SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
A hilarious and utterly chaotic mashup between Total Wipeout and a battle royale, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout very much lives up to its name, even despite a few persistent flaws.
Finally someone has managed what previously seemed impossible: create a battle royale game that just about anyone from seasoned gamers to near-totally clueless controller newbies could play and indeed even win at. I’m confident that with little more than a bit of nudging in the right direction, my grandparents could play Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, and if I’m being honest, that’s really saying something. But even though just about anyone could pick up and play, that doesn’t mean that those of us who habitually play video games will soon lose interest in this stupid fun. Making the cut, qualifying for that next round and scoring that winning crown are just as exhilarating, if not even more so, than getting kills and victories in any other battle royale currently on the market. Couple that with a remarkably low skill floor, and the perfect balance between fun, frustration and thrill, and the end result is an utter triumph.
An utterly crazed battle royale that draws on popular TV shows like Total Wipeout and Takeshi’s Castle for inspiration, Fall Guys is unlike any other game in this genre. Sixty players, all disguised as adorable costumed jelly beans, must survive a gauntlet of obstacle courses, team games and all their associated shenanigans. The objective, survive and qualify for the next round. As each round passes, more and more players are culled from the match, swept off into a sea of pink slime by giant windmills, beaten into submission by giant fruit and even tugged or thrown into the drink by your fellow players as they claw their way forward in the hopes of making it through to the next round. Only a select few reach the final round where they must compete for the crown. The winner receives a truly ridiculous amount of experience points and in-game currency, propelling them further along the season pass, a near-ubiquitous feature of our multiplayer games.
In this steadily growing genre, Fall Guys is better prepared than most to weather the effects of time and declining player bases thanks to its unique style and gameplay. Framed not as a massive pitched battle, but as a friendly televised competition, the game refers to its matches as “shows” and takes inspiration from the brightly coloured and plasticky obstacle courses of television series like Total Wipeout. I think everyone who’s ever watched one of those game shows has thought that they could do better on those obstacle courses, even as we watch contestants being swept off their feet. The fun behind Fall Guys is that now you have a chance to prove it, and have your wish fulfilled in a blaze of vicarious excitement. Everything about it, from its adorable jellybean avatars to its earworm soundtrack, seems to be designed specifically to give you that rush. It’s pure chaos, and no matter how old you are, there’s something inherently hilarious about watching your dressed-up jellybean fall flat on their face or run headlong into a wall disguised as a door. Losing leads to frustration of a good-natured kind and winning is both relief and genuine excitement. I found myself on the verge of screaming at the TV whenever I didn’t qualify, and pumping the controller in the air whenever I made it. To say that scoring my first crown felt like a genuine life achievement is an exaggeration, but only by a little.
So far, the game features 24 different courses and team games, although some seem to appear far more often than others. You’ll soon figure out which ones you love and which ones you hate, and some have rightfully gained notoriety. Slime Climb, a race to the finish through a gruelling obstacle course surrounded by rising pink slime, is the epitome of this game’s attempts to cull the weak, proving that even without assorted firearms, people will inevitably find some way to become obstacles on your path to success. But it’s only mildly annoying since the only interference you can run is fairly good-natured grabbing and pulling. I’ve found I particularly enjoy Fruit Chute, an uphill run where you stand a fairly good chance of being unceremoniously brained by a giant banana, and Door Dash, which commonly features sights like lead players running headfirst into walls and an unstoppable tide of jellybeans crowding through a gap far too small to fit everyone. For the See Saw obstacle course, where you have to navigate across a number of giant seesaws (as the name suggests), the quote “hell is other people” is all too apt. You’re reliant less on skill and more on your fellow players having any idea about how a seesaw, that most complex of playground equipment, works. Though anyone can play this game, there is some hidden skill and learning that can be done. As in all multiplayer games, understanding what other players are likely to do next is key to success, but Fall Guys wisely keeps that hidden behind its fun, colourful exterior.
Although I love the game’s variety of obstacle courses, I’m a little less enthused about the idea of team games, though I acknowledge that I’ve yet to encounter a few of them. While these add variety to the game by sorting players into teams and getting them to cooperate by stealing eggs from opposing teams for example, even the developers have said that tweaks need to be made. Put simply, their tendency to appear as the second or third rounds of a show means that being assigned to the yellow team in a three-way brawl can bring a premature end to your rise to the top, even though it’s no fault of your own. Such is the pitfall of online multiplayer games. However, the structure of Fall Guys’ shows only accentuates it.
I was however pleasantly surprised by the structure of its battle pass, microtransactions and in-game currency, and its generosity makes other games look stingy in comparison. Getting the crown at the end of a show gives you a bumper harvest of experience points and currency, while crowns themselves can be spent on the most exclusive items in the game’s storefront. But even if you get eliminated in the second or third rounds, you’re still awarded with a decent amount of XP and in-game currency, just enough in fact to ensure that, unless there’s a cosmetic you really want straight away, you don’t really have to spend actual money to get it. Progression is less of a slow crawl than in other games.
Put in the simplest terms, Fall Guys is an absolute delight. If Fortnite is chocolate cake, then this game is a towering ice cream sundae of hilarity with extra chocolate sauce on top. It’s even best shared with friends, and in an age where many of us are physically distanced, there’s a lot of joy to be had in simply spectating after you’ve bit the dust (or rather slime) and seeing your friends meet their own untimely ends. While it remains to be seen whether the developers have the means to keep this game going past its spectacular overnight success, I think the future looks bright. Verdansk, eat your heart out.
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