Okay, so my opening might have been just a touch melodramatic (if there is such a thing for a term that innately means to excess?) but there is some truth to how MPQ has hurt me. I've never been a big fan of mobile games: which I will call this even though I played it on my Windows 10 laptop through Steam (my screenshots are from a phone emulator though). The mobile mindset seems to be to make a game fun enough to get someone interested, and then not fun at all unless they pay money, and the more they pay the better things are for them. That horrible generalization (though perhaps not unfounded) describes MPQ very well. For proper perspective, I am not against paying for games, I know from my own projects that programming a game is hard, hard work. And having artistic talent is something that you should be rewarded for using. But as someone who's lived most of his life below the poverty level I am very keen about getting a good return for my limited money. And MPQ does not give you nearly enough for how the game is deliberately designed to constantly suck the cash/ Steam gift cards out of your wallet. That said, let's take a look at how the game works.
Match 3 pop-culture-style, or, Bejeweled with Eye Beams
So I remember the release of Bejeweled by Pop Cap Games back in 2001, it was a monster. Everyone I knew was losing hours upon hours to that damn game. I resisted for a while, but even I gave in (and this was back on a Windows 98 desktop computer). It was fun, I will give it that. Oddly, it was also the only "match 3" game I played until MPQ. The match 3 format is easy enough, usually you move two adjacent pieces to make a match of 3 or more in the same colored pieces. The matched pieces disappear, and new ones drop into place. It's a simple mechanic, it's really just about pattern recognition and some luck. Easy to get into, and engrossing enough to be fun.MPQ takes that basic formula and adds it's central concept, superheroes. Each match you make earns "Action Points (AP)" for each tile matched (so matching 3 red tiles gives 3 red AP). You choose up to 3 heroes, and each has up to 3 abilities. Some abilities are passive, so they are always in effect, while the rest have an AP cost. For example Iron Man's Repulsor Blast power costs 10 red AP to use.
Your heroes and your opponents (also up to 3 at a time) each have health points. The goal is to reduce the other guy's health to 0, which knocks them out of the fight. Each hero (I use the term generally, there are playable villains like Doc Ock) does a different amount of damage for each color, so out of your group the hero who does the highest damage will 'move to the front' after each match (making them the one to take damage). In addition to doing damage from each tile matched most abilities also do damage or create special tiles.
Special tiles change a tile of a certain color on the board into a new hybrid tile. So Iron Fist can make a Green Attack Tile, which means a green tile on the board - that is not already special - gains a fist symbol and automatically does a certain amount of damage at the start of Iron Fist's side's turn. Luke Cage can make a Red Protect Tile, which reduces the damage his side (whoever's in front, not just him) takes by a certain amount.
The most common special tile though is the Countdown Tile. This makes a counter that decreases each turn, and when it hits 0 it triggers some effect. Because all of these special tiles alter ones on the board a big part of the game is trying to match away your opponenet's special tiles while protecting your own.
Having these powers adds a whole extra dimension to the basic match 3 game. You don't want to make a match that includes one of your special tiles (you destroy your own if you match them). Likewise, you may not need a certain color, but make the match to get rid of an opponent's special tiles. So there's an extra layer of decision-making to each turn, and strategically there are some heroes who work better with others. Since most powers cost AP, you don't want a lot of heroes who have the same colored powers since you won't be able to use them all. And some abilities just combine in very useful ways.
Also, the artwork is good and most of the powers look pretty cool with their short animations.
Why Hulk No My Friend?
Sadly, it is in this cool concept, having a roster of heroes, where the evil creeps in.You get a few free heroes at the start of the game. And they all have a "Level" that determines their overall power and "Covers" that determine what powers they can use and how strong (combined with the hero's Level) those powers are. You have to gain covers to increase a hero's maximum level, but you win covers at random from earning "Tokens" that you turn in for a random hero from a pool of them. These tokens can be won, but usually just the least powerful - heroes themselves are rated by "Stars." A 1 Star hero is the lowest and least powerful, with a low maximum level. 5 Star heroes are the most powerful and can be upgraded the most. This makes it hard to talk about characters, since there is a 1 Star Iron Man, a 3 Star Iron Man as well as 4 and 5 Star versions (each with different art). I have no idea why there isn't a 2 Star Shellhead though.
Confused yet? Yeah, it's kind of hard to describe (for being pretty simple really). Anyways, so you can earn tokens for playing the game and even just for logging in. But, those are almost always lesser 1 or 2 Star heroes. Each token has a small chance (sometimes just 1% or so) of giving you a higher-Star hero's cover, so occasionally you'll get a great deal.
