A Look Back at Uberstrike

So this post's going to be a bit different, as it's going to be about a game I played a long time ago. That game is called Uberstrike. It was released in Steam sometime in June via Steam Greenlight, and it's now one of the worst games in Steam today.

But I wanted to talk about it, it's condition and what it used to be, since it was a pretty big chunk of my childhood.

To sum it up, Uberstrike is a futuristic PC FPS that was released in November 2008 under a different name, called Paradise Paintball for the Mac app store.

Back when I was around 8-9 years old, when I was gaming with a 2007 Macbook(u wot m8), I had found this game in the widget store, and it quickly became my obsession for the next three years.

The gameplay at that time was pretty simple. You had a machinegun and a rocket launcher, and those were your weapons in an 8-player deathmatch(I think). Eventually it got updated with new maps, weapons, gamemodes, and other goodies. I actually got really good at the game, despite playing with a trackpad for most of my time playing it.(Yeah, I was good at an FPS game using the trackpad on a 2007 Macbook)

Some time later, a few updates changed the Avatar models, weapons, added maps, removed paintballs entirely, changed the name to Uberstrike and added a store to buy better weapons with more damage, range, etc. This however, quickly made the game extremely Pay-to-Win, as you can only rent most weapons for a limited time, mostly only one day, for a hefty price. Buying weapons permanently is extremely expensive, as it probably took around a month's worth of outstanding performance to be able to afford a permanent weapon.

The community didn't seem to be able to notice this absurd amount of P2W in this game as much as I did, when I tried to assess this in a forum post I made a long time ago. Only two or three people who replied seem to be in the same boat as I was, and one not too bright person seemed to try and defend the game by saying I just needed to save up.

I have tried Cmune's form of earning credits(pay-to-win points) to try saving up enough to buy something useful. These were doing tasks like watching ads or playing sponsored games, taking surveys and such. Unfortunately, most of these methods were extremely shady and unreliable, and the only safe ones don't even earn you enough credits to rent a weapon for one day.

Admittedly, I also have resorted to cheating credits, right before I quit entirely. Now that I look back on it, it was a good idea considering the stories in the Steam reviews where their account was worth over $5000. This is also mostly because Cmune also wanted in on the Pay-to-Look-Good bandwagon.

The game slowly diminished from my life, to the point I quit entirely. I've heard that it was going to be on Steam Greenlight, and I checked it out a bit to see that it was in the exact same condition that it was in since I left, just with two new maps. Okay, maybe worse given the amount of hackers that have been in the game since it was released on Steam in June.

The hacker issue has been a big one since the release, and only one "major" update has been released since.

It's current state is terrible, and one that may force Uberstrike out of Steam. Sad to think that one of my favorite games in the past has now become such a travesty of a game. It is insulting, to players and people who actually spent money on this game. Quitting was ultimately the best decision I ever made.

So that's my story on this whole Uberstrike thing. So whoever knows someone who comes across this game, tell them it's not worth it. At all. Crap servers, hackers and such will make this game well worth the uninstall.

--GameKiller