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When I buy a game with dollars, ordinarily I'm looking to get roughly an hour of enjoyment per dollar. In a day and age where I can wait for a steam sale and pick stuff up for $15 or below (see Rainbow Six Siege, which I'm beginning to tire of roughly 30 hours of gametime in) this is actually quite easy to do.
Excluding Hawken or other F2P games with stupid divide-by-zero ratios, the best game in an "hours enjoyed/dollar" ratio is Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Hands down. I have about two thousand hours spread across several accounts, and even then, I've put about $500 or more into the game. That still comes back to about 4 hours enjoyed on the dollar. (Even though I never once paid full price for the game itself. If we ignore all the money I've spent on custom skins, the real ratio is much, much higher.)
But now I'm going to talk to you about a game I have 9 hours in. It's a game I picked up for $40. I don't know if I'll ever get as involved in it as I've been in Hawken or CS GO, but it's a game that if it suddenly vanished, this instant, I'd sit back and say "that was worth the purchase."
Squad - in case the image doesn't load.
Like I said, I spent $40 on this game. It's also in "Alpha". I rarely put real money on early access games, and even less often spend close to what I'd spend on a AAA title.
The Game
The graphics are nothing special, it's crashed on me more than a handful of times, but nonetheless, for me, it's been worth the purchase. As I stated in another post, it's a military-sim. Obviously it focuses on the combat side of the military, but I'm pleased to say, they've really done will sticking to the necessities here. In a minute, I'll describe what really keeps me coming back, but for now, I'll describe the game itself. It's pretty barebones. It's "class based" but the only thing that changes from class to class is what you're carrying - and nothing special. Some people have more bandages than others, some have binoculars, some have a scope on their rifle, others are designated marksmen, and a couple people on each team are squad leaders. Everyone runs at the same speed, no one has "special abilities" (sorry Sparky, no fast for you), and everyone takes the same amount of damage before going down.
There's bullet drop, and the bullets are projectiles, and they're shot across truly vast maps. I'm talking maps that in a game that is frequently played with over 70 people in a game, you can run for several minutes without hearing a shot. They're big, and dying can be a real inconvenience. This isn't a game that you run around willy nilly on your own taking potshots at strangers. It's a game where if you're downed, you can either choose to spawn at a location of your choice - limited by where your squad leader and team mates have put the spawn points (and also will take time) or you can wait for a medic to make his way over to you and patch you up - and often, even if you have to wait a minute or two for a pause in a firefight or for a medic to run a while, it's worth it to wait.
It's objective based. So far, the only game mode I've really focused on is AAS or Advance and Secure. It's reminiscent of the Onslaught game mode in UT2k4. You advance across the map, capturing points in order. In this game mode, you don't actually have to capture all the points. Capturing a point gives you additional tickets, and tickets are what permit players to respawn without a medic. When you run out of tickets, you lose. There isn't any straight deathmatch or team deathmatch game mode, and frankly, it just wouldn't work here. You have big teams, but the maps are plenty large enough that that sort of thing could go on for hours if there weren't set locations to take.
Speaking of those big teams, you aren't just dumped in a pile trying to yell over 30 different people.
The Hook
At the start of each game, you have two minutes for your team to sort things out. That is, two minutes to create squads, define roles, formulate a plan, and communicate it with the other squads. Squads have a maximum of 9 or 10 people depending on the number of players in game. What's most common is a 72 player game where each team has four squads of nine - though you're not limited by that, and can have five or six squads of less if you choose.
At the head of each squad is a squad leader. Squad leaders, in addition to being responsible for leading the squad, are responsible for setting up your spawn points - FOBs and rally points. FOBs can be used by your whole team, while rally points can only be used by your squad, and only for a limited duration. They are also the only ones who have a direct line of communication with the leaders of other squads.
So why is this game worth at least $4.50 an hour to me, when my usual bar is $0.50 - $1.00 an hour?
It's big enough that a single person can't mess up the whole game for everyone, whether they teamkill or leave early or are just AFK. That's not the reason, it's just one of the variables in the final reason. Another variable is that despite the size, communication is never cluttered. As a non-squad leader, you can communicate by radio with members of your squad, or you can communicate "by voice" with friendlies in your immediate vicinity. Those are the only two factors I can really identify that contribute to the real reason. There must be a third or fourth or fifth, but I have no idea what they are.
The real reason is that in 85% of the games I've played, everyone actually, legitimately, voluntarily works together. I don't know how the game accomplishes this. I really don't. There's no ranking system that "forces" people to take the game seriously, there's no report function or rating system for other players, but for whatever reason, in this game where you play with between 30 and 50 other people on a single team, everyone has some mentality of teamwork. Most squad leaders actually give direction to their squads, actually listen to them, actually work with other squad leaders to manage the whole team, and actually have an effect on the game. Most players actually give feedback, actually spot enemies, actually participate in coordinated attacks, and actually follow the directions of the squad leader. It's magical, and in the nine hours I've been here, I've found Squad is giving every other multiplayer game I've ever a played a hard run for their money for the title of "best multiplayer gaming experience".
Squad does something right. I don't know all the variables at play, but the end result is immensely satisfying, whether you're pinned down in a ten minute firefight shouting directions to your team and locations of enemies, or whether you've been dead for a minute and a half waiting for a medic and are getting a greater picture of the map and player movements or locations, or you're just running half a kilometer through the woods in a northerly direction just bullshitting with strangers on the internet. It's satisfying.
It may not be your cup of tea, but check out the reviews if you'd like and you'll see a ton of people share the exact same sentiment.
A note to players using AMD hardware - don't get the game right now. AMD support on Squad is very poor and you will experience game breaking crashes.
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