Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Pros

• 24 different events to choose from
• Brisk, 15 minute gameplay sessions
• Intuitive controls are easy to learn

Cons

• Quality of individual events can vary
• No local co-op or solo game modes

Fall Guys may look cute and irreverent, but this platforming battle royale can quickly become a source of contention among competitive friends and family members. It trades in the military hardware of more conventional battle royale entries for a cast of rotund cartoon characters and a playful world that's splattered in candy colors. And while you can learn the eccentricities of each map and each objective, chance has as much a part to play in your success as anything.

Players take control of the titular Fall Guys - bulbous and largely indistinct creatures that can be given personality and color through a number of different costumes. If you've ever seen an episode of Wipeout, you understand the basic premise here. Characters are dropped into a sadistic obstacle course and race to the end. Each round trims down the number of competitors - either due to disqualification or reaching the finish line too late - until there's only one left standing. The obstacles here are varied and frustrating, and most of them take advantage of Fall Guys' loose and wild physics engine for diabolic results. Getting sidelined by an unseen obstacle is common. Getting knocked into a seen obstacle because of a tumbling competitor is just as likely. It's the type of game that urges you to win but places enough random chance into each event that you won't take it too hard if you lose.

As is typical for the battle royale formula, competitions allow in a lot of people. The game starts with 60 competitors, and it can be easy to get lost in the mix early on. As you proceed to the later stages, you'll begin to identify rivals directly. The huge variety of ridiculous accessories does a great job of helping the otherwise indistinct blobs stand apart from one another.

These foot races make up a majority of the competitions - and they serve as one of the most effective ways to winnow down the competition - but you need to be prepared for other competitive challenges as well. The need for a mean edge remains in these other competitions, but they take cues from party games to lend diversity to the experience. Different variations on tag or pin the tail on the donkey are common, but you'll also find minigames that ask you to rhythmically jump over spinning poles and scrambling for control of eggs. Many of the games even split the players into teams, forcing grudging cooperation in between the more prevalent winner-takes-all events. All told, there are two dozen events that are randomly chosen for the series of courses.

But for players worried about complexity, everything you'd need to do can be handled with just a few buttons. Players can jump, grab, and dive. It's enough that most players can pick up everything in a matter of minutes. And while more experienced players will always have an edge, that simplicity combined with the random factors on a given map means that anyone can conceivably walk away with first place.

The graphics may be fundamentally simple and the narrative sparse, but Fall Guys comes with character to spare. The costumes themselves are staggering in their sheer breadth, and the majority of them are uniquely bizarre. The obstacles and courses are intimidating without being gory, a feat that's largely accomplished through the bright sheen that the candy-coated textures provide. Fitting the breezy aesthetic of Fall Guys is an equally breezy playtime. Even the tensest showdowns can be completed in 15 minutes, and most players won't make it to the end of a given match. If you're looking for a game you can just pick up and play, Fall Guys offers it.

It also does so while managing to avoid a lot of the microtransactions that run rampant in the online gaming genre. While you can pay for items within the game, they're always purely cosmetic. And there are very few cosmetic items that are locked exclusively behind a paywall. Microtransactions simply give you currency that you can earn just by playing the game. Exclusive costumes come in the form of paid DLC, but there are only a handful available, and their absence won't have any impact on the actual game.

How much you enjoy Fall Guys on a whole is going to come down to how competitive you are and how willing you are to accept the role of chance as well as skill in your success. But with its short playtime and whimsical art style, Fall Guys is hard to put down. How much you enjoy Fall Guys on a game by game basis is largely going to come down to random chance as well. While most of the mini-games are great and do an admirable job of keeping the game's flow at a brisk pace, some of them aren't quite as fun. And since all levels are randomly chosen, your mileage may vary on how much you enjoy a particular run. That said, it won't take you long to give it another go.

Fall Guys isn't the type of game you'll want to play for hours every day. Instead, it's best suited for small doses. But as a way to waste a half-hour with friends or an excuse to dress up your little avatar and see them in action, those smaller moments will be well spent. In any case, Fall Guys takes the battle royale formula and does something new both in terms of gameplay and artistic sensibilities.

Pros

• 24 different events to choose from
• Brisk, 15 minute gameplay sessions
• Intuitive controls are easy to learn

Cons

• Quality of individual events can vary
• No local co-op or solo game modes