3 out of 5 from TA. Not bad, but not indicative of the forum impressions either While I do agree about the lack of context, which others here and other reviews have mentioned, I don't agree in other areas. Even when I replay missions, it doesn't feel like a grind or a chore IMO. And while the Coming Soon tags are quite tantalizing, I don't think the game feels incomplete. 15 missions that offer some replay value due to random spawns and more enemies as difficulty increases is nice for 1.99, and I feel there is a lot of tactical depth and required planning. On easier difficulties, you can rush in without much thought, but do that on harder difficulties, and you'll get shot or killed You have to consider overlapping sight lines, cover, vunerable positions, surpression and flanking, etc. Right now the game is at least 4 out of 5 for me and with the promised updates and content, I only see the score rising
Ouch, was hoping for 4 out of 5, but whatever - I can see where the reviewer is coming from. We were at a point where we could not afford to keep developing the game without some kind of cash flow. What's available on hand right now is a little light, and the coming soon tags don't do much to help that.
Yeah, it definitely hurts, but it's not worth getting tripped up on. I absolutely respect every reviewers opinion, even if they give the game 1 star. Reviews are subjective, the best we can do is take the criticism and find ways to improve on what the reviewers didn't like. In the case of this review, the major (only?) criticism was the lack of content - which we're already working on solving with constant updates.
What's important is that the people playing it are enjoying the experience, and they are, so we couldn't be happier. With that said we are still on the grind getting you, the players, more content and features and we only see the experience growing and getting better. Hopefully any one upset by the coming soon tags will have a change of heart once they realize our dedication to making BnC a must play on iOS!
If it's any consolation, I always put user reviews and impressions over critics when I read reviews for products and I'd say that the forum impressions here are much more positive than a 3 out of 5
Game Impressions I wish I could give the game an honest rating, I'm just having difficulty playing it. I just registered in order to voice my problems I'm having since the developers seem active on the forum. Now my problem is the same thing with a lot of other games in that I find it difficult to read the small fonts. The onscreen wording is sooo tiny that my poor old eyes can't make out all of the information. I'm not trying to pick on this game but I so want to play it but even with my bifocals (yeah, I know I'm old), and seriously the best money can buy, I still have a hard time reading the small print. Granted I only have an iPhone 5 with it's now bigger 4" screen (sarcasm) and this is probably better suited for an iPad I still wish I could just make it more readable. Sadly I find I just end up deleting the games that have this problem for me.
This is frustrating!!!!! The guy on the left is a bigger threat than those straight ahead.I've tried setting the point of views of my soldier towards that guy on the left.But my soldiers always shoot those soldiers in front of them instead of the one on the left(I think is because they saw those guys which is in front of them first and won't engage the one on the left until those in front of them are dead) And it's keeping me away from getting the job done with 4 stars Hope I can set which is the first priority to kill for each of my soldiers Sorry for my bad english
The "coming soon" tags are probably worse than just leaving things out, at least until you've established a pattern of updates. But when the screenshots says "from around the world" and there is one non-US force, it feels deceptive. Likewise when it says I can customize armor. (Seriously, who wrote that copy? Did they not play the game in a near-final build. It is straight up untrue in some material ways. :-/ ) If I'd known going in that I could only customize my gun, play as a few forces (description still says "and more", I think meaning "one more"?), and that the "end-game fun" was a leader board for speed or something (with more coming soon listed in the description), I still would have bought it on day one. I just would have felt less disappointed with what was in the box when I unwrapped it. These games are always US forces, and that was part of the specific draw. Given that this is a game and genre built around precision and attention to detail, the corners cut in the initial release work against you pretty significantly. "Own all the angles", a wise man once said. I'm optimistic about the upcoming constant updates (possibly some attachment bias), like many here. I'd be more optimistic with a submission date/week and partial list of changes, and it would help Mighty Rabbit establish credibility on this front more quickly. It's a fun game, but with changes of the scale that are mooted, I don't want to burn out on the early levels grinding. Alas, my golden M4.
