"Forget everything you know about mobile games because 'RAID: Shadow Legends' is one of the most ambitious RPG projects of 2019". Have you come across that message before? Probably on some YouTube video spouted by a flapping mouthpiece or maybe even copypasta'd on Reddit. It's become a running joke among gamers to talk about the overbearing advertising that pours out of 'RAID: Shadow Legends', but have you ever stopped to just think about whether or not any of it is true? I mean sure, rational thought would have you roll your eyes and get on with your day, but what if 'RAID' is the mobile game to end all mobile games? What if it does have gripping gameplay and an amazing storyline, like we are so often reminded by every bloody YouTuber in existence? Why, the only way to find out would be to bite the bullet and try it out for yourself- except hold the phone; I've done some preliminary due diligence and can confirm that this game is every bit as trashy as you probably instinctively presume, now let's get into why.
Before we dive into 'RAID' in particular, I would like to combat an accusation that has been raised against anti-mobile crusaders in the past. (mostly by 'news outlets') Namely how us that complain about the existence of mobile gaming are inherently entitled and toxic for the crime of pointing at the dumpster-fire for all to see. Now don't get me wrong, I understand how hard it must be to fight the heavy stigma over the mobile gaming world and it's quality, and my heart goes out to those that struggle to make good mobile games because they can't pull in the positive attention that the title really deserves; but that is an incredibly fringe scenario. Gamer's natural revoltion to mobile outings is what is known as a 'learned response' and is instinctive in sentient beings who wish to avoid truly dumb and harmful practises. (Like playing money-dump mobile games.)
It feels redundant to repeat, but there's no harm in remembering how everything that touches the mobile realm almost inevitably turns into a money pit. EA's 'The Sims' was adapted into that abominable 'Sims Freeplay' which uses excessive timegates to whittle you down until you cough up some pity dough. Warner Bros. 'Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery' was so desperate to get players to spend that it charged them with an in-game currency for every action, eventually getting to the point where the game throttled a child and forced you to pay to make it stop. 'Sqaure Enix' bastardized their 'Final Fantasy' name with 'Brave Exvius' which attempts to bring collect-athon mania to your phone and monetize upon it. (And let's not get started on that atrocious 'A New Empire') Even the boyscouts themselves, Nintendo, couldn't help but fall for the greedy trap of mobile games with the heavily paywalled 'Mario Kart World Tour' and the pay-minefield; 'Dr. Mario World'. So with all those examples to hand (and countless others that I can't be bothered to mention) it's not as though the modern perception of all mobile games being desperate money-hungry crap has spawned from nothingness, there is a precedent here!
Which brings us to the topic of the day; 'RAID: Shadow Legends', the savior of mobile gaming that is destined to bring us all to the mobile promised land if we'll only give it the chance it deserves! Plarium's big mobile outing certainly knows how to work the advertising angle to an absolute T; practically everybody already knows about this game the second you mention it and what's more they know all the talking points; It has an amazing story, console-level graphics, and hundreds of heroes to collect. You know you have a strong ad campaign on your hands when your nonsense is that prolific. They even even have an impressive chart of statistics to look through regarding the performance of this title; 4.4/5 stars on Google play (With a whopping 600,000+ reviews!) and even a nomination for Google play's 'best of 2019 User's choice award'. (Which it lost.) So who am I to say that the game is bad?
I am a functioning human being with eyes, it would seem, as there is no way that anyone who claims the same boons can ignore the glaring issues with this game. Let's hit the talking points, shall we? Firstly "The amazing story"; RAID's story isn't lazy by any means, bombarding you with exposition regarding ancient events and fantastical names, but if that's what people think makes a 'great story' then folk need to reassess their standards. RAID shouts fantasy gibberish at the player in lieu of providing a gripping narrative and hopes that people won't notice due to sheer sensory overload, it speaks volumes that I can't even remember what any of it was about and I only heard it all last week. (Wait, I just looked it up again and it's the same 'Dark lord subjugates mythical land' thing that you've seen a million times. Just pay the Tolkien estate their royalties and move on.) How about "Console-level graphics"? Firstly, can we reflect on how meaningless of a statement that actually is. Console level? What, like PS2 graphics? PS3? Because these certainly don't hold a candle to 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" and that game is already 3 years old! Heck, the game could look like 'Super Mario 64' and it would still count as 'console-level graphics'. It's a pathetic, meaningless title that isn't worthy of considerable analysis.
