Let the bodies hit the floor
Launch days connect separately, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout which turned out so much better than I had expected.
The premise – a cartoonish 60-player competition consisting of semi-randomly selected obstacle courses, knocking team games, and stressful challenges for survival – is fantastic. The whole atmosphere is silly and charming, especially if you learn to accept that happiness can play an important role and that’s okay.
Fall Guys is a video game rendering of Takeshi’s castle (Most Extreme Elimination Challenge) and it rules.
I thought I would burn out, but after a hundred-plus rounds in the live game (not to mention several hours spent with the beta), I’m still in it to win it. It is bad to break out of the eternal cycle of being in queues again.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PC [reviewed], PS4)
Developer: Mediatonic
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Releases: August 3, 2020
MSRP: $ 19.99
After a big push from PlayStation Plus that helped bring in 1.5 million players on day one, it feels like Fall Guys is currently at the top of the world. Depending on when and where you played, you initially had a rough go – the servers could not keep up with the demand – but after some downtime it was much smoother for me to sail on PC. And on day two, I had only one mid-match disconnect. Things stabilized.
I call that front and center because Fall Guys is a completely online experience. You will be queuing up for a match with 59 other players, not trying to be shaken up over several rounds (some solo, some team-based), and hoping to crown the victories in one of three possible final challenges. There are no training modes, AI bots, or even tutorials (outside of static instruction screens to cover the basics).
That said, you survive, score points, or run each round to the finish – the levels are intuitive – and your jellybean character can run, dive and pack. This game is super easy to learn. I love that simplicity and the nuances of motion control that I have picked up over time. Momentum really matters.
Fall Guys is just you and a desire to outdo your teammates in fumbling footballs, slippery hill climbing, jumping off faith bridge walks, and other activities. If you are fast enough, skilled enough, or lucky enough to be placed at the top of a round, you move on to the next phase. If you fall short – even if by no real fault of your own – that’s a wrap. Other times better. Enjoy your XP and unlock a new outfit.
It would be a sore throat if it were not so damn fun. The best compliment I can pay Fall Guys is that winning outside of this world feels good and only loses sticks for a little bit before I’m in for another try.
There are frustrating moments, to be sure. Everyone will have their highlights (Hex-A-Gone, The Whirlygig) and wish-I-could-skip-it, never record again (Perfect Match, Egg Scramble). There are 25 games in it Fall Guys. Not all are busy enough to hold long term, especially levels with too much downtime or repetitive patterns, but most are. Runs have the very best energy.
My biggest complaint is that due to the random nature of the game (with no voting process or preference for matchmaking) it sometimes feels like your favorite events are nowhere to be seen. Jumping into perhaps false doors and emitting rising sludge is more fascinating to me than avoiding delayed oncoming barriers like smelling a person’s tail and holding it immediately before the exhaust timer reaches zero.
It generally does not appeal to me about the team games, some of which will be sung with a slight uproar, but I can sympathize with people who feel cheated when they “did everything they could” and yet got lost because of bad teammates. At the same time, Fall Guys seems like there is controlled chaos. Some of my funniest, most memorable interactions happened during moments of abject failure. Winning is not everything.
Beyond the inherent pleasure of throwing your floppy body through an obstacle course, Fall Guys has a free season championship for stroke pass as extra motivation. When you level up your account, you will receive cosmetic rewards and currency in-game for a shop with daily rotating skins, outfits and emotes. One type of currency comes from playing, the other from winning. The former can be purchased with real money, but the latter – crowns – can not. In both cases there is no effect on the gameplay. It’s all for show.
While I can not say what future seasons will bring Fall Guys outside of new outfits I have already been fired enough to maximize my rank over the next two months. This is my new way to relax.
What comes next? The hope is that Mediatonic will continually throw new free levels (the developers have said so much) and try to refresh existing stages to keep everyone on their toes. Wishlist features like split-screen support, more party options, including private servers, game modifier keys, and the biggest demand of all – a full-blown level editor – can go a long way Fall Guys relevant for the coming years.
If not one of our hopes and dreams unfolds (I’m at least sure some of them will consider the early success of the game), Fall Guys is still one of the feel-good excursions of 2020. How many players of longer life can get out of it will vary from person to person, but as someone who actually called it quits on the all-too-similar battle genre, ‘ m here and now a pretty fun time.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
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judged by Jordan Devore
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