I don't really like 10,000,000. It was pretty hyped up by the phone gaming types, and I only now bothered to get it on Steam.
For those of y'all out of the loop, 10,000,000 is two games genres playing simultaneously. The top third of the screen is a runner, the bottom two thirds of the screen is a match-3 game. The top third of the screen is essentially just an output - you don't ever 'play' the runner, you simply affect it via the actions of the match-3 game. If in the runner, the player hits the left of the screen, or is killed by a monster, both games end and you're dumped to a menu.
In the match-3 game, you're not really matching jewels as you are matching actions. If you match three swords, you try and attack what's in front of you. If you match keys, you try to unlock, if you match shields you get some health, if you match pouches you find items.
Matches can last anywhere from 30 seconds to about 3 minutes. There is a win condition to the matches, which rewards you in some bonus XP and resources. But I have never once since the first 2-3 levels. The game is hard. Not challenging hard, mind you. It's frustrating.
There are two common ways I fail in 10,000,000. The first is I simply can't match fast enough. Well, okay, this is actually both ways. But, the first way is that I can see the matches and I'm simply not doing them fast enough. That's not too bad, although it's certainly annoying to be matching the 3-5 gems you want the millisecond AFTER you fail, voiding your success and throwing you back to the game over screen. However, this is usually caused by an artefact of the second way I lose - there aren't enough very specific jems to match up to do this very specific thing I need to do. That is to say, yo why do I always run out of keys.
So, if you're at a chest, you have to unlock it. And they require two keys to unlock, or alternatively if you match four keys together, it will unlock both at once. The problem stems from having only a few keys on your board, and going through incredibly stressful, tedious acrobatics to match (or generate and then match) these keys together. I can't really explain it to anyone who hasn't played the game, but the way the movement of gems works is a little counter intuitive, and when gems are separated, it's incredibly hard to get them to fit together.
I could go on about how the metagame is dull or how it's baffling the objective system in 10,000,000 is so annoying when Jetpack Joyride's was so satisfying. I could mention how upgrades are sterile, how little affect they have on the game, how there's no sense of persistence or advancement, or how Jetpack Joyride is better at everything than this game.
But I won't, because I don't want to write anymore. Which is kind of a weird trend in my longer posts where I get so tired thinking of the subject matter of my posts I end before I reach any kind of conclusion.
I don't think 10,000,000 is a very good game. Its genre mixing doesn't work well, some of the meta game decisions are poor, there's not enough sense of reward versus the overwhelming sense of failure, and on top of all of that you can't even buy a sweet tux and royal crown and be this motherfuckin high rollin' motherfucker flying through the world on a golden dragon collecting money and jewels you don't even fucking need.
Take that, list.
