Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 4 (PS4) Review

 

In Chapter 2 Season 4 Fortnite did the unthinkable and dedicated an entire season to a Marvel crossover. I will in this article try to review this season and offer some personal impressions.

The introduction of CH2S04 started through a comic, which was available to read in the last weeks of CH2S03 in the Fortnite main menu. It was actually a quite elegant way of introducing a crossover between Marvel Comics and Fortnite. Thor, the god of thunder, travelled with Galactus through the galaxy in order to prevent the Black Winter event from happening. Galactus however got distracted by the power of the Zero-Point on the Fortnite world and planned to consume it. While Galactus started his 3 month long journey to the Fortnite map, Thor hurried ahead via the Bifrost in order to warn the Fortnite characters of the incoming threat. He also summoned various other Marvel superheroes and some POIs to the Fortnite world to help everybody to prepare for a giant battle against Galactus.

Chapter 1 Season 4 interestingly also featured a superhero theme, which might be a hint to Chapter 2 being some like an alternative timeline or parallel-universe to Chapter 1. The previous Ghost vs Shadow (Alter vs Ego) storyline from Chapter 2 Season 1-3 was unfortunately not continued and most parts of their existence just vanished. All the Ghost and Shadow henchmen and bosses have disappeared (One Ghost and Shadow henchmen were the exception, who happened to travel around the map during the season, doing goofy stuff and turning into an easter egg), the Authority got abandoned, its outer-walls sank to the bottom of the ocean and during Fortnitemares the Authority turned into the decrepit 'Ruins'. The Fortilla also shrank to about a third of its size, Catty Corner got abandoned as well and Rickety Rig was removed all together. Personally I am pretty disappointed that the developers didn't find any ways to bring the Ghost vs Shadow storyline to a satisfying end. The last three seasons they were prominent parts of the game and in CH2S04 most of their POIs seemingly disappeared without any replacement or explanations. There was no story event in the previous season and the whole handling just felt a bit out of place.

I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of new POIs at the beginning of the season. There were more removals of locations without replacements, than new areas. The biggest new area in the beginning of the season was the 'Sentinel Graveyard' south of the Authority, which featured the remains of a bunch of fallen giants called Sentinels, which got slaughtered by Wolverine at the start of the season. This new area might look nice, but was actually more of an eye candy than a new city. The biggest other location change at the start was the remodeling of Pleasant Park as 'Doom's Domain'. You have to however point out, that about 90% of Pleasant Park remained identical. A big lair named 'Doom House' replaced a standard house, a Dr. Doom statue was added into the middle of the park, Dr. Doom stared in as new boss and his henchmen took over the city and the vault in the underground base below Pleasant Park. Doom's Domain may not have changed much, but it was still a pretty cool POI. Overall however those were very little map changes for the start of the season, which again left me a bit underwhelmed.

In the following weeks some smaller POIs also arrived at the map. All of them were placed on external plateaus, which made it clear they were only ported in from some other world. Since they were all really small and looked disjointed from the rest of the map, I didn't enjoy these areas too much. The best ones were 'Ant-Manor' and 'Panther's Prowl'. Ant-Manor featured an oversized dog house and some underground tunnels, while Ant-Manor consisted of a big rock with a large panther statue on top of it. There was also an area called 'The Collection', which consisted of showcases of Marvel items (similar to the room of the Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy) and one POI with an empty prison transport truck (boring!).

The best addition to the map however was a gigantic plateau, which replaced Frenzy Farm and the entire area north of it. This plateau consisted of 'Stark Industries' (which turned out to be the new hotspot of the season) and the large 'Heart Lake'. The entirety of the plateau was called 'Upstate New York'. Stark Industries consisted of a large tech factory, which was focused on building robots, various vehicles and iron man suits. The main building had multiple floor levels and was guarded by Iron Man himself (he obviously got assisted by a lot of his robot companions). Aside the main building was a smaller parkway, which led to a large empty parking lot and a car gyro in front of the main building. There were two other buildings at the Stark Industries site. One was a large production hall for Battle Buses (which would later on play a key role in the Galactus Event) and the other was a building for a communication system with a vault bunker inside and a helispot aside it. Heart Lake was taken directly from the Avengers Endgame movie and represented the lake and some surrounding mansions, where Tony Stark had been living with his family (There is even a secret underground lab with stark vehicles below one of the mansions). Aside from Stark Industries and Heart Lake there were a lot of autumnally woods and rivers on the Upstate New York Plateau. The Plateau could be accessed through ziplines, which allowed players to quickly traverse through the area.

Stark Industries was a really cool complex and many players dropped there throughout the season. I certainly liked it the most of the few new areas this season. Heart Lake was also a beautiful location, but I rarely ever met players there or on other points of Upstate New York (Team Rumble was the exception and there were certainly some memorable battles being fought in this area).

A new addition were the Stark Quinjets. A couple of them would be landing at randomly selected landing places each match. The Quinjets were guarded by Stark Robot henchmen and supply drones were flying around them. The Robot henchmen had the interesting twist, that players could program them after knocking them down first and the robots would afterwards support the players throughout the match as AI allies. The supply drones could be shot from the sky and they dropped weapons and superhero abilities (Iron Man in Stark Industries, Wolverine in Weeping Woods and Dr. Doom in Doom's Domain were also dropping hero abilities upon defeating the bosses).   

The Iron Man Repulsors were a fast shooting laser weapon. The damage itself was lower than most other hero abilities, but this was balanced by the higher rate of fire and lack of cooldown for the base fire. The Repulsors also allowed players for a short time to use the Iron Man Jetpack and to have a sort of auto-aim with the Repulsors. Both side abilities however had a lengthy cooldown. The other Iron Man ability was Unibeam, which was a single super powerful laser shot, which did 90 damage on players and destroyed all buildings it was shot on. It had a 35 second cooldown. The Doctor Doom Gauntlets shot green energy blasts, which were much slower than Iron Man's repulsor shots, but they in turn also did more damage. The rate of fire was also slower than the Repulsors, but both weapons had no cooldown. The Doctor Doom Mythical Bomb was a large energy ball, which could be thrown at enemies like a catapult. It had a 20 second cooldown and did 60 damage, which seems like a fair trade off. The Mythical Bomb was in my opinion however a bit weaker than Iron Man's Unibeam, because of the slow firerate. Doctor Doom and Iron Man were the only heroes with two abilities each.

