Middle Manager of Justice

LouRinaldi

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/middle-manager-of-justice/id536013980?mt=8

Double Fine. Free[mium]. Those two factors mean a LOT of people will be playing this game. I've just finished the first boss fight and I still don't feel like the game has "grabbed" me. Sure, it's got the expected (and fantastic) Double Fine character designs, humor and witty dialogue. But underneath is something that feels ... unexciting. I'll spend some more time with it over the weekend, and see if that changes.

xChillerONEx

Couldn't agree with you more. I played the game when it was accidentally released back in September and found it unfinished and lacking which given that it wasn't the final build didn't surprise me.
I started playing again now that the game got its official release and not much has changed. I like how they managed to balance the freemium aspect. It seems to be in favor of the player and you almost don't have to pay if you don't want to. I say almost because sooner or later you need better heroes and those will cost you real money.

The problem with the game is that its just not fun... I don't find it absorbing in any way. Its just boring and I don't wanna keep playing. What a shame, I thought if anyone could do freemium right it was Double Fine.

Miporin

I have to disagree about the balance. As you pick up more heroes and as they level up, the cost of keeping them equipped and trained shoots up significantly, as does the difficulty of the enemy encounters. However, the coin rewards from defeating these encounters do not increase at the same rate. Also, training time becomes longer as stats get higher, meaning as the game goes on, your supers are spending more time training and less time grinding for cash. Unless of course, you speed up the training time with consumable premium currency.

While the game doesn't continually shove the Buy button in your face like a Zynga game does, it is no less dependent on IAPs. The tragic thing is that they did not have to go that route. This would have been the perfect game to lock behind a paywall things like certain heroes (the ones market research would have determined as most appealing), extra costumes or other cosmetic stuff (possible color changes), or story chapters.

EDIT: I played the game for the couple more hours, and apparently the battles become much easier once all your heroes are level 5 and you've bought them proper costumes (which is a huge upgrade for each one). So then it becomes, in essence, a waiting game in more ways than one. A time-management game where you can exchange real currency for time.

LouRinaldi

Update: I gave up and deleted the game. At the end of the day, it just wasn't very fun. Still laughing at Miporin's last two sentences. Doesn't look like the mainstream critics are receiving it in anything more than lukewarm fashion, either: http://www.metacritic.com/game/ios/middle-manager-of-justice/critic-reviews

jon_a_ross

I played this game a lot over Christmas. It was a way to get out of family conversations and the like. Anyway, putting in some 36 on and off again hours of attention and not dropping a penny has got me all eight heroes, one at level 10, two level 9, one level 8 (My veteran's) and then I have almost got the other four heroes up to level 5. The training time does get stupid, but they train while you have the game closed so as long as the final thing you do is set up the training it doesn't seem too bad.
For free.
And being trapped. Now that I no longer have social events that will trap me I don't think I'll be launching the game again, so it is a bit of a mixed bag.