Monetizer: Sandstorm: Pirate Wars

hello and welcome to pocket gamer. bus YouTube channel I'm John Jordan so um the game we're looking at today is part of our monetizer um feature where we look at the monetization of free-to-play mobile games is from Ubisoft it's called Sandstorm pirate Wars um just booted it up this is our kind of this is the um I guess the kind of daily communication with the developers so um we can kind of neatly see what's going on here three missions available pirate Arena I've got um 24 hours left to complete the daily missions and I receive a free free crate a free crate in 55 minutes um okay right so so far so good um so I'm not i' played been playing a bit this game for the last couple of days um and it's kind of a interesting in many ways interesting Ubisoft hasn't done a lot of free-to-play mobile games um and certainly not done a lot of this kind of original um kind of content so it's done

um done some Assassin's Creed stuff it's done some trial stuff um but this kind of game kind of snuck out really um we didn't know it was coming out we didn't know it was in soft launch we didn't know really anything about it until it came out um it's interesting in many ways I wouldn't say it's it's the um probably I guess it's an original content game I wouldn't say this is their kind of big bet for the year um kind of graphically we can see with the interface here it doesn't look awful um but it doesn't kind of scream Ubisoft at you um I mean you can see this kind of ship in the in the background that's my ship they've kind of had a nice idea about how to kind of run the kind of like the gameplay run the battle it's a bit like CSR racing as we'll see without the racing instead of racing you'll kind of blow each other up but um they're quite detailed kind of um models and and quite good-looking but the camera kind of angles are fixed so so that's kind of like limiting the um the kind of processing paan needed which is a nice trick you know there nothing wrong with that um there's the whole freeto playay model we can kind of see the top of the screen I've got 84 fuel

cells or power cells or something and 5,609 bolts that's the S currency the power cells is hard currency um you see I've got this Raven That's the name of the craft it's only level three or it's level three and we see some other bits here it's it's kind of health and that's its energy we see down the bottom there's some upgrade um upgrade customized equip we looking at that in a minute but this thing kind of flashing the top right so let's go in this is our this is the kind of the um one of the monetizations systems so as ever there's um these crates kind of uh it's kind of like the um come out of the card battling kind of um not it's a card battling um not this is a card battling game at all but um if if I can I can spend I haven't got 10,000 I can spend 10,000 bolts and get um three systems most mostly common maybe a rare one so like um the the more expensive um obvious it's kind of random what you get out of it but the more money you spend spend the more like you

want to get good stuff so if we go to at the end we get seven systems many rare ones many rare systems at least one Epic one not even seen an epic system don't know what that is but it's going to cost me 559 power cells clearly not anywhere close to that um so there's ships so we can see the one I've currently got Raven That's the the first one you get I can buy gecko that's going to cost me 7,000 um and the Curren is so here we kind of see so there's the the power cell basket power usual thing so it starts off at4 that's $5 in us um up to £80 that's um $99.99 um and then we can convert hard currency to soft currency so that's all pretty much we know this this is what freet play games do not doing anything special here so what is the game doing um well let's go and do something um so we can go into the city so um It's Kind like the Hub system it's a kind of Mad Max world it's not really kind of um played

out particularly telling you about exactly what's happened doesn't really matter it's just mad well this apocalyptic um people just driving around kind of shooting each other really um so we can go to the tavern each kind of city has a Tavern that's basically the The Hub area where you go and get missions um so you can see this is kind of like um different see these different missions here there's a green one Amber one or red one that's how hard they are um so we can go in the sky here so we can see the graphics here is is again not not massively highend I mean it's kind I think it's kind of a nice style but it's kind of the text you the font on the you know this kind of thing is not looks a bit placeholder really I have to say so anyway delivery job take this to Gast town so this's this kind of kind narrative branching stucture so we go the case nothing okay um a bit odd the whole point of is you're in a post-apocalyptic world doing whatever you can for money why would you say

yeah I don't know whatever um so it's it's a bit odd I think um so I've got 20 minutes to do this Mission um so go to the map so it shows me where I am shows me where I've got to go um I guess it's pretty straightforward um oh there no where's that one where's Gast town this where I get confused get to guest home that set back where is guest down so this is one of the kind of problems with this game I think it's is very confusing about what you do have this map structure and you can just bom around doing stuff um so this one rest okay um okay let's go up here anyway okay so this is where I select where I'm going to go sometimes you have to have multiple points and as you can see on the map this is like a small part of a bigger map um so let's go and we'll kind of see how the the kind of the game play bit of it works I mean like most a lot

free play games it's really it's all about the meta game it's all about leveling up so you can see this other The Ships Come alongside me so we're going to have a fight so there we go um so I have these let's move this out of the way I have um set up my ship so it's different things um so I'm going to use this I'm going to take out try and take out his shield so I've got here a shield I've got here some anti missile measures I can i' got this rage SC weapons rage is going to kind of fire out more you can see his health bar at the top of the screen in my health bar um so I'm going to win this one quite easily I can switch to this other weapon and kind of Target um so it's very simple kind of gameplay that's why I say it's like a CSR Racing thing um and you have this kind of little preand animation um and then at the end so again this is like the the the random thing I can get one item for free I can get two items or I can you know for a soft currency or spend you know hard currency for three items I mean that the game doesn't give you a lot of hard currency so um you know