The Silver Surfer Board allowed players to launch themselves up into the sky (similar to a Launch Pad) and could be used as a Glider midair. It had a 30 second cooldown and could be cancelled at any point without giving players fall damage, which made it a great mobility item rather than a real ability. The Groot Bramble Shield transformed players into a wooden Ball, which negated incoming damage and even healed the player inside. The Black Panther armour upon activation reduced incoming damage and after a while the armour exploded and damaged all surrounding hostile players. Storm's Whirlwind Blast summoned a little Tornado, which damaged and knocked surrounding enemies back. Venom's Smash and Grab worked as a Grappling Hook, pulling enemies towards the players and giving them damage in the process. Thor's Mjolnir Strike summoned his holy hammer and let it drop to the ground to not only damage players, but also destroy all structures in the target area. The only downside is, that the attack isn't simultaneous and quick enemies got a chance to dodge it. Wolverine's Claws and She-Hulk's Fist are both melee weapons without cooldown. They are obviously only effective in close-range, but very powerful in there. The Claws have a high rate of fire (or in this case rate of punches), but do less damage. Both weapons also have the side effect to slowly heal players over time. The She-Hulk Fists allow her to perform a jump attack, while the Claws enable users after a couple of punches to use a Spin attack.

The involvement of Hero abilities instead of Mythical weapons in this season made a lot of sense, if you consider, that this was a specific superhero themed season. It can be asked, whether this hero abilities were too unbalanced in regular BR matches, but I certainly appreciated their inclusion, if I got lucky enough to get my hands on one of them and they performed the best in modes like Marvel Knockout or Marvel Takeover. These modes really gave players the impression of playing a Superhero videogame instead of regular Fortnite and I certainly enjoyed them. The abilities I liked the most were the Iron Man ones, Thor's Hammer and the Wolverine Claws.

Chapter 2 Season 4 also introduced a new weapon in form of the Stark Energy Rifle, which was dropped only by the Stark Robot henchmen. It was a semi-automatic high-damage energy rifle and I personally very much enjoyed it. It was especially useful in middle and long range distance and a good addition to the Assault Rifle selection. Other new items were the improved blue rated Fishing Rod and the firetrap. On the other hand all the mythic weapons of the previous season got removed and weapons like the flare gun, the hunting rifle and tactical shotgun got vaulted (Since the tactical shotgun is my favourite shotgun I found this especially disappointing... The flare gun would have also deserved more than just one season...). Pump and Combat Shotgun, Boogie Bombs, Jetpacks and Port-a-Forts however were unvaulted for the season. Nonetheless I certainly preferred the weapon/item selection of the previous season.

Fishing became more important and competitive in this season. Fortnite introduced new fish sorts like the Thermal Fish, which gave players temporary heat vision and the game allowed players to compare their collection of caught fishes in the main menu with the collection of their friends (It was even possible to compare the size of the fishes).

Aside from the henchmen, Fortnite also introduced a new enemy type a few weeks after launch. The marauders from the last season had been removed, but now Gorgers (large, but slow moving drones, who shot laser beams) were dropping from the sky. The attacks of the Gorgers were slow, but very powerful. Players had enough time to dodge them, but unobservant players could get wrecked fast. Smaller and quicker enemies named Gatherers could deploy out of the Gorgers and assist them in combat. The Gatherers shot quicker, but also did less damage and were killed very quickly. Gorgers however barely took any damage from standard weapons, but destroyed Gatherers could be used as a laser weapon against them and were much more effective. Players however had to be quick to grab destroyed Gatherers before they were exploding, damaging the players in the process. Defeated Gorgers dropped very strong weapons and many healing items.  

The famous Helicarrier from the Avengers movies also made it into the BR game, it was however no real part of the map and instead functioned as the prematch lobby area. The Helicarrier played a role in the Galactus event, but not involving it into the regular BR matches felt like a wasted opportunity to me.

While some of the previous seasons have been a bit too cautious with the involvement of LTMs, CH2 S04 on the other hand kept players busy the whole season long. There were multiple LTMs featuring Superheroes, some new unique ones and a good mix of returning classics.

The best one was probably Marvel Knockout, which feature teams of either 2 or 3 players facing of against other teams in a tournament style (comparable to Operation Knockout). There were four rounds total and two hero abilities were randomly selected to each player every round. The two team's abilities were however mirroring each other, so that no team got an unfair advantage through the abilities. I found this mode to be particularly fun in order to try out all of the different abilities. Marvel Standoff and Marvel Takeover were rather similar. In both modes teams of 15 players were battling each other. Every player started with one ability and could find a second one through meteors, who crashed on the ground. In Standoff the aim was simply to score more kills than the other team, while in Takeover the teams had to secure reactor checkpoints for a longer time.

The unique LTM i liked the most was Tilted Taxis. In this mode players had to drive taxis and deliver passengers to points across the map within a set timelimit in order to achieve stars. The basic concept was very similar to the Crazy Taxi games, but players could also leave their taxis and eliminate their taxi competitors in order to steal their stars. For me Tilted Taxis was a very nice diversion to the BR mode.  

The Battle Pass of Chapter 2 Season 4 featured with Thor, She-Hulk, Groot, Storm, Mystique, Dr. Doom and Iron Man a good variety of the most famous Marvel Superheroes (Okay, She-Hulk might not be as well-known as the real Hulk, but the point still applies). Wolverine was the 'Secret Skin' (who was, once more, a famous part of the season promotion) of the season and started to appear as a boss NPC after a few weeks in Weeping Woods. The superheroes are designed after their comic versions and not the movie adaptions, which I think does make sense. The Battle Pass featured individual Gliders, Contrails, Harvesting Tools, Wraps and Backblings (Only downside is, that a lot of them are locked to the individual characters and can not be used to mix costumes). A pretty cool feature of this BP were also the individual Built-In-Emotes, which allowed the characters to switch to alternative versions within a match through the use of emotes. The only annoying aspect is, that you have to use the emote at the beginning of every match and can't just select a dedicated style before the match.

