The game is fun - but let's talk about predatory gambling in games.

This concerns the Constellation Axe Skin, I wish I could post screenshots, but you can find all this information in game yourself.

The splash page for the sword proudly presents "50 DRAWS FOR A GUARANTEED ULTIMATE REWARD" notice how that doesn't say sword. Next to the name there is a icon labeled details click that for the next information.

Now, you get a pity count this is your 50 rolls to guarantee, and in bright shiny letters below you are shown the probabilities of 1% for an Ultimate, 5% for Superb, 47.5% for Rare, and 46.5% for Common. This may lead you to believe a 1% chance out of every pull to be the sword, and a guaranteed sword at 50 pulls. but OH MAN are you wrong.

In the tiny text above the probability you will find there is actually (wish I could capitalize numbers) A 0.01% CHANCE for THE SWORD in every pull and a 0.99% Chance of an Ultimate REWARD.

So I did more digging, turns out there are two ULTIMATE REWARDS. The Sword and 100 Ultimate MATERIAL. So now you are probably saying... wtf is ultimate material. well tucked under another tab is a redeem shop for this material, and lo and behold our sword is there for.......... 1000 MATERIAL.

If you have stuck around this long great it's time for some math to reveal how predatory this actually gets. We are going to go with the theory that your luck is absolutely terrible and we will exclude all free cans.

So you now must buy 500 cans (50 for a guaranteed ultimate 99% chance of 100 material X 10) Now we have two options to buy, we can buy roughly the exact amount of coins for 50 cans (8300 coins). $80 will get you 8460 coins ($60 + $20). or we can go the clearly smarter option of $100 for 10800 coins. Now I rounded these numbers out for ease but if you want to do the exact math you can but here we go math time.

We need in the worst situation 83,000 coins to get 500 cans yes 83 thousand. now we buy ten of the $80 options for a total of 84,460 coins BOOM YAY we have our sword for 800 US DOLLARS. But wait a minute snowy I am a big spender and want to buy this sword in the least amount of purchases possible so let me buy the $100 version. GREAT! Well lets do that. FOUR $100 packs will net you 43,200 coins (5 packs of 50 cans) buy 4 get one free right, so how many to reach the ability to buy the sword???? YEP THAT'S RIGHT 8 total, for 800 US DOLLARS. but wait you have a remaining 3,400 coins,,, to buy whatever tf you managed to not pull in your remaining 495 non ultimate cans.

I understand your luck may be better, you may get extra coins that will save you maybe 50 bucks + 50 bucks worth of free cans. but overall to GUARANTEE that sword, with no lucky ultimate pulls on non guaranteed cans. it's $800 for a weapon on a screen that very loudly screams 50 CANS FOR GUARANTEED ULTIMATE while only showing the one ultimate sword. It's misleading and extremely predatory........... base game is fun though. now do I send a thumbs up or a thumbs down? Dunno but I am sure as hell buying 50 cans!

Uses AI assets, brain rotting number of menus, about 8 currencies... EVERY. SINGLE. THING. HAS. A PROGRESSION. TRACK.
Every time you play a match (which will be about 20 minutes of gameplay just to die to people camping in obscure locations) there are 70 things in ur face saying "NEW" or "CLAIM THIS" and you have to navigate through 15 sub-menus just to acknowledge the new sticker that you probably already had, or to look at the time limited deal that you should definitely spend your money on (please spend money).

I would rather sell my personal data to China than rot my brain trying to comprehend the 50 sub-menu system of this mobile-game lookin ahh game.

FragPunk is something of a tragedy.

The game itself is solid; two teams compete to plant the bomb or prevent the bomb from being planted. There's a time limit, the maps are asymmetrical, characters and weapons must be chosen. We've seen all of this before. The twist? Cards that teams can vote on that subtlely or drastically alter the core mechanics. One card makes characters' heads enormous, making for easier head shots, while another shrinks everyone's heads, making head shots more difficult. One card spawns grass on the entire map, obfuscating traps and even making crouching enemies just that little bit harder to see. It's a breath of fresh air for the tactical shooter genre, all wrapped in a self-aware and un-serious package that feels right at home in the grimly sardonic Borderlands franchise.

The game is a fun time with a clever hook. So, what's the tragedy? FragPunk is a live service. And it's not shy about this at all.

It has the usual live service warts like funny money. Excuse me, funny *monies*. Multiple currencies that all do something different, all designed to entice you while obscuring the real monetary value of things. It also does not let you play all the characters out of the gate. You have to grind funny money to do so, and FragPunk is not going to make getting that funny money easy or fun. Characters (called Lancers in this franchise) cost a lot of funny money and you don't make much in a single session. You're very much made to feel left out. But don't worry! You could open your wallet to make this problem go away. And while you're at it, why not buy some skins?

The game is extremely pro-active about promoting all of its wares. The main screen is a dazzling array of colors and sound designed to show you the latest skins, battle passes, events, stickers, and all manner of up-selling straight out of an unregulated mobile game. A lot of time and effort goes into all of this. How much is that distracting from the fun game play? The game locks you out of ranked mode until level 30. But you won't have all the characters. How can you fairly compete if you've not been given the same tools as your competitors? Doesn't matter - the *game* doesn't matter. You could buy that competitive edge if you wanted to. That's what matters.

If you're confident you can look past all of this (the main screen does mercifully have a giant "PLAY" button to whisk you away from all the razzle dazzle) then FragPunk is a fun and interesting game. It's just too bad it wasn't developed differently, with the ability to host private servers and, well, to own the game in any capacity. As fun as the game is there is absolutely no way to know if it will make it through the year in a market saturated by live services all competing for your attention.

Fun game. Very unfortunate.