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24

Hooked

September 3, 2021 by Tim

I think I’m hooked on Marvel Future Revolution, and I feel dirty.

It’s actually a surprisingly robust game, with a sometimes interesting, sometimes serviceable story, and enjoyable button-mashing action-RPG gameplay. I give them a lot of credit for the amount of content and things to do they launched with. Plus you can do it all across multiple heroes you select for your squad. And their approach to costumes proves that you can easily do mix-n-match costumes in a superhero RPG and it’s fine (*cough*Avengers*cough*).

It is a mobile game, though, so around the edges are all of the “freemium” trimmings you’d expect. Purchasable perks, consumables, random draws, etc. It’s all relatively ignorable, as far as mobile games go, and I’ve definitely seen it far worse. But still… y’know.

It’s been a while since I was actively playing any games on my phone… I was solidly into Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes for a while, a connection I was not unhappy to finally sever. Future Revolution ticks a lot of boxes for me in the “grab my phone and play a bit here and there” column, even though I’m not sure that was a column I wanted occupied again.


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Gonfrask
Gonfrask
3 years ago

As someone who has been playing Marvel Strike Force since almost its origins, can’t say anything bad about we the people who get hooked to these games. If something, would say something bad about the “pay to win” thing

Vedrit
Vedrit
3 years ago

It’s sad that mobile games, the platform with the biggest potential has become…what it is. More asset-flippers, shovel-ware, click-bait, poorly-disguised ad players, and shameless rip-offs than actually decent games, and half of the decent games are ports of established games from other platforms.

Jack0r
Jack0r
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

That’s what Google Play Store is pushing on the front page. I am still quite surprised, that a company, that started out with a search engine, manages to make such crappy searches in all of their other products. Finding a good game on the Play Store itself is impossible. You need to search elsewhere and only use the Play Store as a download manager.

Rolan7
Rolan7
3 years ago
Reply to  Jack0r

It’s not a mystery, of course, it’s how they profit off all their “free” services. It’s actually an ancient scheme. Offer free or cheap guidance to tourists, and guide them to spend their money with all your partners.

Freddie
Freddie
3 years ago
Reply to  Rolan7

This way to the egress

Rolan7
Rolan7
3 years ago
Reply to  Freddie

Exit via the gift shop.

Arcanum
Arcanum
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

Most mobile/casual gamers don’t care about gaming. They care about being distracted. When all you care about is having something shiny to alleviate 5 minutes of boredom in the doctor’s office, you’re not thinking about how shitty the game or company is.

Mobile gaming is the fast food industry of video games: It mostly sucks not because it can’t be better quality (though there are real limitations), but because the people consuming it mostly don’t care.

Vedrit
Vedrit
3 years ago
Reply to  Arcanum

You’ve got a point.
I dabble in programming, and my wife is constantly poking me to make an effortless mobile game to give us some form of passive income, but I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to do such a thing.

Me-me
Me-me
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

Honestly, you probably should. Don’t think of it as a disgrace – you’re not making a game, you’re making a toy. And that’s okay. To carry on from Arcanum’s metaphor – nobody’s going to the golden arches for fine dining, but when you just want a burger and cola, fast food is nothing to be ashamed of. And if you can make that toy, or run that restaurant, it may not be the artistic experience you always dreamed of, but it’s also a completely respectable means to support yourself and your family. That said, the mobile game industry is pretty… Read more »

DanVzare
DanVzare
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

You literally just described the Wii.
I guess some things never change.

Vedrit
Vedrit
3 years ago
Reply to  DanVzare

The Wii had just about as much potential as any other console. But mobile gaming had so much more. Almost everyone has a phone, and they almost always have it with them, if not in front of their face most of the day anyway. They’re lightweight, and run for hours, have so many ways of generating input like GPS, camera, acceleration, and tilt. Modern phones are powerful, rivaling or surpassing all but special-built laptops. Mobile games could be so much more than their console or PC counterparts. But they’re not. Mobile games are a joke. Digital street drugs that don’t… Read more »

Merendel
Merendel
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

Modern phones, powerful as they are cant really match the power of a PC or laptop unless your useing a cheep netbook as your referance point. Just by simple size you can fit more transistors on a larger CPU and GPU. The more you have the more calculations can be done per second. They also have room for fans/heatsinks to dissipate the heat generated by the heavier processing output. A small portable device with a limited power supply will never match the power of a larger one with better cooling pluged into a dedicated power source. If they develop a… Read more »

Vedrit
Vedrit
3 years ago
Reply to  Merendel

I’ll never argue that phones could ever compare to even half-decent PCs, but you’d be surprised at how much “power” is in the average consumer laptop. Between size/space constraints and poor cooling, plus bloated libraries for backward compatibility that plagues x86 processors (which is pretty much all laptop and desktop CPUs), there’s a lot of lost processing power. While mobile phones also suffer from space constraints, they typically don’t suffer from thermal issues even in the absence of active cooling. Something a lot of people forget about, is that with the smaller display (and corresponding reduction in pixel count) phones… Read more »

wkz
wkz
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

There IS a current shift away from that actually. Some game makers are starting to see how most mobile game players are fatigued from all the cash-grabbing click-baiting, and are starting to design good freenium games. The idea being: capture a captive audience first, THEN tempt them with stuff.

Not to mention how a certain chinese “BotW clone” is suddenly shaking up the market in new directions.

Of course, there’s still tons on tons of shovel-ware still being made. But there are slightly more and more gems being made in all the muck, if you care to look…

MasterofBalance
MasterofBalance
3 years ago

Ain’t nothing wrong with mobile games :-P.