The Built-In-Emotes I liked the least were Thor's and Groot's. Thor turned through 'God of Thunder' just to a blue version of himself, which in my opinion simply didn't look that great. Groot's 'Battle Brother' allowed him to have Rocket (his companion from GotG) flying around his back, which definitely did look cool, but honestly distracted me a bit too much, since Rocket is constantly moving around. Storm's 'Gale Force' allowed her to summon a cape, which is actually not that impressive and She-Hulk could through 'Gamma Overload' leave her human version of Jennifer Walters behind and unleash the beast inside. Dr. Doom got 'Victory von Doom', which allowed him to pose on a monumental throne after achieving a Victory Royale. This emote is actually really cool, but can sadly only be used after achieving a win, which makes its usage rather rare. Wolverine also had a emote to use his Claws as his harvesting tool. Tony Stark on the other hand transforms through 'Suit Up' to Iron Man, which looks really cool and is generally an extraordinary good skin. The Nr. 1 emote however has to be 'Shape Shifter', which allows Mystique to copy the skin of the last enemy she defeated. This is not only very fitting to the Character of Mystique, but generally entirely unique and a very cool idea.

Every of these built-in-emotes required players to perform 3 challenges in order to unlock them for the characters. In Addition to that, players could also unlock alternative costumes for She-Hulk, Wolverine, Dr. Doom, Storm and Mystique through completing enough weekly challenges during the season (Wolverine was also unlocked through the completion of weekly challenges, similar to previous seasons). I however have to state that I only really liked the alternate style of Dr. Doom, all others didn't look that great (if you ask me).     

Overall Iron Man, Dr. Doom, Wolverine, Thor and Mystique were in my opinion really great skins. Storm was also alright, but I didn't like Groot and She-Hulk too much (That may however just be a matter of personal preference since I did see many other players using them as well). I would definitely rate this Battle Pass as one of the strongest (Especially if you consider, that the game usually sells this superhero skins for 15-20 Dollars each in the ingame shop).

Chapter 2 Season 4 also featured two major events (after Chapter 2 Season 3 disappointingly didn't host any events). The first one was the yearly version of the Halloween Fortnitemares spectacle. Fortnitemares replaced all regular playlists for an entire two week period (Which I think was a bad move. They should have just introduced it as a Squad LTM instead of removing all regular playlists for 14 days). The abandoned Authority turned into the even more decrepit and more dismantled Ruins. Shadow Midas was spawning there as a boss enemy surrounded by his loyal Ghostly Ghost henchmen (Who look and act pretty much like regular Ghost henchmen). Upon defeat Midas dropped his golden drum gun. The two twists of the Fortnitemares mode were for one, that the entire map got covered by a thick purple fog and secondly, defeated players respawned as Shadows. Shadows can move much faster than real players and also jump a lot higher, but they are incapable of using any other weapons than their fists. Shadows, who stand still for a couple of seconds will become invisible till they move again and injured Shadows can heal themselves by consuming loot. Shadows only have one life each, which is quite different than in Apex Legends Halloween modes for example, but they can get a Nightmare Royale (Win), if they manage to defeat all living players in the match. 2020 Fortnitemares also brought back the famous Halloween Rocket Launcher, a demonic crossbow and various candies, that have similar effects like the different food items or fishes. A new item were the Witch Brooms, which sadly functioned absolutely identical to the Silver Surfer Board. Their inclusion was certainly fun, but the lack of innovation for this highly promoted item was disappointing.

Nonetheless, I actually like this version of Fortnitemares quite a lot, since it doesn't overpower Shadows (only one life, no weapons), but manages to strike a good balance between regular BR and LTM.

The main story event of the season however was 'The Devourer of Worlds', which is better known as the Galactus Event. This season there have apparently been fewer problems for players to login and participate in the event, than in Chapter 2 Season 2, where the majority of the playerbase had to skip the event because of technical problems of the Fortnite servers. The event itself started by Galactus destroying the helicarrier and unleashing the Zero-Point, which was hidden beneath the former Authority/Agency. The players were rescued by Iron Man and travelled with him through a black hole into space, where they armed an army of Battle Buses with explosives. The players had to navigate the Battle Buses and shoot down drones and Gatherers on their way towards Galactus. Thor, Wolverine and the other superheroes were supporting the players and during some of the gameplay parts, the players even had to dodge obstacles and barriers (even though there was no life status and therefore no real threat of failure). Galactus in the end was blown away by the thousands of exploding Battle Buses.

Overall the Galactus event was pretty entertaining. It was nice to for once being able to actually interact within the event instead of having to just spectate. It however also needs to be stated, that these gameplay elements were of course very limited and on rails. There is certainly still room to improve, even though this was definitely a step in the right direction. The developers also didn't do themselves any favours by promoting the Galactus event as the best and most spectacular event by far. It was certainly one of the best, but the Events in Season 6, 8, 9, CH2S02 and Season X were probably of the same quality.  

The only two other aspects I want to talk about are the seasons length and the victory umbrella. On the one side I am a bit disappointed that the CH2S04 victory umbrella has a totally different shape and design than all the previous victory umbrellas, who might have had different patterns, but the same universal shape and form. On the other hand the design of the umbrella is rather stylish and menacing with dark energy streams coming out of it. In regards to the season's length, there was at least only a delay of 3 days this season (far less than CH2S01 and CH2S02), but the season was with over 3 months once again one of the longest by far. CH2S03 had the perfect length of around 10 weeks, but lacked a story event. I ask myself why Fortnite after Chapter 1 hasn't managed to at least once provide a 10 week (2,5 months) season with a story event and multiple map changes. They used to perform much better in this area...