The App Store description was written by our publisher a month before release - vests (armor), and the action camera were cut at the last minute and unfortunately, the description wasn't updated to reflect that. One of those omissions will be fixed in the next update. The "around the world" part with the squads was a huge oversight - we're only focusing on international squads for future updates. The "Coming Soon" banners aren't something we particularly liked, and I agree that they really shouldn't have been there to begin with as they imply the content was cut (which is only true in the case of the vests - Mexico and Germany are in the works right now, they were never intended for the initial release).
3/5 is about right for the game as it stands (and does reflect the general feeling about the game in this thread, for those who have read the whole thing). While an intriguing core is there, and the developers have indicated a commitment to adding the remaining features, at the moment the game is very shallow and repetitive, with important elements underplayed (if not missing entirely) and unimportant ones overly focused upon. The majority of the game's 75 current missions (in reality, the same fifteen played over and over at five different difficulty levels) can each be completed within five minutes, and the elements that make FS challenging and XCOM absorbing simply aren't there at the moment. The special abilities and items for the characters in B&C are nearly pointless, for example, and I've almost never had to use them (or even had time to), whereas in XCOM the distinct special abilities of the various classes were useful and powerful, and employed repeatedly. Simply charging through a room and unloading everywhere is also often more effective than planning any kind of ambush or tactical advance even on the higher difficulties, which should certainly not be the case. With the addition of the remaining gameplay modes and new challenges that change the focus of the gameplay from disjointed arcade-style speedruns into cohesive campaigns involving lengthier tactical engagements, B&C will very likely be a game worth 4/5 (or higher). It's just not there right now, unfortunately.
The armor text is still on the description, probably worth changing that quickly. (Can you remove also screenshots without an Apple review? I *think* so, but I'll get destroyed if I screw up and remove them all from our app, or something.)
You're correct on why the soldiers aren't turning. We had a lot of internal debate on the behavior of the soldiers in situations like this. Should they always follow the specified angles exactly, leaving behind any other targets seen, or do they stay focused on a target, and then turn when that target is down? In most cases, the target is taken down relatively quickly, so waiting for the target to be down doesn't usually cause much of a delay, but it can occasionally result in the problem you're having. I'll look into ways to tweak the behavior to improve these corner cases.
I totally agree with this. Unfortunately, we're currently five years into a market where everyone has been burnt at least once buying a game hoping for updates that never come to fruition. It's really, really tricky figuring out how to handle this in a review as we've been caught with our pants down more than a few times giving a game an overly positive review because of future promises that never pan out because of a million different reasons. Instead, we just look at what the game does have. I totally agree with Jeffrey's assessment, as right now Breach & Clear feels like going to an awesome restaurant your friends have been hyping forever with some swanky multi-course tasting menu where your waiter comes back and tells you, "Sorry, we're out of food" after the first course. I'm very used to iOS games having things that are "coming soon" but usually these things are handled in an Angry Birds-like sense in that you finish the content the game has, and you're met with another "world" or whatever on the level select screen with a "coming soon" on it. You already feel like you've gotten the complete experience, and there might just be more coming eventually. With Breach & Clear, there's so much "coming soon" stuff that the feeling you get is much closer to, "Man, it seems like this game is missing EVERYTHING." That vibe is hard to overcome, as it just gives you this notion that you're playing something that's super unfinished regardless of whether or not that's actually the case.
You are absolutely right. A lot of the game is in the 'coming soon' folder, and we're currently working on adding quite a few features in right now. Things such as the Replay feature, restat options, more guns, more equipment...and so forth. A lot of devs certainly play this card, and for us it was a mix of necessity and a gauge on where the game stands in our minds. To be very frank, we didn't expect nearly the response we got at launch. We've been blown away by the support! On the other hand, we're completely in agreeance as a team about the points being brought up. Our goal is to take those suggestions, critiques and comments and start to guide the content towards what users are asking for. So there's good and bad to both sides, we'll just keep chugging to where we are on the 'good' side for everone . Should have a list of what Update 1 is going to bring here soon!
