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10 things you can (or have to) buy in Gameloft's new Blitz Brigade shooter

Pay to slay (and to play)

10 things you can (or have to) buy in Gameloft's new Blitz Brigade shooter
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Blitz Brigade, Gameloft's new Battlefield Heroes-inspired shooter, is a cartoony FPS with oversized guns, caricature classes, and big bouncy tanks.

But, if the game's soft launch in France is anything to go by, it's also bursting at the seams with in-app purchases.

This is a game where if you can see it, you can pay for it. You can pay to win, and pay to play, and pay to expedite any boring bits. It is quite possibly the most unashamedly cynical app I've ever shoved onto my iPad.

To give you the full experience, here are ten things you can - or, in some cases, have to - pay for when playing Blitz Brigade.

Jump ahead in single-player

Blitz Brigade

If you haven't earned enough stars to proceed, you can pay to unlock a new batch of solo challenges.

Plus, you can pay to instantly complete the jigsaw puzzles that you finish as you play through the campaign.

New classes

Blitz Brigade

You can pay to unlock the sniper and stealth classes if you don't feel like waiting until you get to levels 10 and 15, respectively.

The sniper costs £2.99, and the sneaky spy costs a fiver.

Buy, upgrade, and repair guns

Blitz Brigade

You can pay to get new guns. Cough up some cash and you can unlock assault rifles, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, lightning guns, grenade launchers, mini-guns, crossbows, shotguns, hand guns, sniper rifles, and melee weapons.

You can pay to upgrade those guns to increase their damage, ammo, critical chance, rate of fire, range, or effectiveness against vehicles.

You can pay to repair those guns, for weapons in Blitz Brigade degrade over time as you fire them. The more they're damaged, the more you'll pay. Naturally.

Taunts Blitz Brigade

You can pay for new taunt animations and sound effects. If you want your soldier to breakdance or your gunner to pound his chest like a silverback gorilla or your sniper to say "Boom! Headshot", you can make it so.

You just have to pay for it.

Consumable weapons

Blitz Brigade

You can pay for consumable weapons. You can buy frag grenades, incendiary grenades, flash bangs, health packs, and a jetpack.

One-off items

Blitz Brigade

You can pay for items that refill your ammo, slow down your opponents, make you completely invincible, and restore your health.

Stat boosters Blitz Brigade

You can pay to boost your damage, your defence, your XP, your likelihood to score a critical attack, and your chances of dodging incoming fire.

Instant respawn Blitz Brigade

If you don't fancy waiting a few seconds for the respawn timer to hit zero when you get killed, you can pay to instantly come back to life. Gameloft says it starts out free, but "the cost will increase quickly".

You can also buy a consumable item to reduce respawn timers by three seconds.

Kill everyone on-screen Blitz Brigade

You can pay to instantly kill everyone on-screen. For just 20 gems, or 4,000 coins, you can tap your "Selective Apocalypse" badge and automatically annihilate everyone you can currently see.

Play the game more than 5 times Blitz Brigade

You have to pay for tokens to play the game online. You get five free tokens when you download Blitz Brigade. Once you've spent those, though, you'll have to fork out for more.

Oh, and you'll spend a token even if you join a match with just seconds left to go, or if the match abruptly ends because the host disconnected.

Blitz Brigade

You can purchase many of these things with gold coins (which you earn in pitiful quantities), but you can only purchase some of them with gems (the premium currency), which you have to buy with real cash.

In-app purchases start from £1.49, by the way.

So, there we have it. Blitz Brigade is quite simply diabolical. It's a cynical slap in the chops. An artefact sent back from a dystopian future to warn us about what's to come. It's a cruel joke. It's a nightmare from which you can't wake up.

And it'll be available worldwide on iOS and Android soon. Enjoy.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer