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Game Review: M.U.S.E.

    Hey, everyone. I have a review of the new game called M.U.S.E.. It is a 3rd person shooter, which means you are looking over the dude's shoulder and controlling him as he walks the blasted streets of a big city and battles some sort of cyborgs. It has the look and general style of Shadowgun, without being quite as polished. Let me correct that. Not anywhere near as polished.
      You can do the body rolls to get behind cover. You can crouch behind barriers like Shadowgun. You pick up ammo from cases which are lying around in the streets. (Wouldn't want to leave ammo laying around like that in real life. Ha. ha.) I like how you can shoot at cars that the cyborgs are hiding behind and blow them up. You can also shoot drums of gas and cause them to explode.
    The graphics are good. You start out in front of City Hall and start fighting the bad guys immediately. If you are close to death, according to your health meter, you have a big hypodermic needle on the left of the screen. You can tap that thing and get an adrenaline burst. Objects will appear more clearly and if you kill any bad guys or blow stuff up, you get more points during adrenaline mode. Ah, yes, the points. Speaking of points. It is not enough that this game is $5.99, a hefty price for an IOS game. But evidently they want you to drop some more coin for upgrades as well.
     For instance, I went through this first screen and up some stairs to get to another street. (By the way, you get past those crates by tossing a grenade at them.) As I'm fighting, I have racked up several thousand points. These points, supposedly, can be used to upgrade weapons, armor or whatever. Well, when I get killed, I decide to check out what I can buy with my points. Surprise! My points are gone. So I can't upgrade without buying points, I guess. Well, no way am I buying anything else, so I go back to play some more. I pause the game after racking up a few thousand points, figuring I can buy some stuff with my points prior to being killed. Guess what? Yeah, you're right. When I did this, I lost all my points again.
     So, I start to think negatively of this game. I rarely will criticize any game or book because I'd rather say nothing if I can't say something good. But hey, I go over to the app store and see maybe 40 or so reviews of this game and a bunch of them are 5 star and I wonder. A few other reviews blast it for the reasons I've stated, or other reasons.
     Rather than rant, let me offer some constructive criticism.
1) First of all, do an update and save the progress for the game when people are killed. Man, is it irritating to have to start over every @#^**** time you play.
2) In that update, change the point system in several ways. For one, save the points we earn from level to level, when we die, when we want to upgrade, whatever. At the price this game is, there should be no more money involved. If you absolutely must do that, make sure that the customer can advance without buying anything. If you must, let them get by without the very best gun or something for several levels until they upgrade.
3) The character dies very easily. I don't know if this is so that players will buy some better armor or due to my poor game playing, or whatever reason.
4) Continue to tinker with the graphics, control and game play. I think most gamers are fairly reasonable, but if you want to charge premium money, polish that dude a bit.
    Finally, my advice to the gamers that read the blog. I would wait until you see an update come out for this game. Either that or wait until it drops down in price to the point where it is a little more 'disposable'.
    I prefer to play a game a bit longer than I played this one, before giving a review. However, I kept getting sent back, without means to upgrade, and I don't think I'll mess with it long enough to discover things inside it that may be very cool. It is fairly fun, what little I was able to play it. It just needs some work.
    From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.

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