 

Pro:

(-Marvel Cooperation?)

-Superhero abilities

-Good selection of LTMs

-Upstate New York

-Galactus Event

-Fortnitemares

-Battle Pass Skins were pretty good

 

Contra:

(-Marvel Cooperation?)

(-Surprising abandonment of all Ghost vs Shadow Storyline)

-Very few new map locations/ Unnecessary removal of older locations without replacement

-Gun/Item selection a bit unbalanced

-Season Length (Again!)

 

Result:

Chapter 2 Season 4 was probably a bit of a controversial season. Dedicating an entire season to a Superhero crossover wasn't appreciated by all players. Even though I also believe that Fortnite should be careful, to not do too many of the cooperations, I still enjoyed this out of the ordinary season. The hero abilities were a great addition and especially in the LTMs gave players the immersion of playing a real superhero. The Battle Pass was also of very high quality and a lot of people will probably be angry about having missed out this season. The biggest disappointment however was for me the lack of new locations, the completely needless removal of great map additions of former seasons and the abandonment of the entire Ghost vs Shadow storyline without any conclusion of it. The season was also a bit too long again and the gun/item selection not as great as in previous seasons. The Upstate New York area and the two strong events thankfully overshadowed these downfalls a bit (I haven't even talked about technical issues in this review, but there once again were very noticeable ones this season).  

I have to conclude, that I still enjoyed this season a lot, but there were even more unforced errors and unused potential in this season than in the previous two. Therefore I would rate this season a bit lower than CH2S02 and CH2S03, but leave the overall Fortnite Score at the same level.

Chapter 2 Season 4: 7/10

Fortnite Battle Royale overall: 7,5/10

Warface (PS4) 2020 Update Review

 

This is a short Update article for the FPS Warface, in which I want to talk about some of the major additions to the game since my review of Warface in early January 2020.

Warface has introduced a new fifth class in terms of the SED through its Titan Update. The SEDs (Synthetically Engineered Double) have previously been in the game as enemies in some of the Special Operations like Blackout or Sunrise and were first playable in the Mars Operation. The Titan Content Update now made them a regular class for all PVE and PVP modes alike (BR being the exception, since it wouldn't work with the SEDs weapons). SEDs use only heavy machine guns as their standard weapons. Their weapons don't have to be reloaded, but they can overheat and SED players can not aim down sight (Interestingly the heavy machine gun begins to automatically zoom in closer to the target the longer its shooting). Heavy weapon power, but less precision, make the SED a good fit for close combats, but will give him a little disadvantage in other combat situations. Other advantages of SEDs are their ability to climb up hills without the need for a climbing partner, their increased stability, that prevents them from falling to the ground due to explosions and their heavy armour. Some of the disadvantages on the other hand are their lower health bar, that can also not be redeployed by medics and their decreased mobility. SED players run slower and their slide distance is reduced in comparison to the other classes.

Overall the SED class was a great addition to the game. Especially in Operations are the SEDs contributing to a better class balance. SEDs are the perfect tanks, while Rifleman can focus on damage-dealing, Medics and Engineers resupply Health and Armour and Sniper players are the backups. It is now easier than ever to organize the team through the selected classes. The SEDs are also a good addition to the other PVP modes, where they are raising the diversity in playstyles.

On the PC-Version of Warface there have also been two new special operations, which later on also released on consoles. Operation Hydra continues the story from the Sunrise and Mars Operations. A Warface Squad gets send in to infiltrate the Blackwood mobile naval base 'Hydra'. All other operations are played by groups of 5 players, but Hydra is limited to only 3 players at a time. The total operation features 20 rounds, in which the players have to defend themselves on the naval base. They can use different turrets, shields and lasers to assist them, which can be purchased between the rounds. Random events can also occur during the match (like power outages or poisonous gas appearing) and after round 10, 15 and 20 boss enemies will appear. The more rounds the team was able to survive, the better rewards they achieve (higher rounds usually only reward longer possession times for earned weapons/items).

Operation Blackwood is another mission that directly continues the previous storyline. The operation is once again being played by regular group sizes of 5 players, but Operation Blackwood got a twist. This time players switch sides and join Team Blackwood to fight against their former Warface comrades. They have to try to recapture a former Blackwood base from team Warface and during some parts of the mission players can take over SEDs again, very similar to the Mars Operation. Operation Blackwood plays a lot more like the classic operations than Hydra, which reminded me more of the wave based HQ operation. Both operations offered fun gameplay, even though I personally liked Blackwood a little more, but Hydra certainly also provided a strong atmospheric immersion.

The aspect that I disliked about both of them was that they could only be played on the highest difficulty level, which made the later parts of these operations pretty frustrating and it also benefited paying players stronger than usual. I personally would very much prefer the old scheme with 3 difficulty levels, which allows players of all skill and equipment levels to enjoy and complete these missions.  

It is still important to note the delay between the PC and console release of new content. Usually there are around 3 to 4 months between content updates arriving on the PC version first and later getting ported to console. This can partly be explained by the fact, that there are two different development teams responsible for PC and console. On PC the original Blackwood Team (Former Crytek Ukraine) is in charge, while the Allods Team takes care of PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Nonetheless, these multiple months delays are difficult to explain. Since the Battle Pass system started earlier on PC, it makes sense that there is a different schedule than on the console versions, but new Operations shouldn't require longer than 1-2 weeks additional time to port over to consoles. 3-4 months just seems excessive. The Hydra Operation for example released in December 2019, but only in August 2020 on console. This is simply not explainable!

