Tendo City

Perhaps the biggest thing in gaming over the past year, except maybe for the Switch, is the massive popularity of battle royale games. The first one to hit a huge audience was, of course, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, but there are also others that have copied it, most notably the also extremely successful Fortnite: Battle Royale, as well as others like Radical Heights and H1Z1 (though that last one predates PUBG, but anyway).

Has anyone here tried any of them? I've watched a lot of PUBG on Youtube, but never have bought the game and still don't own it. I'm sure I'd be terrible at it, and random groups or single player probably are not nearly as interesting as voice-chat squads look like they are. So yeah, I'd watched quite a bit but not played any.

Yesterday, though, I decided to finally change that, and since have tried Fortnite and Radical Heights, because they are both free. I played both in single-player mode only, and did try Fortnite on X1 as well as PC. And... I can see the appeal of the games and will probably play them a bit here and there, but as solo titles I don't think I'll be playing a lot of these games. They're fine, but the pacing is kind of weird, which is something always commented on about these games -- you land, maybe have an encounter there, then... maybe, like, spend a long time not seeing anyone, if you aren't in a populated area. Even in Fortnite, which is apparently the fastest-paced one of these games, it's still very slow compared to other kinds of games. I know that's the idea and, combined with the no-respawns design, the thing that sets battle royale games apart, but while they're fun, I was starting to get bored after a little while.

Then eventually, someone shoots be from behind and that's it, I lose. That's really fun. I've never exactly been good at first or third person shooters, so getting only one life instead of respawns has always seemed to me to be something that would probably go badly, and yeah, I was probably right. Even so though, there is something here. Between the two games, Radical Heights' map feels smaller and maybe a bit more action-packed. I only played a few matches, but actually managed some kills, including one where I got a punch kill of a guy with a shotgun! In open areas I'm hopeless of course because I'm bad at hitting moving targets in first or third person shooters (and always have been), but ah well. As for Fortnite, its main differentiating factor is that you can collect resources and build walls or stairs with those resources. The mechanic works well and makes the game different, but that alone isn't enough to make me want to play a lot of the game. If I had friends playing too I could see playing more of it, though, sure (and the same goes for PUBG).

As for themes, PUBG is 'realistic modern day' stuff, which definitely isn't my thing at all. Fortnite has a nice cartoonish style which works well. Radical Heights is sort of in between, as it has a neon 1980s gameshow theme, so it's far from realistic... but it does have real weapons and more realistic gun physics than Fortnite, apparently. And then there's H1Z1, which is the most simmish of the bunch I believe, and does not sound like much fun, but I haven't tried it.

Anyway, these games are huge and I get why, but I don't know that I find them as much fun to play as they are to watch... and I definitely don't plan on spending lots of time to get better. Still, they're alright and I'm sure I'll play one here and there. Anyone else here try any?

I thought PUBG was just another shooter. What exactly is a battle royal game?

Well, the gameplay is that of a shooter, sure, but they have a unique format.

- The game starts out with all of the players parachuting or dropping in from the sky. Usually you drop from a flying plane or something which moves on a path across the map. Players scatter out across the huge map depending on where they go.

- Then, you land and start collecting loot. Looting weapons and such is a core part of these games, as you land with no weapons other than your fists and need to find weapons to fight with. They are all over, but you'll need to find them...

- Then after some time passes, probably a few minutes, part of the map is marked off as 'the area to go to'. This usually is done with a large circle on the map. You're given some time to get to the circle, then a wall of "you will be damaged if you are on the wrong side of this" starts heading towards the marked circle.

- After it reaches the edge of this first, large, circle, the game then pauses again, then sets up a new smaller circle somewhere inside the first one. You have some time to get to it, but less than the previous circle. Also the damage from being outside of the circle increases as the game goes on.

- In solo play, any player which dies is out, you get no second chances. In team games you can be downed, and teammates can heal you if you manage to stay downed. Shooting downed players some more will kill them for good. Unless rezzed by an ally, downed players slowly lose health until they die for real.

- The circle continues to get steadily smaller until there is a single winning player or team. By the eighth or ninth circles the area is so small that someone is sure to win.


