Full Metal Monsters is an epic new mobile shooter than challenges you and four team mates battle it out with five opponents for dominance over five key locations in an arena. It’s basically Battlefield’s Conquest mode on a much smaller scale.
Right away, you’ll probably be quite impressed with the level of polish. It’s a bit of a looker, shooting is satisfying, and the controls are kept to a minimum so it’s easy to control on mobile with touch controls.
There’s also a wide variety of impressive looking dinosaurs to ride into battle. These vary from fast-moving Velociraptors to flying Pterodactylus. You can equip each one with a variety of different weapons from machine guns to rocket launchers,
Each dinosaur can carry two weapons at once – either two of the same, or two different. Early on your options are limited, but pretty quickly you’ll be able to truly craft your own playstyle by combining weapons and the unique move set of each dinosaur.
Dinosaurs also have their own strengths and weaknesses, with stats like HP, Speed, Damage, Range, Armor, and Shield varying between the different monsters. Ultimately, there’s a lot of depth to customise your own finely-tuned killing machine to bring into battle with you.
Dinosaurs have their own strengths and weaknesses in Full Metal Monsters
But there is a pretty noticable issue with Full Metal Monsters, and that’s how closely it flirts with pay to win. Dinosaurs range from free options, which you unlock as you level up, and paid options. While all dinosaurs can be equipped with whatever weapons you purchase or unlock, there’s no way to customise each one’s base stats.
While we haven’t seen the full extent of it yet, it’s pretty painfully obvious that if you buy the best dinosaurs outright, you’re going to actually demolish on the battlefield.
Not only that, but you have to actually buy new respawn points – known as Riders – with the premium currency. You do get plenty of this for free from levelling up and watching ads, you’ll have a pretty big advantage over your opponent’s team if you buy a bunch of these.
This also has negative effects on the gameplay besides the pay to win aspects. Each player can only spawn once during a battle by default: right at the beginning. Once dead, you can’t respawn unless you have extra riders.
As a result, matches are usually over within the first minute. However, if you’ve paid for a bunch of respawns, you can keep coming until the opposing team is all dead. You can literally pay your way to victory without skill even playing a part.
Matches are usually over within the first minute, and determined by the player who’s spent the most
Not only that, but it’s pointless making the default mode Conquest when the entire match plays out within a minute, and all players just rush to the centre to see who can kill the other first. We tried to play properly, capturing points on the periphery, but there wasn’t any real point in doing so.
The final nail in the coffin is how painfully easy the shooting mechanics are. You don’t even need to aim! Simply hit ‘Lock Target’ and your dinosaur will continue to shoot the nearest target automatically until they’re dead.
Given that every player can do this, the contest is literally determined by who’s pumped the most cash into their weapons. If aiming doesn’t play a part in killing an opponent first, then all you need to do is to pay for the most expensive weapons to automatically win. Again, pay to win rears its ugly face.
So while we were initially impressed with the level of visual polish on display in Full Metal Monsters, the blatantly obvious pay to win that infests the entire experience makes it difficult for us to even describe this as a game. It’s just a pretty virtual clash of credit cards, with no skill playing a part at all.
Aesthetically pleasing but it's ultimately just an excuse to spend money
Full Metal Monsters is a visually pleasing shooter that quickly devolves into pay to win shenanigans. There's no skill here, just an exercise in who can spend the most.
