Sunset: A Final Look Back at UberStrike

Remember back when I was talking about UberStrike, an FPS that got absolutely destroyed when it launched on Steam? Well, seems like it's finally getting what it had coming to it.

Just to refresh some people's memory, UberStrike is a "free-to-play" first-person shooter that got massive amounts of negative reviews when it launched on Steam some time ago. One reason for this being that it screwed up the in-game economy when the accounts and game data was ported, and basically a few in-game purchases became a few bucks cheaper than before the move to Steam. Another reason for this being the absolute chaos that cheaters created. You literally could not find one match without there being a cheater.

This went on for a few months, and people eventually just had to deal with it. Then a few weeks ago, Cmune, the developing company for the game, decides they're going to "sunset" the game. Which basically means they're going to slowly, over the course of three months starting from April 13th, going to shut down the game.

On April 13th, they already pulled the download link from the Steam store. They also stopped all credit purchases for exclusive items. Starting May 13th, they're going to disable the in-game shop for these exclusive items. Finally, on June 13th, they're going to shut down the game servers.

"Finally," I thought to myself. It was about damn time Cmune decided to take this crap down. But no matter what, shutting a game down isn't always what a developer should do. And especially not in this manner.

First off, the game was definitely a childhood experience to some people, including myself. Like I said before in my last post about the game, UberStrike used to be a game called Paradise Paintball. I was one of the ONLY people who ever played the first version that came out in 2008, in the Apple store. Over a short period of time, the game went through three updates, one getting rid of the original chibi character models, and overhauling the weapons from just the machinegun and rocket launcher to adding a sniper rifle and a backup pistol, all available to the player, with a shotgun available to purchase or rent. Spring grenades also made their debut, along with the legendary Oriental Kenzo, Gideon Tower's original design. Perhaps some of you remember the infamous crane camping spot on Kenzo? Or maybe the windowsill spot?

PP was then given a MAJOR overhaul. The game took it's new name, UberStike, redesigned Oriental Kenzo, and gave the game a more cyberpunk look. The game was still fun to play, albeit inferior to the beauty of Kenzo and paint splatter. Campers always found new tricks, from ledge glitches and wall glitching on Gideon's, to hiding in treetops. Young pros found their way to the top of the leaderboards, clans were made, rocket jumpers and noscopers all had their place here.

And then... it just didn't take off from there. Veterans missed the original feel of PP, and weapons became broken. The Deliverator, one of the original UberStike weapons, became too expensive for people to rent weekly. The UberMachinegun had 100% accuracy, which made it a poor man's sniper rifle. Game design became sloppy too. They ended up releasing "blueprint maps," which were basically maps without any art to design them. Though they ended up having designs to go along with them, they were often the same. One map even had wall clipping issues with moving walls. You could literally stand in the path of this rotating wall and clip through it.

I guess Cmune just thought it was too much of a hassle to support it, so I can see why they'd want to cut it off. We knew it from the start when we were able to buy weapons without the use of credits. But the way they handled the game before the Sunset was just a massive disappointment.

Hackers were a HUGE problem in the early Steam days. And Cmune did nothing, leaving players to just deal with it. And the controversy with the in-game purchases did nothing to help this, coupled with the fact that many would just decide to hack funds into their account.

Granted, they may have been working on their other games, but to just turn a blind eye on the community that primarily supported them is just wrong.

And so they decided to just shut it down. They pulled the downloads, stopped credit purchasing, and basically just told everyone that the game's over. People are petitioning to release the servers to the public, but to no avail.

It honestly was a lot of fun to play this game. From the chibi characters, to the hilarious glitching, to the desperate times of cheating, I truly enjoyed the game, but it was just sad to see how it all just went downhill. It turned into a travesty of a game, but we still can't let go of the fact that it was once our own little community, our little painball paradise - or Paradise Paintball.

To the UberStikers and the PP veterans who found this, it was fun meeting you all.

--GameKiller

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