent.

Heroes and Generals had with Germany, the USA and the Soviet Union 3 factions fighting against each other to achieve world dominance. This is obviously not historically accurate, since the Soviets and Americans were allies in WW2, but was probably chosen to use a 3 realm concept, similar to games like Planetside 1/2, Dark Age of Camelot and so on. 

With 'Assault' and 'Capture and Hold' there were essentially two different game modes with a couple of variants, which included infantry only battles or battles with tanks and planes. In Assault one team was defending 3 objectives against an attacking team, while in Capture and Hold both teams were fighting over control of 3 neutral objectives. The game modes therefore played quite similarly. The highlight however was certainly the War mode, in which all 3 factions were fighting over control of Europe and there were essentially hundreds of different battles being fought on giant Europe map. The battles themselves however were still Assault or Capture and Hold matches, with the difference, that they were contributing to a bigger goal. This scope of a global conflict was great and certainly the high point of the game.

The visuals of the game were severely outdated. Heroes and Generals officially released in 2016, the same year Battlefield 1 released. BF1 certainly had a much bigger budget, but Heroes and Generals essentially didn't look any better than Battlefield 2 from 2005. Even for a studio, that isn't one of the top dogs, that is a bit weak. The reason for this was probably that HnG was created with the relatively old Retox engine, which was apparently hard to modify and improve.   

Part of the popularity of the game was probably its hilarious physics engine, which provided many funny compilation videos of Glitches and crazy moments, that I can only recommend to watch.

The player numbers for Heroes and Generals were actually quite respectable. For the longest time they remained somewhat constant between 3000 and 5000, which seems totally okay for a lesser known game. Only after the announcement of the server shutdown on the 25th of May 2023 and the controversies around a potential Heroes and Generals 2, have the player numbers significantly fallen. HnG 2 was supposed to be financed via Kickstarter, but that campaign turned into a disaster. The developers were trying to gather 3 million Dollars, which was ludicrously ambitious, in order to make a successor game with the Unreal 5 engine. The campaign wasn't going well and so the developers tried to save it with a Twitch Stream, in which they told players that they didn't need to worry if they don't reach their Kickstarter goal. The game would get financed anyhow. This was obviously a pretty awful signal and lead to a massive backlash with many people pulling back their initial pledges, since there was no reason to donate hard earned private money in such a game/shady developer. I also don't understand why the developers shutdown their first game so early, since it was probably their biggest source of income, still had respectable player numbers and the potential sequel is probably still years from release. Maybe they know what they are doing, maybe not. 

I haven't mentioned the biggest problem with Heroes and Generals 1 yet, which is, like with a lot of F2P games, the monetization scheme. Some people will call it Pay-to-Win, other will call it heavy Pay-to-Convenience. Only one thing is certain, they used a very aggressive monetization scheme, that reached nearly every aspect of the game. I am personally a bit tired of people defending this behaviour of the developers and calling it 0 % P2W, since you can technically unlock everything via playing. That is only correct, if you mention, that you will need to grind for hundreds of hours to unlock the same stuff other players can get within minutes by using the power of their credit card. Every single weapon, gadget, attachment and even level-ups for the weapons could be purchased with real money. The grind to unlock these via the ingame currency was massive. Even unlocking a single weapon would take dozens of hours and there were many weapons in this game. There were also around a hundred different XP Boosters for every single item in the game. In my opinion there was no doubt, that this game was way overmonetized and developers/publishers need to be called out and not defended for it. It is totally fine to point out, that the game is still fun, despite this monetization issues and that plenty of games are even worse. A grey perspective on the matter seems more appropriate than a simple black and white approach. And I haven't even mentioned, that tanks or planes for example also had to be unlocked with a grind and had huge costs to maintain them, which could of course be nullified by paying money. Saying that this was a fair battle, in which experienced and new players were fighting with the same chances, just doesn't seem right to me.

 

Result:

Heroes and Generals had a very cool concept as a WW2 game with a massive scale, in which every battle could contribute to the outcome of the overall war. This was the best aspect of the game and I totally understand why some people loved the Battlefield meets Planetside approach. The gameplay was certainly not part of the best in the genre, but surely serviceable. The visuals were disappointing and the aggressive over-monetization pulled me away from the game. With a better developer/publisher Heroes and Generals could have turned into one of the best games in the WW2 genre, so it only ended up being somewhat good. 

 

6.5/10

Fruit Rings (Cornflakes/Cereals) Review

 

Today we are taking a look at a very different topic. I usually review videogames on this channel and I am considering reviewing some select movies and shows as well. Today however I would like to attempt a food review. As a kid I liked to try out all kinds of different Cornflakes/Cereals. When I saw a cool Box image in the supermarket, than I had to try out. As an adult I still occasionally eat some cornflakes and thought it would be fun to review a couple of them, since they are certainly not all of the same quality.