Better keep the brightness down just in case though 😛

LeHack
LeHack
3 years ago

Actually I’ve never got hooked up with any of these mobile games until very recently, when they released the Witchers Pokemo… I mean Monster Hunter 🙂
And damn that thing is addictive. With normal games there’s a ceremony of sorts. You try and plan out (cough, family, cough) the time and place to sit down and appreciate the game. But with this thing, you just whip it out anywhere you find yourself having a spare moment and keep poking at… at least I get where the reference to porn comes from in this comic 😉

Jeff CB Jones
Jeff CB Jones
3 years ago

Whatcha ya dooin

JD.
JD.
3 years ago

Shes Interested when she thinks he watching porn? but revolted that he playing a game?

lechuckGL
lechuckGL
3 years ago
Reply to  JD.

That’s the pun

Ryan
Ryan
3 years ago
Reply to  lechuckGL

I wouldn’t call it a pun, there isn’t any play on any of the words. Possibly humor at the juxtaposition of the statement as apposed to what is the expected norm.

As to the subject, unfortunately 99% of my gaming is mobile, if you can even call it gaming… I usually pick about one game a year on a console or PC to play through, and i usually do it in binge mode. I miss real gaming, but mobile gaming scratches the itch just barely enough to keep me sane.

DanVzare
DanVzare
3 years ago
Reply to  Ryan

A pun and a play on words are two different things. I learnt THAT from Futurama.
Although it isn’t a pun or a play on words. Maybe he meant “punchline”?

Rolan7
Rolan7
3 years ago
Reply to  Ryan

There’s good gaming on mobile too! Personally I keep a Pokemon GBC romhack, and some official SNES re-releases. The big problem is input, or I’d be running a general SNES emulator, but the Final Fantasy mobile releases also come with new content to justify a purchase.

Vedrit
Vedrit
3 years ago
Reply to  Rolan7

I don’t count ports or ROMs as “good gaming on mobile”
That’s hacking up good games to work on mobile.

Kaogen
Kaogen
3 years ago
Reply to  Vedrit

Hes gaming on mobile.

Not the same as saying ‘playing good games designed for the mobile phone’.
It might not be specifically designed for mobile, but playing games on mobile is still playing games on mobile.

Otherwise me playing dark souls on PC would be me playing on xbox, since its obviously not designed for PC and is instead just a shitty port.

Last edited 3 years ago by Kaogen
KenP
KenP
3 years ago
Reply to  JD.

Sounds like my wife…

Marielle
Marielle
3 years ago
Reply to  JD.

Welcome to the joke

lechuckGL
lechuckGL
3 years ago

I remember a time where mobile phones were expected to replace portable consoles and some AAA games were released. This was a long, long time ago. Of course we get some cool full game releases now and then (like Dead Cells port) but nothing big or fancy anymore.

DanVzare
DanVzare
3 years ago
Reply to  lechuckGL

I remember that time. It was roughly around the time the Nintendo 3DS had been released, and due to it not doing so great during that first year, everyone was calling it the end of portable gaming systems. The release of the PS Vita was practically heralded as confirming the fact that phones were there to replace them, because as we all know, the PS Vita did terribly outside of Japan.

I always stood by the fact that portable gaming systems were here to stay though. Mostly because virtual buttons are horrible to use.

raven0ak
raven0ak
3 years ago
Reply to  DanVzare

and what really brought vita down was game selection …because ppl generally pick console for games they like, not other way around

lechuckGL
lechuckGL
3 years ago

And now that I think about it: there is one mobile game I really miss, not only because it was removed but also because it was an iOS exclusive that never got a port to Android (I moved from an iPhone 4 to an Android a long time ago): Infinity Blade. I think that was the best mobile game ever, and still holds up until today in every aspect.

Jaysburn
Jaysburn
3 years ago
Reply to  lechuckGL

There’s a book series written by Brandon Sanderson for infinity blade, if you’re interested.

clideb50
clideb50
3 years ago

There are two mobile games I really enjoy playing: Fate Grand Order, and Konosuba Fantastic Days. They’re both Gatcha games, but you don’t need to super rare characters to play and enjoy the games.

Annatar
Annatar
3 years ago

Interesting.
It on level with Marvel: Avengers Alliance, or usual current Marvel mobile game…

Bakhtosh
Bakhtosh
3 years ago

I can quit SWGOH anytime I want!

Xanthicirs
Xanthicirs
3 years ago

That’s kind of how I feel about Digimon Rearise.

Marielle
Marielle
3 years ago

I played way too much Fallout Shelter, but it was a lot of fun

Marth Koopa
Marth Koopa
3 years ago

If you’re going to play mobile trash, at least play the ones with large breasted anime ladies

Urazz
Urazz
3 years ago

I avoid the whole mobile game trap by not looking at them at all if I need to get an app and remembering that the vast majority of them are overly monetized.

Grumbaki
Grumbaki
3 years ago

Call of Duty Mobile is a very solid game. No shame being hooked on it

Urazz
Urazz
3 years ago

I find it funny that she didn’t looking at porn offensive but had that reaction to him playing a mobile game. Shows how fucked up things have become nowadays.

robloughrey
robloughrey
3 years ago

Did you shave your beard?

BakaGrappler
BakaGrappler
3 years ago

Ya know, there is this one game. It’s the closest I’ve seen a Mobil Game come to a console RPG without being a port. Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space. Yes, that is a rediculous title… but it is actually 100% perfect. It’s written by the guy responsible for Chrono Trigger, involves Time Travel, has some nods to CT, and the ONLY thing your In-Game Currency buys is random draw characters, and the game is pretty good about drop rates. They’ve also added at least three times the original content to the game since launch, and I’m talking… Read more »