To review, you get heroes at random, and the free heroes are the least powerful ones. Then it gets better. Each hero can have up to 5 covers in each of it's 3 powers, but can only have a total of 13 covers. So you cannot get all 5 covers in all 3 powers, you'll have to choose some to under-power. And after you've gotten those 5 covers in one power, or 13 covers in one hero, all the same covers are useless. You can 'sell,' or really convert, them into purple currency (ISO? I forget, I always called it "purple crap" for how useful it was). Purple Crap is spent to level up a hero, which you cannot do unless/ until you get a cover, within their limits, so it is really easy to get Purple Crap. I usually had at least 300,000 points of the stuff (my friend was always over 1 million). It was hard to get a lot of heroes to level up.
One of the biggest reasons why it was so hard was the game's other system designed to screw over the players, your limited Roster size. You can only have a number of heroes up to your Roster size. So at the beginning of the game you have around a 6-hero sized Roster. Once you get all 6 slots filled you have to sell off ones you have to make room for different heroes. In order to increase your Roster size you have to spend real money (called Hero Points) - and the kick in the pants is that It Gets More And More Expensive The More Heroes You Buy!!! So you just started the game, the tutorial pretty much filled your roster, and you like the game so you decide to buy some more character slots. Well, look, it's only 300 Hero Points for 3 slots. That's pretty good, like under a dollar per slot, not too bad. So you fill those up. No big, only spent a few bucks on the game, I'll buy some more. Oh, wait, now it's 350 points for 3 slots. And then 500 points for 3 slots. And then 400 points for 2 slots. And eventually 700 points for 1 slot. And the cost just keeps on rising.
This is crap. It is total, 100% scum-sucking garbage CRAP! The longer you play the game the higher the tax on playing.
Well, no problem, I'll just get rid of any characters I don't really like, and I'll slowly buy slots with the few free Hero Points I can get from playing. Yeah, that kind of works. But you see, some tokens stay good forever, and some are limited-time events (called "Vaults" to drive home how they're stealing your money), and once you open a token and get a cover a timer starts. You can only hold onto a cover for 14 days, at the end it is automatically converted to Purple Crap. So over and over you're going to keep losing covers, and watching all the tokens you don't have room for pile up, and then you'll need to open those higher-level tokens to keep up with the game, but what if it has a cool character you don't have any room for? Either you shell out ever-increasing money or say goodbye to a hero you might not see again for months (remember, the tokens produce random covers) or just get disappointed because you didn't want that hero in the first place. Literally whatever the outcome is it's bad, unless you have a lot of money to burn.
I Hate Myself For Loving You
And that sucks, because the game itself is pretty damn fun.It's got just the right amount of complexity to be interesting without becoming so hard that it loses the 'casual game' appeal. It's actually pretty fun to play, but every second in-between matches is filled with the frustration of managing your roster. The joy of getting a new token quickly becomes the disappointment of it not being the hero you need to go with the other one you've got, or the frustration of not having enough space. And it's not one of those games you can just spend a little on, the cost keeps going up and up and up the longer you play. There are over 300 heroes total, I cannot imagine just how much real money it would take, or hundreds of hours of playing, to be able to poke-catch them all.
Adding insult to injury, most of the gameplay revolves around events. These are a pool of opponents that change every 3-4 days. Each match you win in the event gives you points. And there are rewards for the top 100-500 players of each difficulty. These are covers, so you can get exactly who you want - if you can out-score other people. Which really means the people who play the most have the best chances of getting better characters.
The other thing you can do is "PvP." This is not real PvP, I don't know a good term for it, I've seen a few games do this same thing. What happens is that the servers look for another player, pick 3 random heroes in that player's inventory, and those are your opponents. The computer is controlling them, you never directly face another live person. And this is the other way to try to get good covers, except the match-making algorythm is so terrible you will often be fighting level 255 enemies when your highest hero is level 70. So good luck. And whenever the computer picks one of your teams and someone defeats them you lose points/ standing - unless, of course, you pay real money for a 'shield' to protect yourself a day or two or three.
Crap.
I really want to like this game. I like the Marvel heroes, I like the gameplay and the graphics are solid. I like having a game I can log into for a few minutes and not have to really commit to playing, it gives me a break in-between other (admittedly more productive) things. But the suck-you-dry business model that never gets any better is just too much to put up with. I respect myself and value my time more than that. If you like match 3 games and either have money to burn or a high frustration tolerence then give it a try - but my advise to most people is don't bother, and don't reward this company for being so disrespectful to it's players.
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