Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5 (PS4) Review

 

Another Fortnite Season is over and it is once more time for a seasonal review of the game. Chapter 2 Season 5 had Bounty Hunter/Zero Point theme and addressed a couple of my criticisms of Chapter 2 Season 4.

The season showed its story focus right at the beginning with a lengthy introduction video, that laid the plot groundwork for the season. In the aftermath of the Galactus 'Devourer of Worlds' Event of CH2S04 the Authority/Ruins have been destroyed and the Zero Points has been revealed. This destruction lead to the emergence of the crystal desert in the middle of the map (replacing the Agency Island and drying the whole area out), which spread till west of Salty Springs, south of Pleasant Park, to the edges of Weeping Woods and also covering the area, which formerly was Frenzy Farm. This finally introduced a new beautiful Biome to the Chapter 2 map (an element of which we saw extensive use during Chapter 1). The desert area didn't only look pretty gorgeous, but it also allowed players to swim beneath the sand and traverse the desert area quicker, if they stood idle for a couple of seconds. The sand effectively worked as drift sand. Unfortunately the drift sand function was due to technical issues being removed for multiple weeks. I would assume for at least a month this unique feature was unable to be accessed due to technical problems...

CH2S05 didn't only bring a new biome, but also more map changes than we have seen in any other season since CH2S01  and that one introduced a full new map. The developers apparently learned from their mistakes in CH2S04, which felt very lackluster in regards to map changes. The new center point of the map was the Zero Point, which replaced the Agency/Authority area. Players could jump into the Zero Point and receive 50 Shield Points. The area below the Zero Point was pretty open. There were no cover opportunities and the players who dropped first usually won the fight at this POI.

The surrounding crystal desert also contained a couple of other new spots. The big new one was Colossal Coliseum, which was placed in the area that formerly included Stark Industries and Frenzy Farms. The Coliseum was a really large Gladiator stadium with multiple levels below and above the ground. The interior of the stadium switched based on the chosen game mode (wooden structures in the stadium resembled those of the ancient roman gladiator arenas). The second huge new POI in the crystal desert was Salty Towers, which was a fusion of Salty Springs and Tilted Towers. The location was still based on the Salty Springs area and most buildings (including the fuel station) were taken over from Salty. Additionally some of the high-rise buildings from Tilted Towers and the famous clock tower were added to Salty Towers. The location was a cool mix of familiar with new and soon became the hotspot of the season. Two smaller old locations from the Chapter 1 map also joined the crystal desert. A half destroyed Dusty Depot (now called Dusted Depot) reappeared east of the Zero Point and Tomato Town was added to the southern part of the Orchard (now the Pizza Pit). Risky Reels was now covered by Sand, but otherwise remained mostly unchanged. The only other new spot in the desert at the beginning of the season was the Butter Barn. It was located south of the Zero Point and was like a mix of a wild west saloon and a horse stable.

Outside of the crystal desert, two large new POIs were Stealthy Stronghold and Hunter's Haven. The later one replaced the admittedly rather dull Sentinel Graveyard from the previous season with a complex of modern apartment buildings, which apparently hosted all of the Battle Pass characters of the season. The apartments featured little easter eggs to every character like a carbonite frozen Peely in the Mandalorian flat and Predator equipment in the Predator place. Stealthy Stronghold was one of the few completely new POIs, that didn't just replace an old one. It featured a sealed off Jungle biome within a walled cage. There are also a couple of ancient ruins, small huts and a crashed helicopter in this place. Stealthy Stronghold reminds me of both a Jurassic World inspired T-Rex cage and the Jungle from the Predator movie. Furthermore there were also a couple of other reappearing spots on the map. Flush Factory for exampled returned south east of Slurpy Swamps as the Flushed Building, the Durr Burger Restaurant from Greasy Grove was now located west of Weeping Woods and the Viking Vessel from Viking Village appeared on top of the store building west of Holly Hedges.

During the season some other spots were added to the map as well. Kit's Cantina was the Fortnite version of the Mos Eisley Cantina of the Star Wars movies (located between Butter Barn and Hunter's Haven). The Cantina was added in the course of the introduction of the Mando's Bounty LTM (a game mode in which players had to hunt down other squads in order to get the biggest bounties). That LTM was also really entertaining.