Warface has also started to introduce a Battle Pass system, which nowadays seems to be getting extremely popular in all kinds of games. These Battle Passes can usually be purchased for either 500 or 1000 Kredits (5 or 10 Euro/Dollar; Only early BPs were 1000K). They feature various weapon skins, multiple emblems, Kredits (BP always contains as many Kredits as its costing as rewards), some special grenades, Bonuses like Resurrection Coins or timelimited XP-Boosters, some few exclusive weapons and some season specific Character skins as ultimate rewards. The first 10 Levels of every Battle Pass feature the free rewards, while the other levels contain the Premium rewards for Battle Pass owners only. The way to earn XP can vary greatly between the different seasons (some focus on weekly challenges others on dailies or a mix of them), but I felt it to be pretty frustrating, that a lot of matches outside of the challenges don't contribute any progress to the BP, which seems a bit discouraging and time consuming. (Battle Pass Tiers can obviously also be bought for money...)

Battle Passes started to release on PC first, but were later also implemented on console. Some of the PC and console Battle Passes were identical, but some also very different. The one they called Season 1 was actually console exclusive and released in May 2019. It featured a Jungle Theme and had no subtitle. What I found a little disappointing is, that it only featured 2 actual weapon skins (Jungle and Kiwi) who had to be unlocked for each weapon separately. The character skins in the BP were all at the very last levels, but there were also some of them hidden behind the season challenges. It is nice, that they offered both PVE as well as PVP challenges in this Battle Pass. Season 1 was also the only BP without Daily Quests, which made the progression even slower than usual.

Season 2 released in July/August 2019 on console and was previously introduced as the 'Syndicate' Battle Pass on PC in November 2018. The first season featured the military group called Kiwi and Season 2 featured an organization called the Syndicate. Same as the previous season it also only featured two different weapon skins (Syndicate and Carbon) for a variety of different equipment. Season 2 brought the introduction of daily quest in addition to the PVP and PVE season challenges for the Battle Pass progression.

Season 3 was first introduced to consoles in October 2019 and had previously been released as Season 'Armageddon' on PC in May of the same year. That season featured rather generic greyish and metallic looking weapon skins and switched the PVE and PVP season challenges into challenges for each of the classes to unlock the Armageddon armours.

Season 4 released on consoles in December 2019 and had previously been published as the 'Berserk' Battle Pass on PC in September 2019. Weapons skins were mix of the golden Berserk versions and some more generic variants. The class challenges allowed BP owners to unlock the yellow 'Salamander' armour parts.

Season 5 started on March 2020 on consoles and had previously been released in November/December 2019 on PC. The theme of the season was Blackwood and it introduced both the fancy black and red Blackwood armour as well as weapon skins with matching colours. A big change was the removal of the season challenges and instead the focus was on completing daily challenges and winning matches, which apparently awarded more BP progression than before. The character skins were also rewarded at Level 100 of the Battle Pass instead of the season challenges like in some of the previous seasons, but this time the BP offered less new weapons and items to unlock.

Season 6 released at June 2020 on consoles and in March on PC. This season featured the all female 'Gorgon' Squad. The season kept the focus on daily challenges, but offered more weapons in the Battle Pass than in the previous season. The weapon skins were very colourful with a green and purple theme (I personally think it is a bit too shiny and therefore not that well looking). A great feature of the Battle Pass however was that it offered 4 unique lightly dressed women of the Gorgon Squad within the first 25 levels and rewarded players with special tattooed versions upon reaching Tier 100.  

Season 7 released exclusively on console in August 2020 and featured a 'Hidden War' theme. The amount of Battle Pass levels was decreased from 100 to 50 and the amount of free tiers was halved as well. The amount of unlockable weapons however remained the same and the new camouflage skins were also separated across the entire BP instead of being just at the last tier. The weapon skins were very colorful again with neon-purple variations, which didn't fit my taste (There are however certainly a lot of people who like this kind of weaponskins).

Season 8 began in October 2020 on consoles and had previously been introduced as the 'Dark Samurai' Battle Pass on PC in July 2020. The Battle Pass system remained nearly identical to Season 7, only that there was only 1 skin for all classes and it was located at the final Level 50 Tier. The weaponskins feature a pink lotus flower, which is again probably a controversial choice (I didn't like it that much). The character skin in form of a golden Samurai skin however is likely one of the best in the entire game and probably worth the price of the BP itself for a lot of people.

The PC version of Warface also received an additional Battle Pass called 'Mutiny' in September/October 2020, which might be the Season 9 in December on the console versions (No official confirmation yet, but the trend seems to indicate it). The BP offers camouflagge skins of the Peacekeeper squad (different camouflagge than in the Hidden War BP) and also camouflagge weapon skins, which in my opinion look a lot better and more fitting than the shiny ones with neon colours. Mutiny Battle Pass also seems to offer more than 50 Tiers, but that may just be a difference between console and PC versions of the game.

Warface also organized an ingame Halloween event, which introduced two new maps to Multiplayer ('Farm' and 'Street Wars', which are spooky Halloween versions of previous maps) and also some event exclusive cosmetics for players to unlock. The new maps could be accessed through the event mode 'Halloween Wars'.

The next PVE Operation of Warface is also already being planned. It is going to be called 'Swarm' and it will feature a lengthy mission to infiltrate a hive of monster creatures and how to get rid of them. The operation will feature multiple acts, a variety of brandnew enemy types and it will even receive its own thematic Battle Pass. Apparently the Warface developers want to start to link the PVE Operations/Story to the Battle Pass content in the future, which seems like an interesting improvement. I would expect that it will take at least 2 more months till this update is also going to arrive on consoles.

(Edit: I have now tried the Swarm Operation on PC and have to say, that it is indeed an entertaining new mission, which reminded me a bit of Operation Blackout. The new enemy type seems to be a good addition, but I am not sure what the 'multiple acts' claim refers to. The operation is not short, but also not really much longer than the others like Mars, Blackout, Anubis or Pripyat. Unfortunately Swarm also features only one difficulty setting and therefore seems to be designed for the most experienced or paying players.)

 

Most of all I enjoyed the introduction of the new SED class, which in my opinion enriched the Warface gameplay without any noticeable flaws (Which is quite odd, since most additions to the game feature both improvements as well as changes for the worse). The Hydra and Blackwood operations were also fun additions to the game. I would have just preferred them to offer more difficulty settings and to release much sooner. The Swarm Operation seems to be heading into a similar direction, even though I enjoy its setting the most of the new Operations.

