Recent reviews by GRRSTR

I played the original indie Ace of Spades made in 2011 for a time. I had a terribly low-end PC, but loved both voxels and shooters; I loved this game. Even now it holds a big place to me, gaming-wise. When I first heard Ace of Spades was going on Steam and was going to be developed by a "real" company, I was very estatic; even if I had to pay. It's, I believe 4 years since Ace of Spades: Battle Builder came out, so I've had my time to experience it. I think my review will be valuable, but you should decide that on your own.

Where to start... Ace of Spades: Battle Builder is a fine sequel to the original indie game, Ace of Spades: Build and Shoot. There's a good mix of new and old, with Jagex's inclusion of classes, hp/ammo/block packs, new gamemodes, etc, serving alongside the classic game; along with being a great fps for low-end PCs. I, personally, think this game needs some more praise(even if it's given after the well-deserved hating). This game has given me hundreds of hours of great times, and tons of great friends.

However, this game suffers from many downsides that I can't forget. I'll try to list all the ones I can think of.

The first thing I want you to know is of the devs going back on their word. When the game was first announced, they said that it would be a one-time purchase; No microtransactions, and no payed DLC. This was blatantly untrue. So far, there have been 2 DLCs. Though I like playing around with the Hurt + Heal DLC, and the VIP DLC is a great gamemode, it's an incredibly slimy thing to do.

Second of all, I feel the classic version of the game has been left out of the devs' eyes. Currently, the only way to play the remnants of classic mode is through the gamemode Classic CTF; this is the only gamemode that has the original soldier("Deuce") character and the original weapons, ignoring other classic game types such as babel, territory control, and zombie(the last two have been a part of the game, however, use the newer additions such as classes and resource packs, which we will now refer to as Jagex "gamemodes"). Not to mention, CCTF is missing things from the original game, such as the SMG and the shotgun. Both of these weapons are in Jagex gamemodes, and available in the custom server creator; though I am not sure at all why these were taken out of the base gamemode. Another thing missing are things Jagex planned to add; a stationary(presumably) turret that I assume was for CCTF, which never fully made it into the game. Though, apparently, Jagex had said they plan to add it... some 3 years ago. Yea...

But it's not just the classic game that's being neglected, it's the entire game. Updates, wether patches, additions, or just the devs saying anything, are few and far inbetween. There are glitches in this game that I remember happening 3 years ago, like there being a constant map vote on any Zombie server... any glitch you see will be around for actual years before the devs do anything. The last real update was from early December 2015, and that was the only update in all of 2015... pathetic, really.

Now, I'm not gonna put my fingers in my ears and yell "LA LA LA LA!". The reason this game is being neglected is because Jagex created another game, which I like to call Ace of Spades 3: Block N Load. It is also a voxel-based builder/shooter, and if you have eyes, then you obviously see it as what Jagex imagined when they bought Ace of Spades. I think that Jagex wanted to make a "minecraft with guns" game, but didn't want to fight for a playerbase... so decided to buy an already commited community instead. But, lo and behold, they couldn't just change anything they wanted and sell it as the same voxel shooter. Ace of Spades has something very special to it; something you don't get from modded minecraft or the "revolutionary idea of minecraft except with guns"(Let's just put this with the other 30 games like that on steam...). For all intents and purposes, think of this game as Bloack N Load beta. That you have to pay for.

The final downside is, of course, the steady decline of what's left of the playerbase. There's never more than maybe 10 active servers, and only 2 or 3 have more than 20 players in them. CCTF games are rare, but less uncommon that the less popular Jagex gamemodes. The only thing you can reliably see are sometimes-populated zombie and tdm servers. So even if you managed to get by all of these downsides, consider that the community has already decided the game is dead, and you won't be playing with anybody whenever. This reason alone is why you should not buy this game, even if I and possibly you love it.

One thing you should do is play the original for free. Try it out, and get the authentic feel of legit Ace of Spades. There is still somewhat a community on the unofficial build and shoot site and on 4chan; check it out.

Rest in peace Ace of Spades.

Very, so very broken, but if you get in a server where nobody is playing Pyro then it's a great experience.