The other addition during the season was the Snowmando outpost. The main outpost of the Snowman Snowmando was located near the weather station south of Catty Corner. During the Snowmando Christmas Event 4 additional smaller Snowmando outposts were put around the map (Snowmando Event allowed to unlock a bunch of cosmetic content including 2 free skins, which is rare for Fortnite). These contained Christmas presents and had some airplanes nearby. The planes were nerfed versions of the Stormwings from CH1S07. The planes were a lot slower than in Chapter 1 and required a lot of fuel in order to fly. These changes prevented them from being OP as they were during Season 7. I really liked the addition of the planes, since they were both fun and much better balanced this time (some might even say they got nerfed a bit too much). Their removal after the Christmas event saddened me. All additional snowmando outposts were also taken out after the event.  

Something that I also really liked this season was the connection between the Battle Pass and the Story. After the Zero Point has been revealed and the crystal desert appeared, a mysterious organization called 'The Imagined Order' (IO) send their best agent named John Jones (Speaking Agent version of Jonesy, who got introduced in the CH2S02 Device Event) through the Zero Point into the Fortnite World to once again save reality. Jonesy has a portal device with which he assembles the best bounty hunters from all over the galaxy to prevent people from leaving the Fortnite World through the Zero Point. The 8 Battle Pass skins are supposed to reflect these best hunters. During the course of the season Jonesy recruits even more characters to support his course by using his teleport device. This has the negative side effect of an increasing destabilization of the Zero Point and Jonesy's clothes and his loyalty towards his employee also get more and more damaged during the season. The whole development leads to the Zero Crisis Event of CH2S06 (More on that in  a couple of months). The recruitment of famous hunters is however a good way of justifying the collaborations with various movie and TV franchises in the Item Shop. This time the collaborations even make sense (even though I am sure Fortnite will keep milking their players even when the skins make no sense, and they have definitely been way too many in the last seasons). Some of the most noteworthy introductions are the Terminator, Aliens, Street Fighter, Halo, God of War and Walking Dead collaborations.   

The Battle Pass itself was in my opinion probably one of the strongest overall. Tier 1 and Tier 100 skin was the Mandalorian from Star Wars. Like in the show he started off with his red standard armour and could collect various improved armour parts on levels of the Battle Pass, till he received his fully upgraded silver mandalorian armour on Level 100. All of the Battle Pass skins got either upgradable or alternative versions this season. Lexa for example was an anime character, that could turn from a little girl into a robot-like version called Mechafusion. Mave is an amazon warrior, who can wear medusa inspired snakes as hair and use fish tails to swim in the water. Reese is an intergalactic bounty hunter with glowing armour (she has no upgradable style, but just two alternative armour colours). Mancake was the new gimmick character of the season (replacing icons like Peely or Meowscles), because he was a pancake person. His alternative version was a sheriff style (including the fitting hat and moustache). Menace was a allegedly undefeated gladiator from Colossal Coliseum. His upgradable style gave him a golden armour set with a purple flaming glow on top of his helmet. The last Battle Pass character was the vengeful spirit of Kondor. The regular version of Kondor is a faceless shadow in the black suit of a parachutist. His alternative style can be accessed through a built-in emote (similar to Lexa), which transforms him into his 'unshackled' version, that looks like a mix of a demon and a robot. The secret skin of the season is the Predator (A second BP collaboration this season after the Mandalorian. It seems like they will from now on be a fixed part of the Battle Pass).

As I already mentioned I really liked the CH2S05 Battle Pass. Lexa was probably the only skin, which I didn't like, because I don't believe that anime skins fit into Fortnite. Mave was also just alright, but I wasn't the biggest fan of hers. Reese and Mancake I definitely did like quite much and the others I liked even more. I may not be the strongest supporter of all these collaborations, but it is hard to argue against Mando or the Predator, since they are both really cool Movie/Series characters. Kondor and Menace (especially his fully upgraded shining version) were also great skins.    