Battle Passes generally seem to take a bit too long to grind and I would also prefer new weapons being available to all players (This however is more of a general issue in Warface and plays a big part in the P2W issue. I recommend reading my original Warface review for more insights). Nonetheless, I did like the cosmetics from the Blackwood (S05) and Dark Samurai (S08) Battle Passes quite much.

The updates during 2020 were either decent to good (New Operations and BPs) or really great like in the form of the new class, but I still wouldn't change my original rating from my Warface Review since structural problems of Warface (Mostly P2W imbalance across all modes; aged graphics; Occasionally clunky hit detection) haven't really been addressed and therefore the overall experience hasn't been improved enough to justify a 6.5/10. Warface can still be good fun in some moments and extremely frustrating in others, but at least there are now more Classes and Operations in the game than before.  

6/10

4 Failed Battle Royale Games: Historical Reviews for Survival Frenzy (PC); Last Man Standing (PC); Horizon Source (PC); The Ark of Horizon (PC)

 

4 Failed Battle Royale Games:

In the following article I will take a closer(but definitely shorter than usual) look on 4 'Failed' Battle Royale Games, that had to close the servers. I have previously looked at games like The Culling 2 or Radical Heights, that had to close due to financial issues. In the case of the Culling 2 this could easily be explained with the lacking quality of the title (My personal Score 2-3/10), while I felt that Radical Heights was in its core actually a fun game with noticeable flaws (6-7/10).

Today we will try to figure out if the closure of Survival Frenzy, Last Man Standing, Horizon Source and Ark of Horizon were tragedies or reasons for celebration.

 

 

1. Survival Frenzy:

 

Survival Frenzy was a melee focused Battle Royale game, which lasted from April 2019 till June 2020. The game originally released as Buy to Play game, but turned into an F2P model in January 2020. The game's population always remained extremely low (All time peak 110 players at the same time), which the F2P release was supposed to change, but failed at.

There are other Melee focused BR games like Darwin Project or The Culling 1, but the Twist of Survival Frenzy was to use household weapons in a realistic setting.

The game contained 4 maps in total. The default map was a small beach island with a couple of holiday residences. At the release of the game it was the only map and was probably the most played one overall. It was generally a well designed and visually appealing map. Future content updates brought a night map, that played in a small suburb neighbourhood, and a jungle map, containing a couple of tree-houses, cages and ancient ruins. The last map was a desert iteration, that included small fortifications surrounded by wooden huts, palms and rivers. The desert map also got a special environmental element in form of a desert storm, that blurs the vision.

The weaponpool in Survival Frenzy consisted nearly exclusively of melee weapons. Knives, baseball bats, sledgehammers, golf clubs, ladles and brooms were the go to weapons, which could either be used to hit enemies or thrown at them. Players could also use suitcases, chairs, bottles or pepper mills as projectiles or simply engage in fist fights instead (It was also possible to perform a kick attack). Every weapon/fist had the option to either use fast or slow attacks. Slow attacks had to be charged, but did more damage (Like in every other game with this system). There were also some special items like bear traps or gasoline containers to trap other players. Of course the game also included a couple of Healing items to recover from a tough fight or a poorly placed jump.

The target of every match was to either eliminate all other players or to escape the match via a helicopter. After a certain time the chopper would arrive at the map, dropping a rope ladder, players had to climb. Only one player could escape and the climbing process took a long time, giving other players the opportunity to either hit them off the rope or throw some projectile at them. If there were more than 2-3 players left, this could get really tedious. Thankfully there was an alternative in form of the gun lockers. Every map had a couple of key boxes scattered around the place and only one of them contained a key, that opened the locker. The lockers hold either shotguns, snipers or pistols. In any case these weapons were very powerful and allowed the owner to easily kill the majority of the players left. You might even say the fire weapons were quite op and could unbalance the match (If somebody found the key and didn't miss all his shots...).

Players could either unlock some of the clothes via survival points they received for playing the game or getting some login rewards. The fancier outfits could of course only be obtained in the ingame shop for money. This system seemed generally pretty reasonable and will certainly not the reason for the failure of the game.

The biggest problem of the game was its clunky gameplay in general. Movement and attacks felt pretty unprecise and random, which was a huge problem. Frustrating gameplay mixed with the lack of players created a freefall effect, which prevented the game from ever taking off (Only having Korean Servers and none for Europa or North America was also a bad idea, which gave many players very high Pings and made the game near unplayable for them). The idea behind Survival Frenzy to create a wacky melee focused game for players to goof around was generally worth considering, but their gameplay execution left too much to be desired. The maps and the body models were generally quite well designed and with the right gameplay this could have been a smaller, less competitive alternative in the Battle Royale genre.

(4-5/10)

 

 

2. Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing was one of the earlier Battle Royale games and released in March 2017 as an F2P alternative to the popular H1Z1. It resembles its inspiration source very much and both gameplay wise and from an art style view doesn't do many things really different.

Something that I did like about the gameplay was the option to switch between First and Third Person Perspective at all times. PUBG and Cuisine Royale also have a feature like this and I believe it is always good to give players options how they want to play their game.

The weapon pool in Last Man Standing was nearly identical to games like H1Z1 and PUBG. If you ever played those or at least saw a bit of gameplay, than you know exactly what to expect. Since they copied it well, i would generally describe this as well done. One thing that this game did a little bit differently are the scopes. Aiming down sight aims a lot closer in this game than in most others. There are scopes in the game, but the standard weapons are already zooming in pretty much, so that they are less important than in other games.

A standout feature of the game was the ability to deploy a barricade in front of the player in order to get some cover. This feature was quite controversial and put many players away from the game. I myself also think it was a cheap way to avoid gunfights and players should rather need to find natural cover in the environment during gunfights, if they choose to do so.

