Fun with the Fitzgeralds (PS4) Review

Fun with the Fitzgeralds is a scuffed Battle Royale attempt by a Solo developer. Some people cut the developer some slack, because she mentions in the description of the game that she developed it for her 6-year-old daughter. I however have to disagree. She might have meant well, but this regularly costs 7 Euro on the Playstation Store (but somehow only 1 on Steam, how discriminating). The only reason this game has seen a very minor rise in population is, that it was given away for free on the Playstation Store for a while, which has lured in a lot of trophy hunters (admittedly including me).

One of the few resources even more valuable than money is time. I will therefore be totally honest in my review. Fun with the Fitzgeralds is, despite claiming otherwise, not a fun game.

You could probably best summarize the game with ‘scuffed Incredibles trapped in an Unreal Engine Mess’. The characters are very clearly based on the Incredibles family with some minor additions, like grandparents and an uncle. Apart from the character looks, there are however no gameplay or other connections to Superheroes.

The map is very meh. There are a couple of smaller POIs and some different biomes, like a small beach, a snow area, a swamp and a little city, but none of them manage to stand out. They all look like they have quickly been created via some random unreal engine map generator. The smaller map size is probably based on the fact that this Battle Royale game only supports up to 8 players per match. For 20, 30 or dare even 100 players, the map would be way too small, but for 8 the map size is fine.

But let’s talk about the two worst aspects of the game, the gameplay and the technical status. The weapons in the game feel awful. There is no precision or any kind of assist when aiming. Weapon switches are always extremely delayed or sometimes the game even ignores your inputs. Movement also feels sluggish, even though at least not as bad as the gunplay. It’s like the game was just quickly ported over from the PC version without any adjustments. Shooting and moving is no fun in this game and that is kind of important in a Shooter Game.

The other huge problem is the technical status of the game. The game is always pretty laggy and crash prone, even if you just boost with yourself. In an 8 player lobby this gets even worse. There is also no bot support and as soon as all trophy hunters have moved on, the playerbase will be pretty extinct again soon.

The trophies are all pretty easy to gain except for one, which requires 8 players in a match. The game doesn’t feature a platinum trophy and I am still hesitant to recommend it even for trophy hunters.

 

Result:

Fun with the Fitzgeralds is not a fun game. It is a scuffed unreal engine mess and not worth anybody’s time except for diehard trophy collectors. The gameplay is awful and the technical status leaves much to be desired. The regular Playstation price of 7 bucks seem audacious considering how many better and free alternatives are on the market. I have played more than a 100 different Battle Royale games and this game is certainly within the 10 worst.

 

2.5/10