[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
Special Ops: Operation Assault is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store packs, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.[/quote]
Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, and whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware.
In this case, the asset flipper took a very lame FPS blueprint and combined it with an equally lame container/cargo ship asset to make an extremely lame minimum viable product/cash grab. I have to stress just how bad the FPS blueprint these guys are using is... it feels like it's made for mobile phones or Nintendo DS or something. It's extremely clunky and unfun to play, with huge lag, long TTKs... I mean, what do we expect from an asset flip? Of course the quality is bad. That's the primary reason gamers don't like asset flips. They're terrible as games. That's even more important to gamers than the moral bankruptcy of the plagiarism that takes place. Regardless, this has no value or merit as a real game.
Merla Games is just HapGames/HappyTube wearing a fake moustache and a trenchcoat. Did they think we wouldn't notice? It's always a little amusing when asset flippers try to hide their identity. It's a tacit proof they know what they are doing is wrong and harmful to the gaming industry, so they try to disguise themselves and further mislead gamers. But as always, the truth will out!
These guys have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. One example of Merla Games doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2642970]Stealth Assault: Urban Strike[/url], which is really the "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/industrial/rpg-fps-game-assets-for-pc-mobile-industrial-set-v7-0-177135]RPG/FPS Game Assets Industrial Set[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Dmitrii Kutsenko.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the mid 2000s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
This kind of asset flipping isn't harmless. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games from ethical developers. It makes it harder for genuine indie developers, who put hard work into trying to make real games, to find an audience for their products. It gives indie developers a bad name.
This game features a number of suspicious, likely fake positive reviews. The reviews all appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and all have very similar wording and writing style. Immediately after this huge peak of reviews, reviews (and player counts) for the game dropped incredibly sharply. This is highly unusual given the very low quality of the game and poor player counts. The "Positive" review score on this game should be taken with a large grain of salt. This might have been done to deceive/mislead gamers into paying for a bad product.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Special Ops: Operation Assault has the insane price of around $6 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer.
For comparison, the $6 asking price for this game could get you games like "Metro Last Light", "Shadow Warrior" or "Batman: Arkham City". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
