I may return to this sometime in the future, but for now, I do not see myself continuing to play Party Animals. An easy sell on its surface, Party Animals is a further evolution of the Gang Beasts party game formula with several caveats attached. Play control, round structure, and visual design are all a step above Gang Beasts and games that share similar genres. Adopting cute, fuzzy animals as the visual motif is equally adorable and hilarious, yet the way you unlock them is anything but.
Party Animals has the gall to implement a gacha system tied up with real-money payments, obfuscated with Monopoly-money transfer rates. Party Animals goes out of its way to slowly onboard the gacha mechanics, only giving you your first token around a few rounds; you have to get properly invested first. Upon entering the Gashapon machine's lair, you're prompted with either a single pull for free or a ten-pull for a token... plus around ten dollars of real cash money. Obviously, when purchasing ten dollars of silly bucks, you have a small amount left over after your gacha pull, starting a negative monetary feedback loop like so many other games these days.
These sorts of scams are unacceptable as they are, but they're been relegated to the free-to-play market for a good while. Implementing Gachapon and a rotating, Fortnite-esque storefront on top of your Gachapon and asking for a $20 up-front fee with a "Deluxe Edition" upgrade path kills any further fun I can have with it. Playing something like this on Game Pass is one thing, but asking my friends to get sucked into this money-grubbing hell just to do a silly ragdoll physics feels like I'm crossing ethical boundaries. Party Animals needs to either significantly gut its in-game monetization and/or go entirely free-to-play if I ever care to return.
Party Animals has the gall to implement a gacha system tied up with real-money payments, obfuscated with Monopoly-money transfer rates. Party Animals goes out of its way to slowly onboard the gacha mechanics, only giving you your first token around a few rounds; you have to get properly invested first. Upon entering the Gashapon machine's lair, you're prompted with either a single pull for free or a ten-pull for a token... plus around ten dollars of real cash money. Obviously, when purchasing ten dollars of silly bucks, you have a small amount left over after your gacha pull, starting a negative monetary feedback loop like so many other games these days.
These sorts of scams are unacceptable as they are, but they're been relegated to the free-to-play market for a good while. Implementing Gachapon and a rotating, Fortnite-esque storefront on top of your Gachapon and asking for a $20 up-front fee with a "Deluxe Edition" upgrade path kills any further fun I can have with it. Playing something like this on Game Pass is one thing, but asking my friends to get sucked into this money-grubbing hell just to do a silly ragdoll physics feels like I'm crossing ethical boundaries. Party Animals needs to either significantly gut its in-game monetization and/or go entirely free-to-play if I ever care to return.