Sweet Fuse ~At Your Side~ Review

18 year old Saki Inafune is excited to be attending the opening of her uncle's, legendary game developer Keiji Inafune, new theme park, the Gameatorium, where everything is video game themed. As she settles down at the opening ceremony listening to her uncle's opening speech, he is suddenly interrupted by a strange voice and the image of a pig taking over all the screens over the park. 

Calling himself Count Hogstein, the pig begins a speech of his own, claiming that he will be taking over control of the park with the plans to destroy it. During Count Hogsteins speech, several people in "piglet" costumes ascend to the podium, tying up all of the park management. Inafune, along with several others in the crowd, believe that it is some sort of ruse or show until Hogstein blows up the ferris wheel, demonstrating that Hogstein's plans are very, very real. 

The Count then explains to the panicking crowd that he will select seven people out of the crowd to venture in the park to play a "Game" where the contestants will go through trials in each of the attractions in the park, one attraction a day for seven days, with their lives and the lives of his hostages, the parks management, on the line. Inafune, worried for her uncle, proceeds to volunteer to be one of the seven contestants in hopes of saving her uncle. Thus, Inafune is inexplicably thrown into a game of life or death with six strangers.

Note: Screenshots were taken in 2x resolution in an emulator, so the "actual" images are somewhat blurry, but its not that bad.  Thumbnails are just slightly smaller than native resolution. I just have an odd peeve with small resolutions and I couldn't bring myself to snapshot such...small images.

My issue with "Free-To-Play"

Today I would like to rant about the Free-To-Play model which is becoming more and more prevalent in gaming and visual novel mobile market. For those less...informed, Free-To-Play is a gaming model where the game is essentially free (Meaning you CAN play the whole game without spending a dime). Free-To-Play (Which shall from this point on be simply acronymed "FTP") was rarely seen a few years back, but since the popularity and success of FTP games on platforms such as Facebook (Where the first major "outbreak" of FTP games spawned; I'm talking about games like the well known Farmville), they have become more and more common on both the PC and mobile market, with the PC market mainly seeing online FTP MMOs and online games.

Now, I'm not talking about actual FREE games, like the ones you used to come across on Newgrounds or any other run of the mill flash game websites; There is a major difference between actual free games and FTP games.  Sadly, many casual players, who dominate the mobile market, do not know the one giant difference that separates the two and is cause for these kinds of games to be coined FTP instead of just free (Even though they often get marketed as "free"). These games work off of micro-transactions for "optional" items, but in the past few years, these "optional" micro-transactions have become less and less "optional". This, ladies and gentlemen, is the heart of my rant.