Mob Control

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Mob Control is an Arcade-style game originally released on mobile devices in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. There’s a good chance you’ve seen advertisement for this game or others much like it, as they’ve been flooding mobile apps and YouTube for the last year or two. And naturally, the mobile versions of the game, while free, tend to be loaded with ads, so $5 for an ad-free version of the game on Nintendo Switch may seem to many to be a preferable alternative.

The premise behind this game is that players slide a cannon left and right, out of which shoots hordes of featureless little soldiers to march toward an enemy on the other side. Players must try to aim their soldiers at gates that multiply their number and try to overwhelm enemy forces with those greater numbers, with a charge attack releasing bigger units to do larger amounts of damage.

The presentation here is decent, but simple. The game uses untextured 3D visuals for its graphics, backed by energetic but forgettable synthesized music. This game’s mobile roots are on full display here, and while this game’s overall style is colorful and appealing, that “mobile stink” might not appeal to some players.

The gameplay itself is extremely simple – try your best to aim and time your shots to get your horde through as many multiplier gates as possible, while also keeping watch for enemy hordes slipping through to counter them before they get to you. You can gradually earn currency to upgrade your forces or swap them out with alternates. In the original release, this clearly meant either tedious grinding or microtransactions, but here it’s just the grinding, as the microtransactions have been removed.

The simple nature of the gameplay isn’t necessarily bad – this can still be enjoyable as a time-waster. But the slow and grindy nature of the upgrade system really does make playing this game feel like you’re just not making much progress at all. At the very least, the Nintendo Switch release does include a local co-op mode, but that just means you can drag a friend into this game’s grind, and that’s not really something a good friend should do.

However, if you are looking for a simple time-waster, you may enjoy Mob Control in small bursts. But probably not much more than that. The gameplay is far too simple, and progress far too slow, to keep your interest for very long.

tl;dr – Mob Control is an Arcade-style game where players aim a cannon to blast out hordes of minions to attack an enemy, hoping to use multiplier gates to increase their number and overwhelm the enemy. The gameplay here is simple and may hold your interest for a short while, but the slow progress in this game means you’ll probably grow bored with it quickly enough.

Grade: C-

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