Have you guys ever watched MXC back in the day? Much like the Super Sentai series was repurposed as Power Rangers for western audiences, the Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle was repackaged and made palatable for us burger biting, beer swilling, flag waving, red blooded Americans.. By palatable I mean we threw the word “Extreme” in the name, renamed Takeshi to maybe one of the sleaziest names I’ve ever heard in Vic Romano, and threw in some vaguely racist Asian voices to tie it all together.
Now I don’t know if I should be ashamed to admit this, but I kinda loved that show. It was stupid and fun and strangely satisfying. Laughing at other people's pain is kind of a pastime of mine and they gave me plenty to laugh at.
Fall Guys is the big hit developed by the small British studio Mediatonic and published by the eccentric Devolver Digital. Released on PC and PS4 last month, it's by no means Mediatonic’s first game but it’s definitely their biggest and the title that they’re going to be known for, for years to come. Them teaming up with Devolver, one of the most beloved and batshit crazy indie game publishers out there, is a match made in heaven and the game is a reflection of this partnership. It’s very much in the same vein as MXC, minus the raunchiness that the early 2000s was known for. Some of the shit they said on that show would never fly today. Bruh you cant say shit like that! It sees 60 players fall into a colorful, chaotic game show where they’ll compete in a series of challenges until there’s only one person standing with not only the crown, but an aura of big dick energy that you can feel pulsing through you. (piccolo vid)
No lie guys, it feels great to win this game and that’s probably because before you get a win, you’re going to lose. Like A lot (Elim montage - captain holt pain) There are people who play games for a living that struggle to squeeze out a 43. The game is designed to be a sort of party game BR and with that being said a lot of the game is RNG. The games that you play are random, the people that you play against are random, and the obstacles in front of you aren't always as straightforward as they seem. This isn’t a game designed for you to be a leet mlg pro. It is designed to be as fun as possible for as many people as possible and part of that is making sure that anybody can walk away with George Dubya. That’s right, for all you potato tier gamers out there struggling to play your favorite games without constantly getting tea bagged and taco dropped, this ones for you.
There are races, team games, keep away games, memory challenges, and a few games that involve precise timing and skill. Those last one I mentioned are my favorite, and for a lot of core gamers those are going to be the ones they enjoy the most. Jump club and Hex-a -gone are the standouts here and I’d argue that they’re the best challenges in the game, (especially Hex -a-gone) but these generally only appear when the field has been whittled down to only a few contestants.Those games are few and far between to guarantee that it’s not only the most skilled players that walk away with a crown. When they do show up, they’re saved for the finals most times, although there are still some lobbies where the final is more RNG based than anything.
In my opinion, not every game is a winner. Fall Ball is just soccer, or futbol if you don't have the “pleasure” of being a “proud American”, and if I wanted to play that I’d buy Fifa. Btw guys please don’t buy Fifa or any other sports game for that matter. Just don’t. Fall Ball is usually very one sided and very slow paced. Luckily the rounds don’t last incredibly long. Any game that involves catching other players and using the grab mechanic kind of suck as well. Games like Jinxed and Tail Tag are bad. Team Tail Tag is worse. And I just about cry if I get tail tag as the final game.
Some of the games are actually straight out of Most EXTREME Elimination Challenge. There’s fruit chute which reminds me of MXC’s boulder dash and then there’s door dash which is the exact same thing as Knock Knock. I say this to note that everything in Fall Guys even if its new, feels very familiar. The BR concept has been done to death but this brings something different to the space. The minigames are straightforward but can catch you slipping easily. . The controls are simple but its up to you to cleverly apply each of them, as there are only four things your Bean-sona can do. Run, jump, dive, and grab. Dassit. After you’ve played two rounds, it feels as though you’ve been playing forever, and that means you have all the tools you need to get a crown.
By playing the game you can accrue currencies to browse the in game shop. There are five different levels of item rarity for everything here. There’s common, uncommons, rares, epics, and legendarys. Everything cycles just about daily, so if you see something that you really like, be prepared to grind Fall Guys all day until you can make it happen. I have to applaud both Mediatonic’s and Devolver’s restraint when it comes to not dropping lootboxes into this title like every other game on the market these days. Most things here can be bought with Kudos, a currency that can be bought microtransaction style from their in game shop, or it can be earned simply by playing albeit at a slower rate. With kudos you buy different patterns, emotes, tops, and bottoms for your fall guy to wear. There’s also a second currency called crowns which you earn by winning games. The crowns can’t be bought and are the currency that you have to use for the best outfits in the game. Bad news is , that means all you super scrubs out there are going to need to get lucky. Good news is, That means when you play you can easily identify the person you have to grief because they have the fancy portal outfit or whatever on. I personally bought this cool monkey outfit after a few dubyas myself (monkey vid insert)
Like most TV shows, and every game that comes out these days it seems, Fall Guys will be broken up into seasons. With the new season I’m sure they’ll tweak some of the current game modes that they have, remove others, and even add a few to keep things fresh. There’s going to be brand new cosmetics to strive for with a dope medieval theme. I can’t wait to whisper into my boys ear (No Freaky) before yeeting him to his doom or at the very least the back of the line.
All in all Fall Guys is a great game, only held back by a couple of things. The availability being one issue. I mentioned earlier that the game is available on PC and PS4 and while that's cool for Sony, its not exactly consumer friendly. I get Devolvers Digitals dilemma here as a publisher tho. (Oooh Yall hear that alliteration? Yeah ya did…) Getting that Playstation Plus look has been huge for them as it provides an install base of sorts as well as capital to continue to invest in and improve the game, but that comes along with locking out all Xbox and Nintendo Switch players. Now I can forgive passing up the Xbox, everyone does it. Kinda sad really. But the Switch has the audience and mobility factor to really make Fall Guys into a success. I hope they will in the future but as of this video I cant find anything guaranteeing that.
A second issue is the lack of crossplay at launch. This game seems perfect for that and it’s just not here. In 2020 thats kind of strange. Everybody and their mothers are bending backwards to put crossplay into their game. It was recently implemented in Dead by Daylight, Smite, Sea of Thieves, Call of Duty and more. Just about every major multiplayer game in every genre has done this or plan to by the end of the year. I don’t see how this game was able to release without that.
This third issue is a gripe I have with the game, though I realize not everyone is going to agree with me here. There’s plenty of mini-games but only one real game mode. I think its pretty cool that the game is designed for anyone to win. The devs have said that they never intended to make a sweaty game and I can respect that. Thing is, a good portion of gamers, myself included, are sweats. The game is so incredibly random that a perfect run can come to an end at a moments notice through almost no fault of your own. To change the core play mode would be a mistake, but I’d love a mode that eliminated some of the randomness and was more skill based. I’d also love a private game mode if that'd be possible. I'd love to load up with 59 members of my community and have a great time. The game is already so content creator friendly that this would only boost numbers on platforms like Twitch and Youtube. Without different modes, this is a game that I can see myself playing for a couple of weeks but not far past that mark.
Even without all of that, Fall Guys is a massive success. Its shot past the 7 million units sold mark on Steam, and is the most downloaded playstation plus title of all time. That being said this game has a bright future. Will it be the BR to dethrone Fortnite in popularity? The ingredients for success are all there besides one, time. We’ll have to wait and see how this goes, but I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing about Fall Guys and Mediatonic for years to come.
Guys I’m Mr EMP. Thanks for coming to EyeMakePlaysTV. If you liked what you saw here, be sure to comment, like, subscribe, all that good ish that youtubers are always asking for. Links to my social media platforms will be down in the description. Im gonna go hop back on Fall Guys and get a couple more George Dubyas.