Games from the past - Robocraft

I know this isn't far enough from the past for some, but this is a game I used to play in 2015. That's 5 years ago and it's a quite long time in the world of gaming. I had a long pause as the game started to suck, the devs changed the gameplay too much and I lost most things I thought were fun.

So this is not a hype-type -game review. It's a sad and bitter post about the dreadful world of gaming.

The point of Robocraft is to build a robot and use it to battle your enemies. There are different modes in the game, some of which include auto-heal and respawn, while there is also a mode in which you have only one life. The game is in teams of 5, as the game tries to match balanced teams together. The level of gear you are using determines the tier you are in, but you can end up in a match of higher or lower tier.

The victory can be achieved by either killing the entire enemy team, getting enough kills or capturing specific points, depending on which game mode is on. The enemies are destroyed by shooting enough blocks from the enemy robot. Very simple.

When the game was good, there was no auto-heal and if I remember right, most modes didn't have respawning. Auto-healing is one of the things which I think ruined the game, as all you needed to do was to escape for 10 seconds and your robot starts to fix itself. When the game was still fun, all damage remained. You could have remaining 1 vs. 1 with two extremely damaged bots, trying desperately to kill the other one first.

Also in the past, every robot had to have "pilot seat". Destroying the pilot seat instantly destroyed the entire robot, so the robot seat gave pressure in robot design and in combat.

But in an attempt to attract more casual players, the devs dumbed down the game. Auto-heal, removal of pilot seats and other changes ensured that fans of the game were horrified. There are still players playing the game, but the drastic changes had reduced the amount of players significantly.

I returned to play the game after a 3 year pause, but even though the game was fun, it wasn't as fun as it used to be. Both the excitement and the pleasure to play were gone. If I was a fresh player in the game, I might enjoy it more, but now I'm hallowed by the memories of the thrill of the fight. Now it's just.. casual.

I miss the old fights between larger amount of robots. The time when you had to play smart, so you wouldn't die in the first minute of the match. When you had a great atmosphere in the game.

This can happen when games change to please the greater crowds. The casual gamers didn't come in as waves, but old players left. Hopefully the devs got some money of it. I had made some in-game purchases, as the game is free to play, and got some cosmetic upgrades. I'm happy I supported the devs, but I'm sad by the loss.

But currently, the game can still be fun. I'm not going to spend hundreds of hours in the game anymore, but it was fun to play after a pause. My old robot with sniper-railguns felt still like it's my own and I managed to do really well with it. The game was filled with new kinds of typical strategies, going from missile launching helicopters to super fast close combat robots. Railgun robots, like mine, were surprisingly rare. It was fun to play and shoot down some flying robots and in some rounds, I was top of my team in kills.

Robot building in the game feels smooth and is enjoyable. I got a bit bored when coloring the blocks, but I'm happy to accept this as my personal issue. The robot building had multiple alternatives with multiple options for weapons - lasers, plasma cannons, railguns and many more. Even the movement of robots had multiple options, ranging from wheels to ski's and wings to hover blades.

It's possible to equip the robot with shields or other useful gear, like a kind of "weapon charger". Every shot spends a specific amount of energy, which takes a while to recover. The "weapon charger" gives a quick fill to the weapon energy, allowing you to take more shots in a short time. All parts added points to CPU, which was limited. The more powerful parts added more CPU, giving a bit balance to the game.

Only a limited amount of different weapons was allowed at once, so you can't pick one weapon of every type. I'm old fashioned and I preferred only 1 weapon type per robot.

As I had said, the game was still fun. It can give hours of fun for players, but I still feel like it has lost something. Something more valuable than robot building and easy combat for newcomers.

I don't believe in soul, but it's a good word to describe things.

The game lost it's soul.

Now it's just an empty shell to me.

Please don't let Steem's soul die.