And then, win or lose, you go back to a menu where you can play again. You get rewards of some kind from the game, but can't keep any of the stuff you collected, that needs to be done every game. These games all have microtransaction systems as well, for stuff for your characters to wear and the like. PUBG has random loot boxes. These don't give you loot during games though, only new stuff to wear to make your characters look different.


As for maps, PUBG currently has three maps, while Fortnite's free Battle Royale mode and Radical Heights each have one map. PUBG's first two maps are quite large, while the third is smaller, more like Fortnite's map size. Radical Heights' map is probably similar in size to that as well.


The games are compelling to watch, as the tension of always being at a risk of dying in a game like this where you can't just respawn makes all of that looting and exploration feel much tenser than it would be in a more 'normal' game. They can also be fun to play, though skill, or, sadly, cheating -- and these games, PUBG especially, have a LOT of cheaters -- are highly rewarded, so the better (or the more you cheat) you are at the game the more fun it probably will be.

Still, they're interesting and a quite different take on the shooter. For actual play, as far as multiplayer shooters go, I like classic Unreal Tourament-like fast-paced arena games the most, I guess, though sadly few people play those games these days. Splatoon is also really awesome. Battle Royale games are interesting too, but for me maybe more to watch than play... still, they're worth a try for sure.

A few thoughts:

The first point is how all FPSes work, the plane is irrelevant. Looting weapons and such is also a core part of just about every FPS going back to Doom.
The slowly shrinking play area? Now we're talking, that sounds like an interesting new game type. Hardly a new genre though, any more than adding "king of the hill" or "capture the flag" counted as a genre. It's a good idea though.

Is this really a genre, or is it really just a battle mode type, soon to be expected in every FPS multiplayer mode?

On the subject of 'FPS', PUBG supports either first or third person modes, but you can't switch during the game; it's an option in the main menu and you only play against people also in first or third person, depending. Fortnite and Radical Heights are third-person games. They're as much or more third-person shooters than they are first person.

Also, while collecting weapons is a big part of all FPSes, it's a bit different in these games because of the massive scale of the map -- each is a huge amount of space, with lots of buildings, towns, hills, and more. PUBG has two maps that are 8x8km, and one that's 4x4km. That smaller size is about the scale of the Fornite Battle Royale map, but it's still pretty big. Getting weapons and stuff might take time, if you don't start in a good place, and with the permadeath system there are high stakes. So the loot-collection element, while yes, common to the genre, feels a bit different in these games... though sure, that might be more because of the permadeath than anything.

Quote:The first point is how all FPSes work, the plane is irrelevant.

I'm not sure what you mean here, I've never seen anything like the 'choose your starting point by jumping from the plane' thing in another shooter.

Quote: Is this really a genre, or is it really just a battle mode type, soon to be expected in every FPS multiplayer mode?

It's a new subgenre or game type, which one I guess probably depends on who you ask. It definitely requires its own map(s), since they're so different from the kind of map you see in other FPSes, and at least some of its own game mechanics, though. Of the games I mentioned, PUBG and Radical Heights are battle royale-only. Fortnite has two modes, the free battle royale mode and the players-versus-ai defense mode. That latter mode was developed first, but never caught on at all, and Fortnite seemed to be going nowhere... until they decided to copy PUBG and added in the battle royale mode, which quickly exploded and now Fortnite Battle Royale is one of the most popular games today. The "main" PvE mode' still going nowhere in popularity though, I think. And H1Z1's battle royale mode started out as a separate mode in a game originally not designed for it, but now has been spun off into a separate battle royale-only title.

So yeah, it's kind of just a mode, but most of the games are stand-alone.

Wait you choose your starting location by jumping out of the plane? Well, that's an interesting twist, though I don't really see that as attached to the mode itself.

I suppose it's all semantics. In any case, it's a creative new mode and I'm glad to see creativity in the genre.

Yeah, sorry, I guess I wasn't clear on that point -- in PUBG and Fortnite, you choose when to jump, which allows players a lot of options for where they want to land, particularly so considering that the parachute has a pretty good range. Radical Heights tries to change things, in that you start that game falling from the sky from the center of the map at some random angle, and can choose which way to go from there as you fall. There also is no parachute, the game just has no falling damage, which is kind of amusing. The basic concept is similar though. A shorthand joke way to describe the genre is to say "100 [characters/things/what have you] drop out of a plane..." so I do think it's an important element of battle royale games, though you probably could do one without it somehow.