One of the biggest changes of the season was the implementation of NPCs into the Battle Royale mode. They had either one fixed or multiple possible locations, where they would appear in every match. Players could talk with them to receive informations, start new quests (like collecting x, getting kills with y, or to start bounty hunts), which reward Gold, or buy weapons/items from them with the Gold (Gold could alternatively also be found in treasure chests). Some of the NPCs could also either be challenged to duels or be assassinated in order to obtain their special weapons. Most of the NPCs could additionally upgrade the rarity level of weapons in exchange for Gold. Upgrade benches, who formerly fulfilled this function, were completely removed from the game in CH2S05. 

There were 42 NPCs in this season, who were all scattered around the map. All the current Battle Pass characters were NPCs and also some of the more memorable characters from former BPs returned as NPCs together with a couple of itemshop characters. Most of them were assigned to locations, which storywise seemed to make sense for them (like Tomato Head at Pizza Pit, Mancake at Butter Barn, Ragnarok at the Viking Vessel or Menace at Colossal Coliseum). Some of them were also less fitting (like Brutus at Dirty Docks instead of Grotto or Mave in the mountains instead of Stealthy Stronghold). Some of them like Snowmando and the Predator got added during the season. The Predator was a hostile NPC in Stealthy Stronghold, who dropped his cloaking device, which could make players invisible for a while (You however had to deactivate the cloaking device in order to use weapons, which was good since it otherwise would have been unfairly strong). The only NPC, who kept moving throughout the season was the Mandalorian. He started the season at his crashed Razor Crest ship and kept moving through the crystal desert till he found a permanent home at Kit's Cantina in the end of the season. Mando dropped his thermal scoped Amban Sniper Rifle and Mandalorian Jetpack (similar to the Iron Man Jetpack from CH2S04).

Aside from the chracter-specific weapons there were also a couple of other items added to this season. Some of the most important were the Zero Point Crystals, which could be extracted from the Zero Point Shards and allowed players to teleport a short distance forward for around 15 seconds. The Zero Point Crystals could be found all around the crystal desert and made traveling in this region a lot faster (also useful to escape the storm). Some of the other new weapons were for example the Dragon Breath Shotgun, which dealt extra fire damage and was very effective against player buildings, but less effective against players themselves and the Boom Sniper Rifle (similar to the Heavy Sniper Rifle). All other 'new' weapons were just variations of old weapons from other seasons. Some of the unvaulted weapons in CH2S05 included the Tactical and the Charged Shotgun. All of the superhero abilities from CH2S04 and some other weapons (like Pump Shotgun, Scoped AR or Bandage Bazooka) were vaulted on the other side. Choppas were also completely removed from the game, which I found rather disappointing. Overall I nonetheless did like the weaponpool for this season more than that of the previous one.

Since the story played a heavier role in this season, there were also some other new elements in regards to that aspect. The IO had some cool mysterious hidden underground facilities beneath the new POIs Colossal Coliseum, Hunter's Haven and Stealthy Stronghold. Additionally secret elevators have been hidden around the map, which randomly transport IO Guards (hostile NPCs similar looking to the Enforcer from CH1S05), who attack players in order to prevent them from leaving the Fortnite World through the Zero Point.

The weekly challenges and punchcard system was once again changed (I strongly believe they are right now only changing it for the sake of changing it and are no longer trying to find the best possible system). Punchcards were now hidden and were only shown, if the player got close to completing them. Weekly challenges also changed their form. There were now around 7 purple challenges each week, but they were classified into two different sets. The quests in each set had to be completed in succession, which means the next weekly challenge only unlocked if you completed the previous one of this season. There was also one set of golden challenges each week. There is one starting golden challenge, which rewarded more XP than the purple ones and 3-4 follow up golden challenges, which rewarded similar XP to the purple versions. The negative twist about this however was, that the golden challenges would disappear after 7 days and could no longer be completed. The leveling process was generally slower this season, which however can be explained with the length of the season. XP coins only started to appear in week 8. Overall the challenge/punchcard system and leveling experience was in my opinion worsened in this season.

