Welcome Time Wasters!
Alright. I went back to my smartphone this week, but I wish I wouldn’t have. It’s not that I didn’t find a good game, but rather that it was unplayable due to the sheer amount of ads. Get ready for a rant about Shootout 3D.
Shootout 3D is a puzzle game that has the player controlling all characters on the field at once. This includes both the good guys and the bad guys. The way it handles this is to have the player swipe the screen to control which way characters are facing and tap to fire.
This is an interesting idea for a puzzle game. It challenges the player to consider their actions before choosing to fire. That and the quickness with which levels can be beat make it perfect for the mobile market.
Shootout 3D even adds in other interesting elements as well. Among these is ricocheting bullets off of walls and other surroundings to pull off more complex shots. On top of this, some of its puzzles are set up so that they can be beat in multiple ways. That’s something I can always appreciate. Unfortunately, my appreciation for this game didn’t last long.
Here’s the thing about Shootout 3D. It is filled to the brim with ads. I have seen unskippable ads so up as often as after every level and at the minimum they show up once every two levels. We’re talking 30 seconds of ads for less than half a minute of gameplay. That ratio is way off. What’s even worse is that these are the worst type of ads. Those that hide the icon to close the ad out. Sometimes they also have those short demo ones that just never seem to have a close option until the player taps something, is whisked off to the Play Store, closes it out and then comes back to the ad.
Let me be 100% clear here. I hate ads. I mean really hate ads. They get in the way and pull the player out of the game without a moment’s notice. However, I do understand that developers need to make money. Especially when they are putting games out for free. Even then, this is an absolute trash way to go about it. There is no better way to kill a player’s drive for your game than to hit them with so many ads that they spend more time dealing with them than playing the game.
Please listen to me, developers. I’ve said this time and time again and I’ll keep saying it until you listen. The proper way to use ads is for incentive. Shootout 3D even has this option after levels. Players can watch ads to increase how much in-game currency they get. Alright. That works. Now your goal is to make the items that can be bought with that currency so desirable to the player that they are willing to sit through the ad for those extra gems, coins or what have you. And no, this doesn’t mean have the game come to a halt until the player spends real-world cash on the game. I’m not saying that Shootout 3D does this, but it seems to be the way that some developers think games should be made.
Now we’re on to the part where I would normally talk about the graphics and audio in Shootout 3D, but I’m not going to. What’s the point in talking about the graphics and audio in a game that the player barely ever sees due to the sheer amount of ads on the screen? There isn’t one. Heck, I couldn’t even turn off my mobile data to get good pictures of the game for this review. It just kept coming up and warning me about not having an internet connection, which I can only assume is some poor attempt at a DRM-like system to try and make sure I don’t skip out on the ads.
Let’s be honest about this. By now, you’ve already seen that score up top and already know you aren’t playing the game. At least, I hope you won’t put yourself through this. So let’s just look at the poor-quality pictures from its Google Play page instead and understand that the game looks alright, but isn’t worth trying out.
Shootout 3D earns 1 GiN Gem out of 5!