You would be forgiven for thinking this would be a review of the popular Kelloggs 'Froot Loops'. As a kid I used to eat them sometime and they were one of my brothers favourite cereals. Instead, we are today talking about the Knock-Off version of Froot Loops, called 'Fruit Rings'.

Froot Loops are the multicoloured ring-like cereals by the famous Kellogs company, which were first introduced in 1963 and have since than been represented by its famous blue toucan mascot ('Toucan Sam'). The German version of Fruit Rings by the 'Ja' company clearly copied the cereals, just that they are being represented by a blue sheep, thats sits on top of pink swan. I said the German version of Fruit Rings, since there seem to be different Knock-Off versions of Froot Loops in a variety of countries, which also feature different mascots.

There is for example 'Krogers' Fruit Rings, which are being represented by a chameleon, or 'Alca Foods' Fruits Rings with a lion. 'Kwality' got a red parrot, while 'Baumann Food' features a colorful parrot instead. And lets not forget the basketball playing Wolf on 'Tarladalal' Fruit Rings, which stands in strong contrast to 'Best Yets' cartoon ape. Many people also fail to mention, that 'Temmys' Fruit Rings have both a crocodile and a bear as representatives of their food.  

And than there are the Froot Loops Knockoffs with slightly changed names, like 'Fruity Rings' from 'Hofer', who choose an owl to be the face of their cereals. You shouldn't confuse this with Fruity Rings by 'Enrich', who also took the monkey approach. 'Fruit Hoops' by 'Crownfield' and their elephant also certainly deserve a mention.

I only tasted the Ja version of Fruit Rings and therefore my impressions are solely based on this version of the product. Without Milk the Fruit Rings taste nearly flavourless, which is a big downgrade in comparison to the original Kellogs Froot Loops. If you soak them into Milk, like you should do with cereals, than they taste a little bit better. Nonetheless, there is huge discrepancy in comparison to Froot Loops. While Froot Loops are tasty and nice, Fruit Rings are barely acceptable. Their flavour is just so impactless. It's not actively unpleasant to eat them, but it lacks the satisfaction of proper cornflakes. I have eaten a couple of worse Cereals, but was nonetheless really let down by Fruit Rings.  

Since the price of Fruit Rings is nearly identical to that of Froot Loops, I can only discourage people from buying the Knockoff. The small saving isn't worth the big loss in quality. I guess you simply can't trust a blue sheep riding a pink swan!

 

4/10

Gum Ball Run (PC) Review

 

Gum Ball Run is a Speedrun Platformer Game. In the Single Player campaign the focus is clearly on speedrunning and earning medals, while the multiplayer is focused on competitive online races.

Players take control of a running gumball, who has to compete in races/ complete the levels as fast as possible. Movement and platforming feel for the most part pretty responsive and good in this game. You can however sometimes get stuck in the environments in situations, where you shouldn’t be. These moments however were infrequent enough, that they didn’t impact the gameplay too much.

The single player missions are usually pretty short, but I did enjoy playing them. Some of them were quite challenging to complete with a gold medal and I only managed to get 28/30, but I mostly had a good time doing it and enjoyed finding the best route for each of the levels. The difficulty however was all over the place. Sometimes you got a really tough level out of nowhere and two levels later you got a total pushover level. The levels could have definitely been a bit better balanced.

The Multiplayer races, were nearly all played on totally different tracks and according to the developer, were the main focus of the game. I do think it is pretty cool, that the dev didn’t use the same levels twice and instead really designed them to either fit a singleplayer speedrun or a multiplayer race layout. Even though gameplay was mostly the same, you could also use something like the superjump ability in multiplayer, which was pretty much never viable in any of the singleplayer stages.

There are some aspects of Gum Ball Run, that I need to criticize, but I also want to praise the game for delivering frequent content updates and quick fixes. I once had a problem with a popup message ingame regarding my internet connection and reported it in the steam forums. The very next day the developer had already provided a patch with a fix for the issue. That’s what I call customer service. The content updates usually release at least once a month and add both, new multiplayer races and themes, as well as additional single player stages. This is generally a really good pace of updates.

