"Yes, Gears of War 4 is the latest in an increasingly long line of games to bring a card metaphor into the action. Here you'll open blind boxes (which you can grind out for a far-too-high price or spend actual money on) and get new characters, weapon skins, versus bonuses, Horde skills, and bounties."
This is why I despise the direction the industry has taken since last generation's abuse of paid DLC. It's a pure cesspool of greed, where the typical game feels stripped of content and like a $60 catalog of more things to pay real money for. Rather than unlocking things in-game, this often either isn't an option or is made intentionally slow and/or frustratingly random and luck-based, encouraging players to pay to progress.
Most people respond with "they have to make money" and "you don't have to buy it." Yeah, and you don't have to bend over to be violated by these companies, either. Paid DLC is priced at several times what the same comparable content in the main game would cost, and players are teased with shadowed-in characters, vehicles, modes, and menu options as well as other in-game reminders that they're missing content. This makes full game purchases feel incomplete and lacking, and this is the new norm.
Look back at older games like Perfect Dark and Resident Evil 4. PD had multiple difficulty settings that truly felt unique with added objectives in each; rotating 3D gun models with descriptions in the menu; an entirely optional game mode where you walk around the institute you work for, go through tutorials, read information such as a plot synopsis, and use a firing range that even had its own separate descriptions of weapons; a challenges mode separate from the campaign and multiplayer; tons of unlockables including dozens of cheats; secret bonus missions; little things like hidden weapons and cheese in missions; occasional actions that influenced the next mission, such as lowering the hoverbike; and more. Today, the campaign and MP would be included, but cheats, several weapons, several MP maps, secret missions, and the institute and challenges modes would all be paid DLC, and the MP characters would have intentionally slow unlocks, prompting microtransactions to speed things up. RE4's mercenaries mode, alternate outfits, and certain weapons and sections of the campaign would be sold separately, probably for a total of $30-45.
I wish that people who accept being treated this way would have more self-respect.
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