Sunday, September 8, 2013

Xbox 360: Free to Play Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

Ok, so I got a gold subscription and have been trying out the sparse collection of free-to-play games currently on the Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 seems to embrace the Free to Play (F2P) model that the Xbox on Windows 8 free-to-play games use, and it is one i'm perfectly fine with.  It is basically a system where you can advance your progress/competitiveness by paying real money for in-game items.  Some of the games will give you in game credits for coming back every so often.  However, if you don't want to you can get everything by grinding it out - without paying anything at all.  

So what are the current Free to Play games I've played on the Xbox 360 and how do I feel about them:

First of all, the catch all: of the F2P games I have access to, there are issues with connectivity (dropping from the server, getting booted from games).  Hopefully the Xbox One will be better (I guess it can't be much worse).  Most of these games seem like $5 (400 point games at best).

* World Series of Poker: Full House Pro:
This game is a mediocre poker game that pretends to have an single player mode (it is basically "practice" and will not give you chips - except for Pro takedowns).  The more annoying thing is that this game seems somewhat unstable.  Over the past few days, I have lost connection to their server at least 5 times (and that is probably over a less than 3 hours of total playtime).  Sometimes it is slow to connect to games.  If this game wasn't free, I would recommend you completely avoid it until it is patched a couple of times

* Spartacus Legends:
This is a seemingly relatively simple fighting game.  Most of the game seems to be single player (with a multiplayer matchmaking mode for one on one duels).  The matchmaking may have been improved (finding a match may be difficult), but has issues like putting your level one gladiator against a much higher level (fully decked out) gladiator who will promptly kill yours (unless you like paying to resurrect them).

* Happy Wars:
I think this was the first F2P game on the Xbox 360.  It has been updated numerous times (and seems to have decent support - there are semi-frequent "events" and a daily map that lets you "treasure hunt).  Basically this is kind of a melee capture the flag scenario where your team rushes the enemies castle and tries to take out their main tower (in their castle) before the enemies succeed in doing the same (though you can win by controlling the most spawn points in the time limit if neither big tower is destroyed). 

There is a "single player" mode, but the levels are locked behind multi-player leveling.

Some of the issues I have with this game are the horrible (in my eyes) camera.  It is third person, but the obstructions, like castle gate entry ways are not translucent.  So if you are in the wrong place, you can't see anything.

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