Wargaming have embarked on yet another title that is sure to fail. It’s called ‘Caliber’ and it is…wait for it…a First Person Shooter. Wargaming are trying to build this thing as a “free to play” game where you get no competitive advantage by spending money. (Yeah. Sure. Right.)
“What is it really”, you ask?
It’s World of Tanks, or World of Warships, or World of Warplanes all over again only with human skins rather than vehicles. It is almost literally the same, exact game.
It’s another doomed-to-failure partnership with 1C Game Studios developing it and Wargaming publishing it. And we all remember what happened the last time Wargaming published a game for another studio, don’t we? It was an epic failure that lasted less than a year. Creative Studio developed Total War Arena and made the fatal mistake of having Wargaming publish and attempt to monetize it.
The only people that ever played it were Wargaming and Creative Studio employees before Creative pulled the plug on it and wished to God they had never gotten into bed with Wargaming. Word around the campfire is that the entire Creative Assembly staff took a 3.5 hour long shower and still couldn’t wash the shame off.
At any rate, back to this train wreck in slow motion – Let’s start with a look at the video:
Yeah. Complete. Total. Epic. Failure.
Here’s the question for Wargaming: are you so fucking far ’round the bend that you don’t realize this game has zero, let me repeat, ZERO chance of success?
First off, lets start with the fact that as far as FPS games of this genre are concerned, you’re about SIXTEEN YEARS TOO FUCKING LATE TO GET ON THE GRAVY TRAIN!
If that weren’t enough, your reputation right now is on par with mud. And I’m being kind there. Don’t think so? Let’s see what people are saying about ‘Caliber’ already:
Caliber doesn’t look like a game that will be a hit. There’re [SIC] no rational cues why this game should be popular among teenagers, and in this regard, it will surely flop.
https://gamebangtheory.com/reviews/caliber-closed-beta
’tis but a barren wasteland
https://www.giantbomb.com/caliber/3030-74812/user-reviews/?sortBy=helpful
It’s tactical and focuses on the interplay between the four spec-op buddies, apparently, neither of which make it stand out when all the other team-based military shooters do the same.
https://www.pcgamer.com/wargaming-is-bringing-its-new-team-based-shooter-to-gamescom/
Yep. It’s garbage. You can’t even jump, folks. I’m not making this shit up:
The game doesn’t permit jumping in general and jumping off heights in particular because of the limitations, which feels strange at times. Even though there is a button (space bar by default) for leaping over (at least some) obstacles. This works much similar to Brink, though to my taste the latter game is better, granting the feeling that you are playing a dexterous character, a master of parkour. In Caliber you’re just a slow coach. Moving across the maps in Brink and Doom is intrinsically fun, whilst in Caliber it’s not.
https://gamebangtheory.com/reviews/caliber-closed-beta
It’s just awful. I mean AWFUL. Here’s a screen shot of the player build screen:
Looks pretty familiar, doesn’t it? It should. It’s just a rearranged, slightly different GUI to World of Tanks/Warships/Warplanes.
In the true fashion of Wargaming, however, they’re lying already. Check this quote out from a Wargaming “spokesman” who didn’t identify himself:
“I want to stress, it’s following the same business model as World of Tanks. It’s free-to-play, but of course we need to sell some stuff in the game to make some money.”
https://www.pcgamesn.com/caliber/microtransactions-wargaming
He also goes on to stress this:
“as it is for World of Tanks, you don’t buy any competitive advantage”
https://www.pcgamesn.com/caliber/microtransactions-wargaming
Really?! So gold consumables that are more effective than credit consumables aren’t an advantage? Paying gold to automatically train your crew to 100% doesn’t give you an advantage over your friend that started the same time you did and doesn’t have the money to do that? Using gold to buy modules instantly doesn’t give you an advantage over those who don’t?
Wargaming is so full of shit it’s beyond ridiculous. Everything you buy gives you a pretty god damned big advantage over somebody that doesn’t right from the beginning.
This piece of shit failure will be no different.
I’m going to leave it with this quote from Denis Marasanov. (Please read his complete review over at Game Bang Theory)
Caliber doesn’t look like a game that will be a hit. There’re no rational cues why this game should be popular among teenagers, and in this regard, it will surely flop. There are many great shooters out there, both free-to-play and not.
https://gamebangtheory.com/reviews/caliber-closed-beta
I’m betting the piece of shit lasts about 2 years at most before they pull the plug. It will be another money pit that some of the completely addicted idiots still dumb enough to play Wargaming titles will sink more of their mother’s retirement fund into, but that’s going to be about it.
In the end, it’ll be Total War Arena version 2.0.
Which means they will bring the same problems over to this game. Same RNG problems from the tank game, probably the vision mechanics issues, messing around with shot aiming reticles, the hackers/cheaters will be coming up with cheat mods, they will use the same Match Maker Patent* (same old rigged software* they use to cheat the players on a daily basis over at WOT), and as a bonus, you’ll run into the same knuckle heads from WOT, WOW, WOWP etc. who have scores to settle with you etc.
Gosh, I’m not even scratching the surface here am I ? Why? The people playing it will discover it sooner or later and then quit, and it will fail soon enough.
If you have noticed I have not been posting up front as much as usual. It is because there is not much to say due to the fact that its the same mistakes WG does with their IP’s and their player base.
It appears that all they do is cobble code together from the IP’s they have bought in the past. They do not create. It appears all they are essentially are code monkeys pounding on a keyboard with a rock. Metaphysically speaking that is.
To create something that is great takes time, effort and financial resources to make it happen. This is something I believe WG will not do. But finally to have WG boasting about working with SEGA is not really much to boast about. I had a friend working for SEGA NA and all of the mistakes they have made over the years has reduced them to really a AA game company.
I’ve made several calls over the years about what this company has been doing with their IP and I have been right every single time. As a result, WoT, to put it bluntly the game is nothing but putting lipstick on a pig.
And it looks like once again the game WG’s newest game is nothing more a skin over a modified version of their clunky game of WoT.
I just wish companies like WoT start creating real content and not just taking the customer base as a whole as a bunch of idiots. People are smart enough these days to look at a game and see for themselves what it is and what it is not.
Something that game companies should think about.
A pig is still a pig no matter how many tammy faye make-up sessions you have…
What’s the old saying? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Wargaming had a hit with World of Tanks. Then they ran it into the dirt and ruined it. Then they released World of Warplanes. It stunk from the word go and nobody every played it. Frankly, I can’t believe they still have it running with an average online player base of a few hundred.
Then they released World of Warships. That game, I truly loved. It was different. It was being handled by a completely different group of people.
But then Wargaming took it over, killed it with the same crap moves that ruined World of Tanks and Warplanes and now it’s on its way out as well.
Now this? Who in their right mind would ever play a game like this that is a ridiculous pay-to-win money pit when they can buy any other game of the same genre that has been around longer, has better graphics, better game play, better oversight, actual leagues, actual cash prizes and more for a one time fee of 50 dollars?
It literally has absolutely no chance of success. I would say whoever even entertained the thought of trying to monetize a game that’s already done better for less by at least 3 different companies should be fired, but it’s that same person that drove Wargaming into the dirt long ago.
It is simply unbelievable the very, very bad decisions Wargaming continues to make year after year after year.