Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout Review
Right now, I think it’s fair to say a lot of Americans continue to be stressed. As protests against racial injustice continue, some weeks feel more successful than others, but this past week has felt like a bit of a wash. I’m happy to see some progress being made, but at the same time a lot of people inside and outside the government are doing what they can to stem the tide of progress. The need to constantly fight back against racist, authoritarian violence is necessary but draining, so we have to remember to take a moment to relax and let ourselves unwind. One thing that helps me unwind is silly, meaningless games, which weirdly means battle royale games for me in particular. So this week I decided to jump on a hype train and check out the colorful slapstick battle royale Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is the latest entry into the battle royale trend. Each game, or “show” to use the game’s terminology, of Fall Guys involves up to 60 competitors navigating a series of colorful and cartoonish levels. At the end of each level, roughly 20% to 25% of players are eliminated, except for Block Party and Perfect Match but we’ll get back to that later, until only about 10 players remain. Once this player count has been reached, the game enters the final level where only one player can win, and the one who does earns themselves a shiny new crown. After a show ends, players are awarded with fame, kudos, and, if they were extremely lucky, a crown. Kudos and crowns can be used to unlock new aesthetic customization options for characters and fame advances the player along the season’s fame track with exclusive rewards unlocking at specific amounts of fame. Once the player has finished shopping, the only thing left to do is dive in to another show, hoping for a win or at least a funny story.
In spite of its fairly shallow premise, there are actually a lot of things I like about Fall Guys. I think the biggest thing Fall Guys has going for itself is that almost all of the games are fun to play. All tolled, there are 25 different games that can appear during a show of Fall Guys and I have a good time with just about every one of them. Some of my favorites include Hit Parade, players must race while navigating various bludgeoning implements and pit falls as they try to cross the finish line, Fruit Chute, where players must ascend a mountain while having massive pieces of fruit fired out of cannons at them, and Roll Out, where players try to stand atop a constantly moving cylinder covered in obstacles and holes. On top of each game’s individual strengths, they all feature the same simple controls, allowing anyone who wants to jump in without much preparation or requirement of proficiency. All of the games also use the same cartoony physics, with players flopping and jumping around like bipedal bean bags.
But it isn’t all fun and games in Fall Guys, mostly thanks to confusing choices the developers made. First among these is that, for some reason, with each show allowing up to 60 competitors, players are only allowed to party up with just three friends. I genuinely can’t understand why the developers set this limit, especially considering the fact that maybe one in 20 games has a full roster of 60 players. With that many spaces available, I should be able to be in a party of 10 friends, if not more, so we can all play together. The entire vibe of Fall Guys is lighthearted fun with a huge crowd, so I don’t see why they want me and my pals to be, at most, 1/15th of the roster. Another problem is that, despite having 25 different games for players, I still experienced a lot of repetition thanks to the limitations of when games can show up. The first game of each show will always be a race, and most likely See Saw, so players eliminated in the first round won’t see any team or survival task levels, leading to repetition, frustration, and eventually boredom.
Even more confusing is the developer’s decision to have four different final levels. Given their name, obviously only one of the four will be present in any one show, and only about 10 players will even see which final level is chosen, so variety at that point is basically meaningless. Additionally, one of the final levels is called Fall Mountain and is a massive, complex mountain with a shining crown at the top. I am blown away that the developers made a level named after the game and adorned with the crown, the object everyone is competing for, and then decided to not make that the final level in every show. It’s like buying an expensive muscle car, but then insisting that everyone who came over to see the incredible achievement of automotive design also take a look at a used car you bought off a Craigslist teenager for $100. I actually won a show of Fall Guys this week, but it was on the much less exciting Jump Showdown level. When I won, I didn’t realize what happened and I didn’t feel like a winner, just like a guy who didn’t lose.
The final thing that frustrated me about Fall Guys is that some of the games don’t feel like they were fully vetted. I mentioned Perfect Match and Block Party earlier and that’s because they’re almost entirely toothless. Both of these games end either when enough players have been eliminated or when a certain amount of time has passed. This means that very few, if any, players are eliminated. I personally think that the developers should remove the time limit of these games, but if they’re committed to the format they need to increase the difficulty by several degrees. Another issue is that nearly half of the team games end in two teams collaborating to eliminate the third team. Egg Scramble, Rock ‘N’ Roll, and Hoarders all suffer from this problem. In these games, the goal is not to be first, but instead to not be last, and players are allowed, if not incentivized, to interfere with other teams. This means one team ends up struggling against twice as many opponents only to be eliminated by no fault of their own and that made me dread these games.
When a game is as simple it really needs to nail the few facets it has, and unfortunately Fall Guys doesn’t quite manage. It’s still a fun, easy game to play with friends, which is quite valuable during quarantine, but it has enough problems that it’s not great. If you like the look of it, I think you’ll enjoy it almost as much as you expect, but I think $20 is just too much to charge.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
