The best gameplay mechanics can make your experience fun, pushing you to keep playing even when you’ve experienced everything the game has to offer. However, there are other mechanics that do nothing better than ruin the experience for players, artificially lengthening the game while punishing you for spending your hard earned time on it. Some games have even taken to implementing more “Pay to Win” style rewards which can be picked up through micro-transactions. Of course, the worst offenders which don’t offer much at all by way of content and expect you to foot the bill for everything. Here are the nominees for the worst gameplay mechanic of 2015.
Nominees:
- RNG – Destiny
- Advanced Supply Drops – Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
- Micro-transactions – Evolve
Winner: Micro-transactions – Evolve
Evolve’s concept seemed like a winner at first – one versus four asymmetrical multiplayer which had players levelling up their skills and shifting through dense environments with varying objectives? That too from the creators of Left 4 Dead? It seemed great at first and even when the first beta didn’t really point to all that much depth in the final game, we still had fun. Then Turtle Rock Studios showcased it various micro-transactions for the game. And dear lord did things go downhill fast.
Skins, monsters, additional characters – you had to pay for each and every single one of these. Sure, you could argue that they were simply cosmetic but some new Hunters had clear advantages over those in the base game. It also didn’t help that the amount of “free content” that the developer pushed out was meagre at best, especially compared to Halo 5’s free monthly DLC. Did we mention certain issues took seemingly forever to get fixed? Micro-transactions can be handled correctly but Evolve showcased just how badly they can take a turn in the wrong hands.
Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.
