Galaga Wars
The saddest thing about this game to me is that it actually has the foundation to be a pretty great mobile interpretation of an arcade classic, but someone decided that intrusive ads and predatory micro-transactions were more important than the integrity of the franchise. It's almost unbelievable how many ways they try to squeeze something out of you. Even the very core of the game's structure isn't unadulterated by this Midas touch. Galaga Wars is broken into eleven stages that are designed to be played sequentially every time. This means that you'll usually be starting at stage one and proceeding to work through the following stages on the same set of lives. This gets a little repetitive, but it could be forgiven if it was just how the game designers felt their game would be best experienced. Unfortunately, it seems like the idea was a little more financially motivated. Once you reach a stage that's new to you, you'll unlock the option to spend coins, the drip-fed premium currency, on unlocking the ability to start from that stage at the beginning of a run. While it's annoying that you still have to pay for it once you earn it, this seems like a pretty good deal if you want to save time and risk wasting fewer lives as you try to progress. However, if you actually want to start on a stage other than the first one, you'll either need to spend warp capsules (also drip-fed as you play) or watch an ad. This is on top of the constant offers for optional ads to earn free coins and capsules, and the inescapable ads that run after losing a game. It doesn't stop there though.
When you first begin playing the game, you only have one ship, which means you only have one life (although, surprise surprise, you can get one more per run by spending coins or watching an ad), with every other ship locked behind a paywall. For each additional life, you'll need to spend between $2 and $5 or save up hundreds of crown tokens, which only spawn once per stage every 24 hours, meaning you can only get up to 11 per day, assuming you have already unlocked every stage. Each ship also has its own set of upgrades that need to be bought with coins. There are five chains of upgrades, each with ten increasingly expensive increments to purchase. Once you buy one of the upgrades, you have to wait a few hours for it to take effect before you can buy another one, or you can pay the entire cost of the upgrade a second time to skip the wait and have it applied immediately. This means that for every ship you either spent real money on or patiently worked up to week after week, you need to spend even more money or wait even longer, just for it to be a viable option to play with. So much of my time with this game was spent watching ads and trying to optimize my approach to these predatory systems that I hardly remember the actual game.
I usually like to discuss the boots-on-the-ground gameplay of games I review, more than the systems that support them. I can't remember the last time I talked about a menu or the time between levels, but, somehow, I felt like that's what I had to do here. Galaga Wars is a money-hungry set of menus first and a game second. It's really disappointing to see a franchise you love fall this far, especially when this is currently one of the most accessible ways to experience the series. I understand that people need to make a living off of things like this, but I have played plenty of games that leave me happy to spend some money on them thanks to their smart, consumer-friendly design. Galaga Wars does the exact opposite, leaving such a sour taste in my mouth that I actively refuse to spend any money on it, purely out of spite. I wish there were a better option to play Galaga on mobile, but in the meantime, please do yourself a favor and pretend this one doesn't even exist.
The game is available for Android here (as of 2/6/23): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.bandainamcoent.galagawars&hl=en_US&gl=US
The game is available for iOS here (as of 2/6/23): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/galaga-wars/id1073959479