Chapter 2 Season 5 was the first season of the Fortnite subscription service called 'Fortnite Crew'. It is completely optional and grants players 1000 VBucks (ingame currency) and a unique skin every month. This is skins are supposed to never reappear, same to Battle Pass Skins, the majority of this subscription skins however seem to be heavily inspired by old BP or item shop skins. Apart from Green Arrow every skin so far seemed, in my opinion, like a reskin. Crew members also receive the Battle Pass every season for free, if their subscription is active during the month. The price for this crew membership is 12 Euros. I have to say, that I personally find this concept absolutely absurd. It however makes sense, since there seem to be more than enough players willing to pay for this optional subscription. For hardcore players, who invest hundreds of Euros/Dollars into the game every year this might actually be advantageous and Epic Games is probably making a nice Profit too. I myself remain sceptical when seeing such a heavy focus on cosmetic content. At least Fortnite this time did manage to also deliver some nice story content for the season as well.

Another premiere of the season was the implementation of the Trio mode as a permanent regular game mode aside from Solo, Duos and Squads. I have no idea why it took them 15 seasons to do so, since the game mode is already being played in the ranked modes for quite some time and I also don't see how you could ever have a problem with splitting the playerbase, if you consider the millions of regular Fortnite players every season. In any case the addition of Trios was a good move and appreciated.

Chapter 2 Season 5 managed to once more being one of the longest seasons of the game with around 3,5 months duration (Only CH2S01 and CH2S02 were longer). The trend to much longer seasons than in Chapter 1 seem to continue on. The season itself unfortunately didn't receive a story event as a compensation for the long waiting time, but at least CH2S06 immediately started with a Story event, which honestly should have just been the CH2S05 finale. Since it isn't part of CH2S05 however I will not being talking about it in this article.

 

 Pro:

- Fantastic map changes

- Good story content (even though drying phase after the start...)

- Introduction of NPCs

- Great Battle Pass

- Strong Mando and Snowmando/Christmas Event (reintroduction of planes)

- Positive weapon-/itemselection (new crystal shards etc.)

- New regular Trio mode

 

Contra:

- Season length (never ending issue)

(- No story event during the season...?)

- Decline of the Weekly challenge/punchcard system; slower levelling

- Unnecessary Removal of Choppas (and Fortilla)

 

Result:

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5 was in my opinion a clear step in the right direction and a strong season overall. Most weakpoints, like the season length or the continuous reform of the XP system  remained the same as in previous seasons. I also don't understand why a location like Fortilla or Choppas were removed from the game, even though they took nothing away from the game, but had something to give. The events during the season (story event however was delayed to CH2S06) as well as the weapon- and itempool were really strong and the addition of Trios was overdue, but positive nonetheless. The Battle Pass was one of the best overall and the addition of NPCs worked surprisingly well. The amount and quality of map changes in combination with the heavy story focus of Chapter 2 Season 5 made it one of the best Fortnite seasons I have played yet.

7.5/10

Fractal Fury (PC) Review

 

Fractal Fury is a newly released Third-Person Shooter, that has one standout feature, which separates it from the competition. This is the ability to dismember enemy players.

If you would remove this feature from the game, than Fractal Fury would certainly be a disappointing game. The visuals are very basic. Environments are nearly nonexistent and all maps are just varieties of differently coloured walls and ramps. Most of the walls, which can be used as cover, are actually destructible and the Hardcore/Battle Royale map at least has multiple floor levels, what gives it more variety than the dull other ones. Every of the four game modes has only one map for them and with the exception of Hardcore, they are all really small and boring.

There are a couple of customizability options in the menu (like extensive visual options, controls and sound), which is commendable. Customizing controls and visuals worked fine for me, but customizing the sound completely failed. Changing the sound volume had no impact whatsoever. Even worse, the gunshot sounds seem to be extremely buggy. When I was shooting a fusillade of shots, than I could see the gunshots coming out of the weapon continuously, but the gunshot sound kept skipping out, which is very irritating in combat. The mainmenu Soundtrack is quite decent and soundeffects are also not bad, when they work correctly (Loading screens also deserve a praise, since they consist of moving vector lines and stars in the background, which look quite nice).

Players embody robotic characters with removable body parts, which reminded me a lot of the Terminator endoskeletons. Gunplay is very simple and for the most parts works relatively well. The biggest issues I have with it are, aside from the sound issues, the hit detection and the lack of variety. The rifle shoots somewhat accurate, but hit detection isn't always spot on and some dismemberments feel a bit to random. I understand that some body parts like legs or heads are easier removed than the torso, but the damage doesn't always seem comprehensible (Sometimes you can hit the torso 20-30 times without any feedback, while other times it breaks after 2-3 shots).

