When Hutch Games released Smash Bandits (Free) back in August, it was a bittersweet moment. Sweet because the developers had successfully taken all the great action of their first title Smash Cops and fit it around a fantastic one-thumb control system with beautiful visuals and randomly generated environments. Bitter, unfortunately, due to its free-to-play system. Smash Bandits has the typical freemium trappings of in-game currency built around upgrade systems and unlocking new vehicles, and for the most part those are inoffensive. The killer was the addition of a game-stopping timer.
Being an endless game, eventually you’re going to die in every single run, that’s just the nature of the game. In Smash Bandits, each time your game ended, your “Wanted Level" increased by one. Once your Wanted Level reached five you were forced to stop playing, either waiting for timers to expire for each segment of the Wanted Level or using precious in-game currency to speed up the process. As we’ve said before, any game that has a point that literally stops you from playing it is doing it wrong, and it especially hurt with Smash Bandits because it was such a fun game to play.
Well, Hutch heard the cries of its players and has updated the game to tweak the way the Wanted Level works. Now, when you hit that fifth Wanted Level you can still continue to play, albeit with a penalty. Instead of the regular cops who would be chasing you normally, tougher “Agency" cops will be after you right from the start when you play with a maxed out Wanted Level.
I like this compromise for a couple of reasons. First, it fits within the theme of the game, and it makes sense that as your Wanted Level increases tougher cops would be pursuing you. Second and most importantly, it means I can keep playing the game indefinitely. It’s actually a lot of fun playing games with the more aggressive Agency cops on my tail, and I feel like the increased challenge actually preps me nicely for when my Wanted Level does cool down and I’m back playing against the normal cops.
While the way the Wanted Level works is the biggest change in this update, there are some other nice new features. In the spirit of Halloween, pumpkins are now lying around the environments and if you manage to smash 5000 of them total you’ll unlock a sweet Halloween themed hotrod vehicle (or you could just straight up buy it as IAP, but where’s the fun in that?). There’s a second new vehicle too, a dune buggy, which you can unlock just like the other vehicles in the game. A new gadget, the Electrified Chassis, ensures that any cops who make contact wit your vehicle while in use will get a nice jolt of electricity to get them off your tail.
There’s some other tweaks and fixes which are detailed in the update notes, but by far the biggest news is that you’ll never be forced to stop playing Smash Bandits, which is great news. The freemium style still may not be for everybody, but if you were initially put off by the game due to the hard stopping point, give the updated version of Smash Bandits a second chance.
It will probably be free to play, want more grenades or energy? It's only $9.99!
Maybe this will combat the Call Of Duty game that came out earlier. Hopefully this one will be better
my exact thoughts. COD: ST is, IMO, a worthy mobile game. much better than BF2 iOS which, while i did enjoy playing, didn't finish. i mean if EA could release BF2 mobile, why couldn't they pull off Aftershock? i remember my thoughts after installing and initially attempting to play it: WTF is this crap?!
MC still at the top at appstore
12v12 multiplayer on large scaled maps please
As much as I'd LOVE this, I think we'd be plenty lucky just getting 6v6 to be realistic. Not that the latest ios devices can't handle 12v12 or anything but then the ipod 4g people will be complaining that 12v12 is lagging. =|
EA, please take advantage of the new ios controllers
The Frostbite 3 engine is Dice's engine not EA's!
.. and EA owns DICE. Therefore.. EA is paying for the Frostbite engine. EA owns the Frostbite engine.
Lol. I forgot about that whole Aftershock debacle. That game had problems everywhere!
New Frostbite Go engine a while back made me hope for this and thank God it's happening,can't wait for this to happen. Hopefully a cool campaign and multiplayer are in it
If the campaigns for the PC/console games are anything to go by I wouldn't expect much in that department...
I don't expect the campaign to be incredibly perfect but maybe somewhere near BF3 in the writing department is what I'm hoping for. The AI needs to be better than in BFBC2 on mobile. If it has a great storyline though I'll still finish it.
No, you can't move right now. No, don't shoot. No, you can't run. No, don't switch weapons. Okay, NOW you can have fun.
Hey, you know how we have all that awesome vehicle tech and it's really fun in multiplayer? Well this next level will start on an aircraft carrier, so yeah, you probably know what's coming...
NOW GET IN THE F***ING PASSENGER SEAT.
Title suggestion: Battlefield 3: After the Aftershock
Funny! Cruel, but funny! :-)
Lmao!!!
I REALLY hope this is good. BFBC2 on iOS was a mess, and I'm glad I got it for free.
Free to play, pay to win
The thread in the forums say that they aim to bring the same experience across all platforms. That is an ambitious aim, but as you know the console version is premium.
Doesn't that raise the possibility (albeit still slim) that the mobile version should also be premium?
Wouldn't a freemium mobile version put a huge difference between the two platforms in regards to experience?
But maybe I'm just a fool trying to get my own hopes up. After all, this is EA. :-/
Battlefield 1942 or 1943 or even 1944 for iPad
BF1943 for iPad would be perfect
Battlefield: Strike Squad, trust me.
I hope this game does well and encourages EA to make a mobile version of SW Battlefront. The App Store is sorely lacking in "high-end and high-performance" Star Wars games.
What we want: premium game for $7-$10, no forced IAP, optional IAP expansion packs released in the future, 10 vs 10 or 12 vs 12 large scale multiplayer maps, NOVA 3-level graphics, customizable controls, and detailed multiplayer level up system.
What we may get: free, energy bar, dual currencies, 4 vs 4 or you vs bots, NOVA 1-level graphics, detailed multiplayer level up system BUT extremely harsh exp curve that can be boosted with premium currency.
If EA does most of the developing, we'll be getting the freemium crap.
Hahaha this had me thinking about how bad Aftershock was.
Why would you dump this information on me? It's like telling us that Christmas is coming but you can't say when.
I really hope it won't be freemium, I broke my don't-put-anything-EA-in-my-watchlist rule and added this. Hope they do well by their customers this time.
Great news to me . how much i will have to pay for this game? please some one tell me .