Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout - Review
Some of my fondest memories when I was younger were watching zany TV game shows such as Takeshi's Castle or it's Australian equivalent It's A Knockout (I still can't get that damn theme song out of my head). For the uninitiated these were TV game shows that had contestants running around making idiots of themselves whilst traversing various obstacle courses or participating in team based activities against each other, it was compelling viewing way back in that fabulous time known as the 80s. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout attempts to recreate some of the wacky games from both of these shows allowing you to live out your dreams of stumbling around giant obstacle courses.
Fall Guys pits 60 players against each other (sometimes forcing you to work together when it comes to the team games) in a battle royale of sorts as you fumble your way around giant arena size obstacle courses. 60 players enter the game and after each round several are eliminated based on how they performed in the round, until eventually only 1 player is left and is crowned the winner. Sounds incredibly simple right? And it is but therein lies the beauty of the experience. There are 24 different mini games in Fall Guys broken up into 3 different categories, race, survival, and team.
Race games will see you trying to be one of the first to successfully negotiate your way around an obstacle course, Survival games sees you trying to survive longer than the remaining players left in the game by doing things such as jumping over and avoiding giant blocks that are intent on sweeping you off a platform, and finally team based games such as egg collecting and soccer that see the top teams move on and the bottom team be eliminated. Each and every one of the mini-games are varied enough that they remain fun even after several play- through and with the developers plan to add more I am quite confident that Fall Guys will remain fun for a long time.
Virtual currency exists on the game and comes in two forms, kudos which comes from simply participating in games and crowns which come from successfully winning a round, these can be used in the games item shop to purchase new ways to customise your avatar such as new costumes, poses and dances.
Fall Guys is such a simple game, and not the type of thing I would normally play due to the cutesy nature of the graphics, but boy oh boy does this thing become addictive, it is such a great game to fire up when you only have half an hour to play something, but don't blame me if you still find yourself sitting there hours later having missed an important meeting. There have been a lot of server issues with the game over the past week following its launch but the popularity of the game has been astounding so the influx of players even took the developers by surprise, they have promised to add extra server capacity though, so this should not be an issue going forward.
The balance for the game can feel a little off at times as well, as with events where you are responsible for yourself, being the easiest to worry about, but those team events are dependent on everyone pulling their weight. It is a common thing, to be kicked out, simply because members of your team did not do what was needed in the game, the upside is that if you play with friends, you can chat and co-ordinate, but with random people, you just have to hope for the best. With luck, some future updates might include some more single player, or smaller team enabled events, to help bring things back into a more controlled balance.
Don't let the simplistic or cutesy nature of Fall Guys turn you off there is a fantastic experience to be had here even by the most hardcore of gamers, I am excited to see where developers Mediatonic take the series in the coming months.
The Score
8.0
The Pros
+Simple, slickly presented mini-games
+Addictive multiplayer gameplay
+Great and varied level design
The Cons
+Levelling system could use same work as it is very slow to level
+Hardcore gamers may be turned off by its cutesy aesthetic