If one of the characters loses his head, the controls get inverted. If one leg is shot of, the robot can't run anymore. If he loses both legs, he will crawl. If you remove one arm, than he can't reload anymore and if you remove two arms the character obviously can't shoot anymore. Damaging the torso reveals the energy core (like a heart for the robot) and if you destroy that, the opponent is killed. It is also possible to walk upon another player and destroy his core manually, if it's already reveiled and he is incapable of interrupting you. Alternatively damaged players can also repair the character at robot fixing stations, which remove all damage within a few seconds. So this dismemberment feature is by far the coolest and best part of Fractal Fury.

There are 4 different game modes. Team Deathmatch is exactly like in every other game. Two teams fight each other till the team with more eliminations finally wins. Capture the Flag plays on the same map as TDM and also doesn't really do anything different than CTF modes in other games. It seems however like it is even more a viable strategy in Fractal Fury CTF to just run towards the flag and ignore all combat, since the robot armour kind of protects the players more against incoming damage. Hardcore on the other hand is sort of a round based Battle Royale mode. Up to 16 players can participate and the minimum amount of rounds is 5. Whoever is the last character alive at the end of the most rounds is the winner of the match. The map is much bigger and more interesting than the boring and small maps of the other modes, but still among the worst in the BR genre. There is also shrinking circle, which makes the playable area smaller during the rounds. The only really annoying aspect of Hardcore is, that the game gets unable to cope if a new player joins during the middle of a round. The game will than not give the win to the last surviving player but the new spectating one (sometimes the match even crashes because of this). They really need to fix this.

The last mode is the single player Horde mode. This is a round based survival mode. In theory this is entertaining for the first 2-3 rounds, buts gets chaotic and frustrating afterwards. The first wave consists of 10 hostile robots and they double after each wave, which means that the later waves will have 100+ enemies on the screen at the same time, which proves too much for this smaller game. My PC doesn't have any problems displaying far more demanding games, but the amount of enemies on screen gives my PC serious Lags and Framerate issues after wave 4-5. There is also no enemy variety, just the same generic AI robots all over again. The only difference between the Horde mode and the TDM/CTF map is that a few ramps got placed differently (these maps are really awful and look like they come straight out of a very basic texture creator tool).  

I liked the Hardcore mode the most since the dismemberment and the ability to repair played the biggest role in this mode. TDM was second best and still some good fun. CTF however didn't really seem to fit the game and the horde mode may be theoretically interesting, but in practise was rather boring and clunky due to technical problems.

A positive aspect of Fractal Fury is, that it has full LAN support and lets you play all modes locally with friends (if that is something that you want to do and you can convince other people of wanting that too). The game on the other hand also has a couple of significant technical issues. I was multiple times either incapable to connect to other lobbies, being disconnected during a match or incapable of hosting an own match. This game is still very new and after a couple of minutes i was usually able to connect to or start a new match, but it is something to be aware of.

The lack of variety is also a big problem of this game. There is currently only a single weapon and only one halfway decent map. This is just not enough to keep most players interested for longer than a handful of hours due to the current repetitiveness of the game. I hope they improve this in the future or the game will not be able to maintain their player count (which is not gigantic anyway, but decent for a one person developer game; currently around 20-30 concurrent players daily).

 

Pro:

- Dismemberment feature

- Multiple gamemodes (including full LAN support)

- Gameplay essentially works

 

Contra:

- Basic and under average visuals

- Multiple technical issues (Server connection, Sound)

- Lack of variety (way too repetitive; only 1 weapon and only 2 real maps)

- Hit detection still too inconsistent

 

Result:

Without the dismemberment feature this would probably be a disappointing under average game, that doesn't look great, has sound and other technical issues and additionally lacks of content. I would probably rate this 3-4/10. The dismemberment on the other hand is pretty cool and entertaining, but I can't just give this a great score based on this feature alone. The gunplay is still too inconsistent as well as repetitive and the maps and modes still require improvement. Despite overall being only mediocre at the moment, I would still recommend trying Fractal Fury out for the dismemberment feature alone.

5/10

SOS Battle Royale (PC) Historical Review

 

SOS Battle Royale was the transformed version of the Survival game SOS.

