[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: Microtransaction infested mobile-tier game![/url][/b]
This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote]
[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]
"SUR5" (surfive, survive, geddit) looks exactly like one of thousands of nasty mobile apps infesting the "free" section of Steam, but it's not really free. While I couldn't find this on the app stores, for all intents and purposes this is a mobile app... it has all the same qualities, from the mobile app tier graphics to the shallow gameplay you expect from mobile app cash harvesters. We can't say why this wasn't accepted on the mobile app stores, maybe it's because Google and Apple have QA departments, and Valve has "Steam Direct".
Amazingly this mobile-app-in-exile never made it to Google Play or the Apple App Store, but the developers intended for this to be yet another mobile app cash grab. This is a CCG deckbuilder (think incredibly weak Hearthstone ripoff) where the winner is determined by, you guessed it, who gives the most money to the mobile devs behind this. Swap the Blizzard theme for an AI slop looking card design about post apocalyptic survival or some trash... doesn't really matter, what matters is you have to buy the toxic THIRTY UNITED STATES DOLLAR P2W DLC before you can get anywhere.
There's only a superficial game here. The game visuals and the game itself are incredibly shallow... think of them as the cheap, bright, colourful plastic cabinet dress theme on a poker machine at the casino. That's basically what this is. So really, the mobile app "game" is just a veneer, a thin skin wrapped around a nasty, predatory mobile app cash shop.
Putting that toxic mobile app monetisation aside... this is basically a mobile app on the wrong platform. I didn't spend thousands on a gaming PC so I could pretend it's an iPhone, and I don't think you did either... this kind of mobile app has no place in your Steam library.
While I couldn't find this on the mobile app stores, everything about it looks and feels like it's a mobile app designed for mobile phones... for PC gaming enthusiasts, it's not going to give you a cutting edge PC gaming experience. That alone is enough to disqualify this from any recommendation. We don't spend thousands building gaming rigs so that we can pretend they're iPhones and play iPhone games and mobile apps.
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.
This game is 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.
Even after that, you're expected to pay up $30 USD to unlock content through DLC purchases. The game should not be considered completely unlocked until you empty your wallet for the developer. This is misleading and predatory pricing on a product falsely marketed as "free".
In terms of public reception, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library?
Not on a bet. This might be "free", but I still feel like I got ripped off. Because this is a dead PvP game, with no players, it can't be played anyway. Definitely don't get scammed into giving these guys money.
