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What if Worms was pay-to-win and bad? - Gunbound T Quick Review

5K View2023-01-06

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Skip it, unless you’re absolutely dying for a game in the style of the classic tactical artillery series Worms. Unless you really love this type of game, it won’t be worth the grind. Gunbound T uses that same turn-based formula, and with its colorful art, variety of tank styles, and slick presentation, it seemed to me like it would be a great take on this style of game at first. That first impression wore off quickly though, as I began to hit my head against the wall of players who had already progressed (and presumably paid) further than me.

TIME PLAYED

I spent about four hours with Gunbound T. I leveled my account to around level seven or so, played a few dozen matches, and explored the various progression systems available in the game.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• The look. Whatever issues I have with it, I cannot deny the appeal of Gunbound T’s style. It uses cartoon graphics that lend a sense of fun to even the most tense matches and also help provide the game its own identity separate from Worms. The user interface and general experience of navigating the menus is all very polished and slick as well.

• Variety. At launch, Gunbound T has eleven different vehicles your character can ride into matches, and each has a unique set of two weapons, an ultimate attack, and a passive ability. I greatly appreciated that you don’t need to unlock each of these vehicles and can test them at well. And different vehicles require genuinely shifting your approach to combat.

WHAT SUCKS

• Everything about the gear system. There are tons of different pieces of gear across three slots (head, body, and flags) that must be earned slowly via loot boxes. These gear pieces provide stat boosts as well as major passive bonuses if equipped in a set, so when I went up against an opponent who had more or better gear than me, it was very obvious.

• Progression. It’s not just the gear either. Yes, vehicles are unlocked from the start, but that didn’t mean that my vehicles were on the same footing as everyone else’s. Alongside gear, loot boxes can contain pieces to unlock upgraded tiers of each vehicle type. Those upgrades go up to rank four, and despite being new to the game, I regularly found myself pitted against enemies who already had tier two vehicles. The difference in power was stark, with my weapons often doing a third or even a fourth of the damage of the more powerful vehicles.

• Pay-to-win structure. As I got frustrated by losing over and over, I discovered one surefire way to help even the odds: spending money. Alongside the expected season-based battle pass (called a “Shooter Pass” here), Gunbound T allows players to purchase skins, in-game currency, and, yes, more loot boxes. I didn’t give in to this temptation, and that meant that I just kept losing the majority of my match-ups.

• Loot boxes. I’m breaking this out separately, because it’s even worse than it sounds. I’m not just annoyed that Gunbound T has loot boxes, though obviously that system sucks. But it’s the process of unlocking these boxes. You earn a single box from winning a match, at which point you need to set the box to unlock, which takes a certain amount of real time—the better the box, the longer it takes to unlock. You can only store four boxes at any one time, so even if I could have won lots of matches in a row, I would have been incentivized to stop playing and just wait for my boxes to unlock.

But even that isn’t the worst part. Here it comes: When time had passed and I actually opened up the box, what would you guess waited for me? A new head piece? A new flag for my vehicle? Oh no, no, no. The loot boxes just give you pieces of the gear, along with some of the in-game gold currency used to unlock gear once you’ve gathered enough pieces. A full set of four loot boxes might earn you half of a gear piece, if you’re lucky. And since it’s randomized and there are tons of pieces of gear, the grind appears endless and exhausting. No thanks.

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