SOS released in January 2018 as a Survival game, in which players had to work together or betray each other in order to escape from an island. To escape players had to collect relics, which were hidden in temples and tombs around the island. Only 3 out of the 16 players could than escape via a helicopter (helicopter arrived after shooting a flare gun and waiting a couple of minutes). The special thing about SOS was its focus on interactions between players. Every player started alone into the match, but could team up with multiple other players, if they shook hands with them. Ingame the players could only communicate via proximity chat. Alternatively they could use walkie talkies and had to agree on a common frequency, so that other players wouldn't listen into their conversations. Players could however at any point stop the teamwork and kill their mates in order to collect their loot or increase their survival chances. If 1 or 2 players had already escaped (helicopter could only collect one player at a time), than the other teams were collapsing pretty fast. This team/betrayal aspect was probably the key feature and main attraction of SOS.

The other big aspect of SOS was the entertainment/interactivity aspect of the game. Similar to the Culling (admittedly Radical Heights and Darwin Project also featured a gameshow setting), SOS had a tv-show setting and before each match all players and some of the highlights of interactions between players were shown. The game for example highlighted, that player x had previously betrayed or killed player y and both could interact in a voice chat before the match and Livestreams viewers could also choose some emotes to show their support. Role-playing via the voice chat was a key feature and one of the main attractions for the game. SOS also featured a interesting fame system for their matchmaking. Players, who regularly won or killed many players received more fame, but so did players, who were popular on the streaming websites. Popular and good players therefore got often queued up together, which was certainly a unique system.

In May 2018 SOS added a Battle Royale mode into the game. The classic mode (from there on being referred to as SOS Classic) was still playable. SOS was till this point still a P2P game and in June they switch the model to F2P and removed the classic mode.  As a response to the massive backlash of SOS Battle Royale, the developers reintroduced the classic SOS mode in August 2018. At this point however too many players had already abandoned the game and the player retention was simply not good enough, so that servers for both SOS Battle Royale and SOS Classic were closing on November 2018.

There were a couple of reasons for the backlash, that SOS BR received, but I believe the main reason was the abandonment of too many unique aspects of SOS Classic. The original SOS was less focused on combat and more on exploration of the map and interaction between players. Strangers who met didn't automatically open fire (also because there simply were a lot less weapons and ammunition), but started to first talk to each other. In SOS BR this focus shifted and all other players were killed on sight, like it is normal for a Battle Royale game. Combat in SOS also often consisted of people throwing their fists and melee weapons around or attempting to hit some of their few pistols bullets. In SOS BR weapons like ARs were much more common and combat was therefore a lot faster and resembled more the other games of the genre. The introduction of BR also removed the relics and their protectors, which were PVE monsters called Hupia, that attacked the players. Players often had to work together in order to eliminate those creatures and all of that was lost in the BR mode (Players could also get infected by Hupia and slowly turn into one of them, similar to the infection status in Zombie games). In the new version tombs and temples were only being explored in order to collect loot. The battles around the helicopter and the question, who is going to be pulled up fastest in order to gain a sweet escape, were no longer being answered in SOS Battle Royale. Instead, the goal was just to eliminate all other participants and don't get killed by the circle. The player limit was also raised from 16 to 32, but I think this was probably one of the lesser controversial aspects (Even though doubling the player amount on the same map, made combat encounters a lot more frequent).

It is however important to also consider the standpoint from the developers point of view. Outpost Games (the devs) saw, that their player numbers had been drastically decreasing since the launch and the introduction of the BR mode. More and more players left the game and in order to turn the trend around, they attempted a drastic change (Only between 100-200 players at this point and the Devs spoke of concerning financial problems). Battle Royale games were immensely popular in 2018 (to be fair they still are in 2021) and they saw it as their last chance to secure financial profitability for the game. Other aspects were the launch price of 30 Dollars, which was rather high for a small game still in development and the focus on Voice Chat. There are a lot of players, who like to interact with others via Proximity chat, but there is also a massive amount of players, who don't want to constantly talk to strangers during their playtime (There were also issues of both stream sniping and streamers exploiting their prominent position against other players). Both factors probably played a role in limiting the growth potential of SOS Classic.