and I think maybe this is kind of one of my problems with the with the game so here's a nice thing I can well not nice thing particularly but a thing here you can they use the every play system from Unity you can kind of you can share the video share the video on Facebook but there nothing really exciting happened I don't know why you'd want to share that I mean nothing you know the game happened but didn't do some amazing trick or didn't thing didn't blow up at the end so again get the same thing we see what's going on here so there they are they seem to R up my l so there's this kind of plot going on really um that you're supposedly following but really doesn't make a whole bunch of odds so I'm GNA do this try to take out his shield that's the best thing to do this this rocket launcher thing is the best to taking out Shield which is why I'm using it at the moment if I just use the other weapon even though it's stronger The Shield would kind of knock a lot of the stuff out so it's less effective so we can see his health bars going down we might see maybe not on this one sometimes my shield and my coun go down so basically this is like a power system thing so I have to sometimes switch out what um what power what my what my P's being used TOS obviously like Star Trek take

the power down use it on the shield and all that kind of stuff so you can see stuff's being blocked there's just stuff going on I mean I'm not really doing a whole whole bunch of stuff um um apart from just tapping which again is why I think it reminds me bit of CSR and csr's been very successful so maybe maybe this would be successful but I think CSR was successful because it was all about cars that we knew um and we getting more and more cars this doesn't just doesn't have the depth of um of of kind of structure or the kind of Miss it's just a bit I mean this is this has been going on there for I mean for a while isn't it I'm probably not probably Focus been focusing a bit more on it but um you know it's just not a very exciting the game play is just not very exciting you know okay great I blew him up get my free loot cuz I can't I mean just it's very ungenerous I don't feel like wow I did this I got this great I feel like oh that's a that was a grind that was a real grind you know um and now I've got to the next point

so this guy the doctor gives me a reward so gives me some power cells that's quite nice you know so I've completed that mission even though I didn't really know where I was going so I can so my ship's been damaged so it's going to repair itself in 40 seconds that's okay I could I could do it now with soft currency just go to equip let see so this is my um see so these are my the weapons I've got um in kind of on the syst on on at the moment um we can see at the bottom there's a kind of how much how much power um these are kind of ones that I've unlocked or or or kind of won or kind of found but so if I want to swap one on I can swap the minigun on so it just tells me what it is um but obviously that' be crazy to do that because the um isn't very low part system if I want to I could sell it the minigun um so I could go there recycle it says recycle it but you're selling it really so it's a bit odd um support so down here I can see I've got this this is my um flare system so it knocks

out um heat uh protects the ship against heat producing ammo um and then i' got OB Shield so I've got this one here that I found I don't know what that is um no there's five flares compared to that one so obviously I want to swap that one out don't need that one anymore confirm recyc it so this is slightly weird thing that you're not really using in in card battling games you would be using the card you collected to evolve other cards maybe that doesn't fit within this kind of kind of system so you're just kind of getting rid of the getting rid of the stuff you don't need and just kind of you see when I I've recycled it and I've got some some kind of resources um and you need resources to upgrade stuff no they not do that um okay so if I want to upgrade this I go there and as you can see I've got these resources at the top 54 the red stuff I need 415 of the red

stuff so upgrade it uh wait a second we're missing these items so I can use power cells to do it so it's using my hard currency you got that hard currency so this is my kind of problem with the game is the game play is not very interesting and quite a little bit dull and just kind of like you can't you know in lot of these games now Al Asian games you have an auto play I'm not really doing anything particularly interesting i' I would auto play that you know I want to you know I think the narrative in the game is kind of interesting there's kind of a bit you know some characters there who might be interested in what's going on probably is not very deep but the game play is just it's just a grind um and it's good to grind in terms of grinding The Meta Meta game I think I think people are prepared to go well I can spend money and not grind the metag game or I can grind The Meta game and there is enjoyment to be found in grinding meta games I think um but when the gaml itself is boring and you can't always play it and it just takes so long to get anywhere I just kind of think you know I just can't see how how um I think it's a kind of solid game in terms of the mechanics but but I can't see there's any fun in it really so

there's got stuff we can like customize um play 60 battles and I get a you nose I can see that's nice if people are really you know playing it playing it a lot and you can but it's just it doesn't seem to be to me it's not defeat 100 Raven ships I'm not even close to that you know so I just kind of think it's it's a nice attempt it's kind of so there's something here it was just the implementation so's like a thing take a photo yeah the implementation just wasn't there and I think that's a little bit because there we go do that it's a little bit just because um Ubisoft still I think fundamentally just don't have enough experience in freeo play games um and the ones they do are kind of like Studios spread around the world they have lots of Studios um and I just don't think to really understand freet to play you Need to releasing like one or two or three free play games a year and having that live Ops Team and really knowing really honing it um and unfortunately I

just don't think Sandstorm although I wanted to like it you know I kind of like the the the the kind of the setting um it kind of appeals to me personally but I just don't think it works so um maybe you think differently I mean free to play you can download it have a crack at it I mean I think it's a better than a lot of free play games out there but I just don't think it's it's sufficiently competitive to um to take to take time certainly I've been playing and still continue to play Star Wars galxy of Heroes pretty much every day so for me a game has to be at least on a level of of that game um for me for me to for it to take the 25 minutes I spend every day on that game so and that's kind of how it is with free play games now you know it's not how good is the game as a standing think it's how good is the game compared to the competition of what everyone else is playing you know people still playing Clash of Clans after three years or Puzzle and Dragons after four years or whatever it is so um there we go don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so we do a lot of this analysis of free toplay mobile games that's kind of what we do really love talking about them we love playing them so um subscribe and then you won't miss um anything and hopefully you'll find some games that that you like so hope to

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