That last point is the interesting one that I want to focus more on however. "There are thousand of heroes and combinations" is the big hook that all the advertising sets down to lure in the curious, conveniently without saying anything about the gameplay whatsoever. Allow me to be more transparent where they failed; RAID is a Gacha game. That is to say, a game that implements capsule-machine mechanics, and sometimes imagery, to have player's spend money in exchange for a random reward of varying quality/rarity. ('Surprise mechanics', if you will.) Of course the title has 'hundreds of heroes' because it allows Plarium to keep selling them to players until the end of days. Basically the advertisers are boasting about their monetisation strategies and framing it as a selling-point. (What must the world throw at someone to make them so vile?)
Okay, what about the gameplay then? I have all of these hundreds of heroes that I must pay through the nose to earn, what can I actually do with them? Well it goes like this: you line them up in a team and have the computer automatically run through a 'dungeon' for you. That's right, it's just another 'auto-battle' Facebook game like 'League of Angels 2' or that crappy Naruto game from a few years back, there's nothing unique or exciting about it. The gameplay loop is based around you automating battles all day until you hit a roadblock against enemies that are objectively more powerful than you, then you spend money in the Gacha machines until you get a stronger hero and go through it all again. (Or you go through another eye-gougingly obtuse crafting system because all these games have to have a bloody crafting system.) So did you forget all you know about Mobile games yet? Good, because 'RAID: Shadow Legends' is here to re-teach you that they are all exploitative, creatively-bankrupt and boring garbage fires.
If you're a glutton for punishment, à la moi, you might be wondering about the glorious history of the studio behind RAID, and be curious if this is their first truly awful product or the latest in a long line of crap. (Although you can probably already guess the answer to that, can't you?) Plarium is an Israeli developer known for creating MMO's but only those that run on browsers and phones. (I.E. mobile trash.) They got their start with a Facebook game in 2010 called 'Farmandia' (easily one of the most desperate 'Farmville' rip-offs of all time) and have sailed through the years on their model of "See what everyone else is doing and copy that exactly". And yes, these are one of those millions of Devs that scrambled over themselves to make a 'Clash of clans' clone. (Their's was called 'Vikings: War of Clans'.) Some moron even commissioned these guys to make that god awful mobile tie-in with 'Terminator: Genisys'. (Which was a godawful movie. So at least they followed the source material.) And in 2019 they put all of their marketing knowledge to the test to create a game that might even last longer than a year, although I put my money on 'RAID' getting retrofitted into a browser game before E3.
The most bizarre thing that I came across when researching this company, however, was this article celebrating their nomination for 'Google's best of 2019 User's choice award.' (Which, again, they didn't win. That went to 'Call of Duty: mobile'. Huh, guess Geoff Keighley's show has influence around these parts too.) The article reads like an actual report from a press site, even going so far as to provide a little history about Plarium as a company. It all looks entirely legit until you look and see that there's no name in the byline. Then you look at articles around it and notice how they are all about Plarium and their plans to 'perfect Mobile storytelling'. Then you look at the address bar and notice how the page is hosted on 'Company.Plarium.Com'. Maybe I'm the weird one here, but this sure looks like a supremely poor attempt to generate buzz around your company's achievements because no outlet could be bothered to put anything together. (Which is really sad now I think about it.)
So there we have it. Is 'RAID: Shadow Legends' the 'Neo' of the mobile market, chosen to lead us all into the golden age of mobile gaming? Again, no. It's just another cynical mess of a product that probably uses BOTS to keep it's review scores so high. (Allegedly, I should stress, I haven't the time or patience to bust out the 'AI detection protocols' with these 600,000+ reviews. Maybe for another blog, if you want it.) Yet aside from how undeniably crappy their game is, I will commend Plarium for having one of the most effective miss-information campaign's that I've ever seen. I can genuinely type in 'RAID: Shadow Legends is bad' into google and come across pages of boot-licking fluff before actual rational-headed criticism. If nothing else; that, ladies and gentleman, should teach you the power of a good advertising team. You may not be able to polish a turd, but you can still pimp it out like a glamour model with the right sales team.
No comments:
Post a Comment