A lot of the criticism from the SOS Classic players was very understandable and I believe removing the mode completely for two months after the F2P transition, was a horrible decision, that lead the game closer to its demise. Going F2P and selling cosmetics/ a Battle Pass however seemed like the right move and you also have to point out, that SOS already back then had a couple of BR elements, like that only three people of all contestants could survive. They should have however considered keeping a few more of the Classic aspects like the relics/monsters, fewer weapons and more interactions between players like the teaming up feature.

Gameplay and visuals of SOS seem to have been heavily inspired by The Culling. The combat system, which took a much more dominant position in SOS Classic, looked very familiar to that of Culling 1 (Focus on melee weapons; Purposely less precision, but a mix of fast/ heavy attacks and blocking; Guns require more skill to hit). The visual presentation also looked pretty familiar, they may have used the same engine. Apart from that however the games weren't too similiar, even though they of course both shared survival/BR elements, but SOS definitely had its own twist on things. The Culling featured a jungle environment for their main map and while the SOS map also featured jungle parts, their island had an even bigger diversity of different elements and I would generally classify the SOS map as a really beautiful iteration and something of a blueprint for a tropical island map. There were a variety of different bays and beaches, interlaced temple ruin complexes, hidden tombs, fields of long grass, which allowed players to bland in, campsites scattered around the island, thick jungles and even a large volcano. The elements mixed really well and the environment simply had this clean natural feeling of adventure and exploration. As far as I noticed, there were no significant map changes through the BR transition.

Another aspect that I already mentioned, but want to emphasize more is the standardization/ adjustment of SOS in the BR mode to the rest of the genre. Weapons didn't drastically change their patterns in the BR mode, but they went into the dominant gameplay position, which made the game fell less like SOS. Melee combat became rare instead of normal and finding numerous weapons through lootcases was very frequent. Those lootcases didn't only offer weak pistols like in classic, but SMGs, ARs and Shotguns, like you see them in most shooter games. The weapons now also featured the popular colour based rarity/effectiveness categories and armours were introduced to the game as well. Items like syringes and mushrooms against infections were removed. Players also didn't start on random locations around the map, but head to jump out of a plane that flew over the map in the beginning of each match. The UI also changed and was adjusted more to the standards of the genre (Addition of minimap, Killcount etc.).

 

Pro SOS Classic:

- Beautiful map

- Interactions with other players were essential and entertaining part of gameplay

- Mix of PVP and PVE elements

- Exploration aspect (Different paths to achieve a goal)

 

Contra SOS Classic:

- Voice Chat too mandatory for enjoyment

- High asking price

- Could have still required more polish

 

Pro SOS Battle Royale:

- Gameplay is still fun

- Map is still fantastic

(-Later on SOS BR + SOS Classic)

- F2P removes entrance barrier (Only cosmetics)

 

Contra SOS Battle Royale:

- Standardization of BR Gameplay/ Combat had a far bigger emphasize

- No more interactions with other players (Teaming up, Betrayal, Voice Chat)

- No relic hunting and PVE elements anymore (Infection/Hupia)

 

Result:

SOS Battle Royale doesn't really deserve the hate it gets, since it was still a good BR game (Fantastic map, gameplay still fun). It is however difficult to argue, that it was more than that, since it adjusted its gameplay mechanics too much to other games to stand out. SOS Battle Royale seems to have been good short term fun, but not much more than that and on an emotional level the criticism of the fans is understandable. SOS Classic was simply a much more unique game in the Survival genre and the team/trust aspect haven't yet been managed to be expended in any other game I know of (There are some Horror games and for example 'The Cycle', which have familiar concepts, but less determinant). SOS Classic also had a much better combination of PVP and PVE than most other survival games out there (at least in my subjective opinion). It is however doubtful whether Classic would have survived longterm on its own, but the complete removal of it for 2 months was a large mistake. In my humble opinion, the devs should have kept the main focus on Classic, but used BR as an alternative mode and indeed went F2P. This would have been much better than removing the more popular of the two modes for too long and still keeping the main focus on BR, even though the community signaled them to do the opposite. SOS wasn't a flawless game, but it looked like it offered good fun and it certainly deserved better than it got.  

 

SOS BR: 6/10

SOS Classic: 7/10