[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b]
This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote]
Possibly the worst PUBG ripoff ever made, this low poly low budget VR tech demo failed harder than Concord. You've got VR exclusivity, wrapped on laughably poor quality game assets and characters. Guns and other pickups you have to find are just floating in the air, and the developers didn't bother with ammo pickups, it just regenerates in your gun, because trying to combine real gameplay with VR tech demo quality implementation was making this a complicated enough mess already. Needless to say, big failure on Steam Direct.
So, "Rampage Agents" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
[i]Most PvP games on Steam fail.[/i] Very few of them ever go viral. This game failed because the developer expected it to become "virally" popular without creating any actual reason or compelling features. This doesn't do anything that other games already do better.
There's fierce competition in the PvP game arena... and I'm not referring to players fighting other players. There's thousands of PvP-only games but only a tiny handful of them are successful enough to attract and keep a wide player base. This game failed to compete and didn't get enough people to stay active. Despite being free, it did not have what it takes, it's as simple as that.
There is no real single player content here. The developer thought other players could replace actual storytelling and level design. That was a bad bet to make, and yeah, the developer lost. Hard. Without a player base or meaningful solo content (storytelling, narrative, you know, what makes games like GTA famous), the game has nothing to offer. Other players are not a substitute for doing the job of a developer and creating meaningful game content.
In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D graphics which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games.
It's VR exclusive, and that shows the developer failed to understand the most basic axiom of VR game design... if the only cool thing about your product is VR support, your product is not cool.
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.
On the important matter of pricing and value for gamers, there's a lot going on here with monetisation, so this really shouldn't be considered a truly free product because of that.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $10 USD for this.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
It doesn't stop there, this game is also infested with mobile app store like microtransactions. This is a consumer hostile model that we don't need to see on PC. It's deceptively priced to gouge gamers, and that's a reason in itself to avoid this.
You can always judge a game by how popular it is with the general public. Steam has over 130 million unique gamers, and over 40 million unique logons every day from dedicated PC gamers. But this only ever had a peak player count of a dozen or so people... that's very poor public reception. Gamers rejected this, most likely due to the reasons I supply in this review.
All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.
