[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
Covert Commando is one of literally thousands of creatively bankrupt asset flips infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.[/quote]
This is just a bunch of plagiarised/stolen Synty Studios low poly assets dumped on a basic top down twin stick shooter game blueprint. At least the developer isn't trying to get your money for Synty's assets. Needless to say this was a huge flop, gamers can smell an asset flip from a mile away.
Covert Commando is partially or completely made up of stock assets, "borrowed" from asset stores and free asset websites. Little, if anything in this game is the creation of the "developer".
While there's no up front price for this asset flip, the other problem with asset flips is that when developers aren't capable of doing their job and creating high quality assets, it's also true they can't do any of the rest of the job of a game developer either. That's definitely true for "Covert Commando", and this kind of asset flipping never results in games that have quality or value for PC gamers.
The developer chose not to do the job of a real game developer and create meaningful bespoke levels, narrative based gameplay progression and so on. Instead, they decided that "Procgen IS content!" and lazily tried to use procgen algorithms to create infinite, samey, repetitive, soulless levels, because that's a lot less work.
As a result of this poor decision, the game gets tired and repetitive almost immediately. Developers must learn that procgen is a terrible substitute for creating real content. It should not be used as "ez-mode" for content creation, as the developer tried to do here.
This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
On pricing, this is "free" enough, at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 2 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.