Even more debatable was the usage of Boosts in the game. Those for example allowed players to gain more XP during a match (Nothing unfair so much), but also for example to start with ammunition already equipped or get a shield or medpack from the start. These Boost could either be unlocked with level ups or purchased with money, which made them kind of P2W elements. The advantages of these boosts weren't that large, but still totally unnecessary and I personally find something like this very off putting. (Unbalancing a game to make money, no matter how slightly, is always a bad sign...)

Last Man Standing released with a Solo mode in the beginning and shortly after added  Duo, Trio and Squad modes and additional ranked modes. These Duo/Trio/Squad modes however had a twist and could only be played with friends and not random teammates.

The game also had an additional Survival/Free for all mode called 'The Proving Grounds'. This mode can be used to explore the map, familiarize with Last Man Standings gameplay and just have some casual fun. I believe this is actually a good addition to the game.

Last Man Standing has a realistic visual style, but the texture quality is in general just okayish. H1Z1 for example looks better and that game is certainly not the visual benchmark in the BR genre. Sound Effects are also only average. They function, but do sound a bit cheap and often there are nearly no sounds at all hearable.

The Map of Last Man Standing has a very realistic look, clearly being inspired by games like H1Z1 and PUBG. I would nonetheless conclude, that the Last Man Standing map has more environmental objects in terms of grasslands, forests and hillsides and fewer cities. Buildings are also less detailed than in the other games and textures are generally fewer and a bit less detailed. Despite the lower quality, the map still accomplished the look of a decaying nature side. During the course of the game's lifetime the developers have occasionally updated the map without really changing the feel and flow of the map.

There are no Vehicles to traverse the map in Last Man Standing, which is noticeable since the map is still relatively big and comparable to H1Z1 and PUBG, which both offer vehicles. The zone also does a lot of damage in a short time, which I generally like, but in this game it seems to have taken quite a bit of walking to outrun a zone without any vehicle possibilities. The zone is in this game an electric field, that electrocutes all players outside of the playable area. That sounds pretty cool, unfortunately the implementation wasn't done so well. The zone doesn't consistently move, but instead always jumps a few meter ahead and makes some weird noises in the process.

Another point of controversy is the game's decision to randomly spawn players across the map. There are some games that use random starting positions (like Darwin Project, The Culling 1 etc.), but there are also a lot of games that let you jump out of a plane (PUBG, Fortnite, Apex, Warzone etc.) or some Mixtypes (H1Z1). Some players will like this feature, others will not. It is still important to note, that in Last Man Standing loot isn't really scattered equally, which means some spawn points will be a lot worse than others, which could be seen as unfair.

An annoyance rather than a point of controversy was the loading time before a match was going to start. In most other games once the prematch lobby is full, there are about 20 seconds to 1mins till the match starts. In Last Man Standing on the other hand players had to always wait a full 3 mins period after the queuing time. This is honestly just torture and total time waste, which is very difficult to find reasons for.

Many players also complained about the amount of Bugs and Glitches in the game, which is honestly something quite common in F2P early access games. The developers according to their patch notes also tried to resolve the issue, but many players were still under the impression that the developers were unable to cope with the high number of annoying Bugs.

Characters in the Last Man Standing can be customized and this is obviously how most F2P games finance themselves. The skins in my opinion didn't look that impressive, but were at least not as crazy looking as in some other games. The game allowed to both purchase Skins with Credits or Lootboxes. With the credits the player could choose which skin he wants and common ones apparently unlocked pretty fast, while the very rare stuff took a lot of time to grind. Lootboxes had a high chance of containing multiple rare items and could either be unlocked through level ups or purchases with real money. Leveling was pretty slow in the game, which was probably done to incentivize purchases of Lootboxes or Credits. Nonetheless, the Customization system generally seemed pretty fair to me. A bunch of Skins could easily be obtained through simply playing the game and people who were more interested in fancier skins could unlock them with money, but there was no need to do so.

The Developers of Last Man Standing have a very bad reputation. Officially the developers are Free Reign Entertainment, but the publishers behind the game apparently usually create new studios to publish games and have a track record of abandoning at least half a dozen games after just a couple of months. Games can obviously fail, but here milking players short term, while never truly improving their games before closing them down, seem to be a pretty unethical business model. Last Man Standing for example looks practically identical to their previous game 'Falling Skies'. Nearly all their games have already been shutdown. It is very questionable whether they ever wanted to support any of these games. Last Man Standing seems to have been playable till the end of 2018, which already made it one of their longest living games. The publisher also never announced the server shutdown, players could just not login anymore from one day to the other.

Last Man Standing had the potential to be a decent F2P alternative in the early days of the BR genre, where Buy to play was a lot more common than in 2020. The foundation of the gameplay is quite worthwhile, but elements like the Barricades, the Boosts, long queuing times and squads only with friends would put me off this game. Some players might obviously even like the Barricades and for them Boosts and squads only with friends might not be a concern. I just feel that nowadays there are more polished and less controversial alternatives in the F2P area of the BR genre, so that the shutdown of the game was somewhat logical.

(5.5/10) 

 

 

3. Horizon Source

Horizon Source was a Battle Royale game with Hero abilities and Fortnite like Building aspects, which is why it often got referred to as a Fortnite and Overwatch Rip-off. Being a Chinese game didn't really help to fight the copy accusation, but I would certainly also give it some credit for doing things in their own way. The game released in March 2018, when the BR genre didn't have that many large competitors outside of Fortnite, H1Z1 and PUBG.

Horizon Source has Hero abilities, but they work differently than in Overwatch and I don't see any visual similarities with the game. The Overwatch Comparison therefore seems a bit far-fetched, but they certainly stole the building element from Fortnite. There are certain gameplay elements that all shooters share, but the buildable walls and ramps are not a part of it. The building blocks consisted only of grey metal (there were no wooden or stone alternative like in the role model) and therefore looked a bit artificial and unfitting of the tropical environment of the game. The building animation itself was straight out stolen from Fortnite. This copy paste job was in my opinion unnecessary and gave the game quite a bit of criticism and mockery. (Upon closer inspection I also noticed, that the item bar in this game looks extremely similar to Fortnite...)

