Monster Burner Review: Roasting monsters again and again on Windows Phone

Last calendar week, most of united states of america were thrilled when Monster Burner launched as a free Xbox Windows Phone game. Surprisingly, a few days later Monster Burner is no longer free; it at present sells for a dollar. The only other time an Xbox Windows Phone game has gone up in cost (Aroused Birds and ilomilo promotions excluded)  was Miniclip'due south Fling jumping from 99 cents to a too-high $2.99 last year.

Monster Burner was gratuitous on iOS before it got pulled and relies heavily on In-App Purchases. Now that it costs a buck, should yous notwithstanding get it? Read on to observe out...

Destroy all monsters

Monster Burner's gameplay has a simple but strong foundation. Enemies arroyo from the top of the screen and each one that reaches the bottom causes one heart'southward worth of damage. To keep your hearts safe, you'll fling fireballs at the baddies from anywhere on the screen. You can hold your finger downwards before launching the fireball to increase its size and thus hitting more enemies. Ricocheting shots off of walls will burn even more than foes at once.

That ricochet mechanic gives Monster Burner some technique. The more enemies you lot hit with ane fireball, the higher your score and the more than money bonuses they drop. Then bouncing fireballs off the walls in order to hit the virtually possible enemies will reap the all-time rewards. But the enemies come in different patterns and speeds, so yous can't always reply on a particular angled shot to get the chore done. An if you're in trouble, you might just have to flick similar crazy instead of charging up big shots to richochet.

Monster mash

On the whole, Monster Burner lacks for enemy variety. You'll mostly fight the same orange 'Morglins' throughout the entire game. Sometimes they show upwards wearing skull helmets, in which case they accept two hits to kill instead of 1. Simply at the very least, some palette swaps would've spiced things up a fleck.

That said, a few completely different enemy types bear witness up in some levels. Water-based Droolers are the most mutual secondary foe. Fireballs kill them but they also extinguish the fireball, ending a philharmonic chain. The play a joke on is to aim for as many regular enemies as possible before your shot hits the Drooler. When these guys outset showing up in large numbers in harder levels, you'll just accept to moving-picture show away instead of worrying well-nigh combos.

Other enemies include fast-moving spiders, ghosts who disappear and reappear, zombies, werewolves, and a vampire bat. Bats must be killed quickly because they bleed your life from a distance. But most of the baddies I but listed simply appear in the Transylvaniac set of levels instead of throughout the game. They fit that level's theme but the game would work better if they as well showed up in other levels and modes.

Finally, princesses don't autumn into the monster category, yet they pose just as much threat equally enemies. Whenever a princess runs by, you take to permit her reach the lesser of the screen unharmed. Accidentally roast her with a fireball (very easy to do) and you lose a heart. I've dyed, I mean dieted... err, no, DIED quite a few times as a result of unintended princess barbecues.

Game modes

Monster Burner offers several modes, simply they're spread around kind of oddly. The 'Play' push leads to a campaign mode that sadly lacks a story. It contains six sets of regular levels. Each set has a different number of levels within it – one offers only 4 while two of them take eight. And the High Plains set up's levels start their numbering at two instead of i. Truly there is no rhyme or reason to the level distribution.

Within that same Play choice you'll also find a prepare of bonus modes: Survival, Revenge of the Enchantress, Spider Lair, and Fright Dark. Survival (which costs a bunch of coins to unlock) is a challenging stage that goes on for quite a while and offers potentially high coin payouts. Nobody has discovered how to unlock the other threee modes; maybe they're a teaser for a future update?

Outside of the play option, you lot'll also find three more game modes on the cluttered main menu: Level of the Day, Gold Blitz, and Four Seasons. Four Seasons is a fix of iv simple season-themed levels. I judge the point of them is to compete for higher scores with your friends. Note that fifty-fifty though the help text mentions global leaderboards, like other Windows Phone games this one just supports Friends Leaderboards.

Aureate Rush adds an interesting time-based element. You tin can only play information technology every six hours, and the game's Live championship will even display a number one when it becomes available. (The Live tile has a spelling error though, equally pictured a few paragraphs beneath.) Gold Rush levels change every week. They're longer than normal levels and offering far more than coin rewards than usual.

99 problems

• The Children'due south Fashion advertised in the game'southward Store description is NOT present on Windows Phone. Permit's advertise our games honestly, okay devs?
• The options screen has a Deject storage backup choice, which would exist awesome... If it worked, which it doesn't. Let'southward promise Ubisoft fixes that with an update.
• No book control options! Given Windows Telephone's lack of independent volume command, developers should never forget to include sound options.
• The game crashes on outset-up for some users. I didn't experience this, but information technology needs to be fixed.

Grinding for gold

Monster Burner started out equally a freemium title. Even though the game costs a little coin now, information technology still relies on the same IAPs as before. Basically, the in-game store sells single-use items (deadening down monsters, speed upwardly monsters, or draw damaging fire walls) and several permanent upgrades. The upgrades give you more than life, make your fireballs bigger or reverberate more than, and increase firewall size. Considering the campaign difficulty ratchets up super quickly, you'll need to buy most or all of the upgrades to consummate the game.

All of those toll coins, which can exist earned during gameplay. Upgrades go super expensive, and then players will have to either grind for coins or purchase them with Microsoft Points. The IAP prices (equally with many Windows Telephone games) don't offer a terrific value for the coin. But the permanent 2x coin multiplier for 160 Points ($two) is practically a must-buy since it cuts the grinding time in one-half. Our coin grinding trick will speed it upward even more!

Achievements

Spelling is difficult, okay?

Many of the Achievements involve earning 100 per centum efficiency ratings on levels by keeping fireball use to a minimum – unremarkably not every bit hard every bit it sounds. Others require players to earn orbs from high scores on the levels. A few levels won't surrender their orbs without a fight, let me tell you. And ane Achievement wears a shamefully incorrect description - the one for getting 93 orbIt really takes 111 orbs to unlock it.

Yous'll besides need an overall leaderboard score of one million points. The problem is level scores don't always post to the leaderboard for some reason, so you lot might accept to replay levels several times just to get their scores to count. Ubisoft should definitely better the leaderboard functioning.

Finally, purchasing every upgrade will take a while. Utilize our fast money grinding flim-flam to get them in a bustle.

Overall Impression

Monster Burner is congenital equally a gratuitous game and information technology really should be free, so I don't know why the toll got raised to a dollar. But even I you gene in that price and the 2x permanent coin multiplier, it still ends up existence just iii bucks total – a fair price.

The design of the game relies a tad too heavily on grinding though. The campaign difficulty spikes weirdly and so that yous'll sometimes have a tough time until you buy another upgrade or two. And only certain levels are good for grinding anyway, so you end up playing those few levels or Golden Blitz for hours and barely even visit the other levels. The game could use more fifty-fifty payouts and eight levels per fix instead of some sets having fewer levels.

I don't desire to sound too down on Monster Burner, though. It needs more polish, simply the core gameplay is fun and like shooting fish in a barrel to learn. I love the art style too. If you can put up with a little grinding and similar turning monsters to ashes, don't hesitate to grab the game and the 2x coin multiplier along with it.

Monster Burner – 99 Cents - 33MB - Store Link

Oh Dear

New report reveals Microsoft's time to come AR strategy; HoloLens iii is expressionless

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/monster-burner-review-roasting-monsters-again-and-again-windows-phone

Posted by: samonscancest.blogspot.com

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