I know you just used it as an example, but personally I thought Candy Crush wasn't that bad of an offender as most modern games.
You could play pretty far into the game without spending a dime (except $0.99 after every 20 levels or so if you didn't want to bug your friends to log in and help get you the ticket to unlock the next section...).
I'm pretty sure I got to like level 128 without using any of their consumable items except in one level where I was forced to as a tutorial, and another level where I used one I was given for free because I had replayed the level too many times and was sick of it.
You do have limited 'lives' per day (and then they try to sell you on getting more to keep playing), but I saw that as a daily challenge of how far I could get before the lives depleted, since as long as I kept beating levels I didn't lose lives, and once it did, I quit for the day.
All in all, I got a lot of enjoyment out of that game and only spent less than $10. And that money spent was easily worth it.
That being said, I have heard that the later levels are absolutely brutal, and are nearly impossible to beat without using the consumables or getting damn lucky with the types and patterns of candy that appeared, so it may get more predatory at that point.
You heard right- they do t just get harder though.
They get far far more random- often times you only have one or two possible moves, or you have one okay move and a couple useless moves near the top of the screen. That turns it into literally a slot machine.
So it becomes absolutely a matter of trying 20 times, and the game only gives you three free lever pulls per 24 hours.
You could play pretty far into the game without spending a dime (except $0.99 after every 20 levels or so if you didn't want to bug your friends to log in and help get you the ticket to unlock the next section...).
I'm pretty sure I got to like level 128 without using any of their consumable items except in one level where I was forced to as a tutorial, and another level where I used one I was given for free because I had replayed the level too many times and was sick of it.
You do have limited 'lives' per day (and then they try to sell you on getting more to keep playing), but I saw that as a daily challenge of how far I could get before the lives depleted, since as long as I kept beating levels I didn't lose lives, and once it did, I quit for the day.
All in all, I got a lot of enjoyment out of that game and only spent less than $10. And that money spent was easily worth it.
That being said, I have heard that the later levels are absolutely brutal, and are nearly impossible to beat without using the consumables or getting damn lucky with the types and patterns of candy that appeared, so it may get more predatory at that point.