The 6 different Hero characters look a bit like they were taken straight out of an Anime, which is personally didn't like that much, because the map actually has realistic visuals and these characters didn't seem to one hundred percent fit in. The abilities of the heroes range from healing to blocking incoming damage for a short time or a more powerful single shot. The abilities seem to freshen things up, but were apparently not such a prominent part of the gameplay, as in Apex Legends for example.

Horizon Source despite some strengths was still lacking optimization in terms of gameplay. Movement and Gunplay were still a bit too clunky. It wasn't as bad as the worst in the genre, but certainly also not as good as the best games in the BR business. The gameplay overall was okay, but not above average.

The weapon pool mostly consisted of the usual suspects, but they were also a couple of interesting additions like Shuriken Stars or electromagnetic traps. There were Solo and Squad modes available, but no Duos. Maybe they were planning to release this later on with some new heroes, but neither ever happened.

I really liked, that you could, similarly to PUBG and Cuisine Royale, switch between First Person and Third Person perspective at all times. This made the game appeal to both audiences and enabled players to choose the right perspective for the appropriate weapon and situation.

Another aspect that I really liked was the tropical/jungle map of the game. This reminded me a lot of games like Far Cry 1 or a pacific Battlefield map. The focus on the map design was clearly on building a beautiful environment instead of a themepark map. The cities and POIs are all very generic and forgettable, even though they don't do anything particularly wrong. Because of the beautiful environment I nonetheless really like the map however.

Horizon Source implements a noticeable amount of Bots in every match, similar to Realm Royale for example. This obviously is a matter of opinion and controversy. I understand the reasoning and if you look at the player numbers, which were never higher than 1000 concurrent players and quickly dropped to 200-300 one month after release, the decision was probably wise. It's certainly better to get matches going with smaller numbers of players, that to be stuck in pregame lobbies for all eternity. The falling player numbers in combination with the death of the developer were the main reasons for the early shutdown of the game.

Horizon Source tried to mix elements from other games like the hero abilities and building tools with the classic BR elements in an admittedly visually appealing map. The reason for its lack of popularity was probably, that it didn't copy anything better than the originals and that the gameplay and gunplay was overall just okay. Horizon Source was not a bad game, but also failed to offer more than short term fun.

(5.75/10)

 

 

4. The Ark of Horizon

The Ark of Horizon was a Chinese Battle Royale game with one clear standout feature. It had superhero like Jetpacks, that allowed players to fly through the air like Iron Man.

This was honestly the coolest feature of the game and probably the reason why most players tried it out. The jetpack didn't just temporarily boost the player up for a couple of seconds, like in a lot of other games, but it allowed quick traversing of large areas of the map, in a stylish fashion. The Iron Man comparison therefore seems pretty fitting. The Jetpack could however not be used indefinitely and required fuel. The fuel system in Ark of Horizon worked a lot like a stamina system for running in a couple of other games. After long periods of flying, the players will have to stop using the Jetpack to let it replenish itself.

Ark of Horizon praises itself for having combat on the ground, in the air and even below water. It is true, that the jetpacks enabled players to quickly reach another platform, but it didn't necessarily change the combat itself. The Jetpack could be used to quickly fly towards another player and start a surprise attack on him or to dodge incoming attacks. In air combat however was very rare and difficult to perform. The jetpacks were mostly used to get to another place quicker or to reach a platform in the air, on which combat than took place. The under water areas were actually even a bit disappointing since the water didn't seem to impact movement at all. Combat below water played the same way as on ground, just the environment looked a bit different.

The map in The Ark of Horizon consisted of a couple of islands, that were mostly filled with woods. The unique element were the flying ship-platforms in the air, which gave the game a bit of variety and something to differentiate it from the rest. The visuals overall were alright, but also not as good as the most polished games in the genre. The Ark of Horizon however definitely looked better than all of those mobile BR games, which usually have pretty hideous PC versions.

The soundeffects were also just okay, but often a bit too quiet and footsteps for example sounded pretty reverberating.

The weapon pool in the game is very comparable to most other BR-Games and consists of all classics like Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Snipers and Pistols.

Every player also got two abilities, that they could select before every match. One was a passive ability like to regenerate Health, Fuel or Armor and the other ability was an active one, like to create a dome shield or use invisibility for a short time.

Another nice feature of the game was the last stand mode. When players lost all their health, they would enter this mode, where they could only use melee weapons anymore. If they managed to quickly kill an opponent with the melee weapons, they would regain the active health status. During last stand, their new life bar would however constantly deplete. This prevented the last stand feature from being unbalanced and required players to really fight for their survival.

Same as Horizon Source, Realm Royale or Radical Heights this game also used Bots to fill up lobbies. Some players recorded, that the Bots unfortunately took over  a couple of months after release and they rarely encountered real opponents anymore. This was probably one of the main reasons for the game's downfall. The game had Solo and Duo modes, but no squad option. A nice feature was, that players could before the match test all weapons in the pregame lobby.

Ark of Horizon was at the end a very short lived game, which was probably due to its low player count (Peak player count never higher than around 250, which for a Battle Royale game is very low). The game was released in January 2019 and the permanent server shutdown followed in May of the same year. Supposedly the shutdown was due to technical issues, but I assume that is just a different way of saying the game didn't accumulate enough money with the lack of players.

The Ark of Horizon was a pretty unknown game within the BR genre and I believe that it would have deserved a bit more recognition, at least if you compare it to the armada of mobile games like Creative Destruction or Cyber Hunter, which had/have a much bigger population. The biggest problems of Ark of Horizon probably were, that apart from flying and the last stand mode, it didn't have any standout features or over-average gameplay elements. The lack of promotion and players outside of Asia was what finally determined the games fate. Despite this I would still like to see the implementation of the flying ability to some other game, because Ark of Horizon did this one well and for that alone the game was worth giving a try.

(5.75/10)