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The Ories: Super Space Monsters!

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The Ories: Super Space Monsters!

This is a freemium game review, in which we give our impressions immediately after booting a game up, again after three days, and finally after seven days. That's what the strange sub-headings are all about.

The Ories: Super Space Monsters! is a good name for a video game.

Let's break it down: the first two words force your brain to ask whether it knows what an Orie is, and when your Numskulls return empty-handed you notice that there's a colon.

"Aha!" you think, "this may provide me with the answers I seek". After the colon is "Super", indicating that Ories are awesome, and the final two words categorically state that they are creatures from the stars.

That's all very exciting isn't it? Or maybe it isn't, and it's all a linguistic ruse to get this poor sucker pumped up for a mediocre freemium game. Let's find out over the course of seven days.

First impressions

The idea of The Ories: Super Space Monsters! is apparently to fling a rocket you're travelling in around planetary bodies, collecting gems and completing dares by magnetising to planets, rocks, and moons.

Gems are simple collectables, like coins in a Mario game. You grab these and head for the exit, which is the giant gaping mouth of a huge alien creature. Apparently that's what passes for safe in space.

Dares are challenges set as meta-elements of the game. One of these is to rescue a friend trapped on the level, which is as straightforward as collecting a token with a different image.

The sweet visual design features all sorts of adorable alien creatures - with big eyes and protruding tongues. It's not an amazingly new idea, but it is at least pleasant to look at. The audio is also beautifully unobtrusive: the music taps along inoffensively and the chimes of collecting things in the world have a satisfying "ding" to them.

Day 3: Ad machine

The Ories has turned into a different game from the one I began playing three days ago. What started as a simple two-touch game about looping around planetary bodies has become an ordeal whereby I'm forced to consume adverts for video games I'm not playing.

Full-screen static ads between levels have begun to really irritate, but what's worse is that you acquire the game's content by purchasing it with SP. You get a tiny amount of SP for each mission you complete - perhaps 30 or 40 SP if you do well and put in a few minutes of work. Or you can watch a 30-second video and receive a guaranteed 50 SP.

Having completed all of the missions in the first galaxy of challenges, I then have the option of revisiting the levels I've already finished for more SP. Or I can watch a bunch of ads to unlock the next galaxy.

I had to watch about ten to do this, and while I did find out that Hollywood is making a new G.I. Joe movie (which is good), I did have to sit through about five minutes of ads to see new content (which is bad).

Day 7: Cattle

Now The Ories would really like me to sign up for their regular newsletter in exchange for 100 SP. Great.

There's a fine line between being served an acceptable number of ads to help pay for a game's maintenance or its initial development - especially when that game is free - and feeling as though you're little more than an ad-watching bovine.

When I play The Ories, I am not a respected individual whom the developer is eager to please. I'm a number, a line on a graph, an anonymous App Store user from whom to extract as many ad views, email addresses, and social shares as possible. I am here to have my patience and tolerance for ads tested. I am here to have the very marrow of my bones sucked out.

The heart of the game just isn't enough to warrant the excessive amount of advertising and additional rubbish I need to go through to unlock more content. Because, yes, I could pay, but what I won't be doing is playing each level dozens of times to acquire the SP I need to see more of the game.

The Ories just doesn't mix up the play often enough to warrant you coming back to the same content on multiple occasions. Level layouts are identical, and you'll need to navigate the same routes over and over with your craft, all the while avoiding hazards you've seen before.

There are upgrades available to improve and visually customise your ship, but once you realise how scarce the SP to do this actually is you never frequent the upgrade store. It also implements Everyplay, the new game video social network, but it's an afterthought.

If a game had the power to make iced buns miraculously appear wherever you played it, you'd put up with being served a lot of ads, because if an experience is rewarding enough you should be prepared to pay for it in whatever way the developer sees fit.

However, if a game is merely competent, and there are better options available in the same marketplace with less intrusive advertising, why would you keep playing it?

How are you getting on with the game? You can tell us and the rest of the PG community about your experiences by leaving a comment in the box below.

The Ories: Super Space Monsters!

A mediocre game is made infinitely worse by locking away content that's only accessible after umpteen repeats of the same content, or consuming loads of ads
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Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.