While the quantity and the quality of the new levels is good, I do have to criticize some of the updates to the monetization of the game. I do understand that this game is being developed by a single person and since the game is being distributed for free, it needs to make money somehow. There are a lot of skins in Gum Ball Run and I think it is perfectly fine to monetize them. Some other monetization methods however rubbed me the wrong way. The dev  for example added a chat function to the multiplayer, but you had to buy it for 50 cents. Admittedly that wasn’t a lot of money, but you should just not monetize stuff like this. The chat is thankfully free nowadays. Instead the singleplayer has been heavily monetized retrospectively. I had played through 30 levels of this game, but one of the last updates simply locked me out of 25 stages I had previously beat. If the game had launched this way, than I would have probably been okay with it. Having to pay now to gather access to something I previously had unlocked just seems a bit wrong to me. Perhaps the dev should have just locked every additional level after the first 30 behind a paywall, if he wants to change his business strategy months into the game's lifecycle.

The singleplayer has therefore become a lot less viable to most players and while the multiplayer is still getting regular free updates, the player numbers have collapsed. A drop in the player count is expected with most games, but Gum Ball Run now has fallen to peak daily player numbers of 15 or less. This could lead to neither single- nor multiplayer really being accessible anymore, which will just further shrink the small playerbase and ultimately lead to less revenue too.

 

Result:

Gum Ball Run is a fun speedrun platformer/racing game. The game is however not without its issues. I did enjoy both the singleplayer speedrun levels, which invite you to repeat them over and over again, in the pursuit of the best times, as well as the competitive online races. Small issues and the unattractive monetization changes however let the game down. I was thinking about giving the game a 7/10, but because of the Paywall and shrinking playerpool will ultimately reduce it to 6.5/10. Interested players should start the game in the next months, since it might become abandoned till next year.

 

6.5/10

Big City Stories (PS4) Review

 

The Playstation 4 exclusive game 'Big City Stories' often gets described as a mix of GTA and Sim City. This comparison isn't totally inaccurate, but probably makes the game sound cooler than it actually is.

The players take the role of a newly elected mayor, who has to manage his city, by constructing buildings, upgrading them and completing missions for the local citizens. The big difference to other city building simulators is that the game is to a large degree being played in the third person perspective as the mayor.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, neither gameplay aspect is strong enough to convince players to stick with the game. The GTA inspired gameplay is in the best case a cheap knockoff. The missions are pretty repetitive and neither exciting nor very engaging. You must simply collect stuff, drive around and upgrade buildings. This form of gameplay gets boring after a few hours at most. There are also some minor framerate issues. Nothing too big, but also not really justified by the underwhelming visuals. Additionally there were some AI, Physics and visual Glitches. Again nothing game-breaking, but these do eventually add up as well.

At least the dialogues and quest texts are a bit funny. The police for example orders you to build a donut shop and you can negotiate with a bunch of Zombies, who took over the local mall.

The City Builder aspect is probably the stronger part of the game, but even that one can’t compete with dedicated City Building Simulations like Sim City, Cities Skylines or the Anno games.

A cool idea is the option to visit the cities of other players or a common Hub area in the form of a train station. Unfortunately there isn’t really anything to do there. You can simply chat with other players or show them your emotes/skins in the train station, which isn’t overly exciting and I didn’t experience any other meaningful interaction elements, when visiting other cities. A lot of potential was wasted in that regard.

Big City Stories also has two other major flaws. For one, it has a very restrictive region lock, which prevents players with Non North-American Playstation Accounts from playing this game. It is common for some games to not release in all playstation store regions, but usually you can still play all of them regardless of your account region, once you downloaded them. Big City Stories on the other hand excludes you from playing it on a different account for no reason at all. I don't want to call it racism, but it is needlessly restrictive and discriminatory.

The other really big flaw are the P2W aspects in this game. Big City Stories isn’t really P2W since you are not directly competing with other players, unless you are simply comparing your city to theirs. Nonetheless, it is extremely frustrating that you will run out of labour very quickly, which is needed to construct buildings or buy improvements for them. Your available labour points will reset after a day, but you can also simply buy as much labour as you want from the cash shop. Furthermore there are some buildings, which happen to be very useful, which can only be bought with real life money. This stinks!

Another weird aspect of Big City Stories is its obscure shutdown announcement. The game was scheduled to shut down on the 1^st of April 2023. In May however the game is still being playable, which leaves a couple of possible explanations. Either the shutdown got indefinitely postponed due to new found success of the game, the devs simply forgot about the game and its servers, or the shutdown date of the first of April was some kind of Aprils Fools joke to have some free marketing for the game. In this case I could just say: What a sick joke! In any case the developers should stop ghosting the players and make some kind of official statement in regard to the servers and the future of the game.

 

Result:

Big City Stories has a cool concept as a third person city building game with GTA inspired gameplay elements. Sadly the game is less fun than it sounds. The on-foot/driving as well as the city building gameplay are too shallow and, in combination with strong Paying Incentives and plenty of Glitches, leave too much to be desired. Before the novelty wears off and the flaws off the game become too apparent, players might nonetheless find some enjoyment or amusement in Big City Stories.

 

5/10