Battle Royale Survival (PC) Review

 

After recently playing Pixel Battle Royale, I thought to also give this game a go. Needless to state that both Battle Royale Survival and Pixel Battle Royale are shameless copies of Minecraft and Unturned with their pixels graphics. Trove for example shows how you can make a pixel game of your own, which is actually decent.

Battle Royale Survival however isn't a decent game. What this game does better than Pixel BR is, that it allows up to 100 players or bots to participate in a lobby.

The map in Pixel Battle Royale was already bad, but the standard map in Battle Royale Survival is even worse. It is without exaggeration the worst map I have ever seen in any BR game and i seriously doubt any other game can do worse (At least I pray to never find out, if any BR does worse). 98% of the map is empty wasteland. There is a small city in a valley in the middle of the map. The only other things on the entire map are 2,3 houses at the outside parts of the map. Once the plane started the first time I was left shocked after seeing this misery of a map. I understand that this game is probably a rush job, but you should take at least more than 5 mins to design the map. Every amateur with minimal dedication could have done a better job...

There is a training map, which is completely useless since there is only 1 Bot on it and nothing else to shoot or do. Thankfully there is also a second map in the game. This map has a very large city in the middle of it, which even got its own harbour and a cathedral. All buildings however can not be entered and there is absolutely nothing else on the map aside from this city. In a game like this however, this city is already a clear highlight.

The population of the game is even more dead than that of Pixel Battle Royale, which means an average of 0 concurrent players. While 100 Bots are an improvement over Pixel BR's 20 and while Pixel had stupid Stormtrooper Bots, Battle Royale Survival suffers from the opposite fate. 100 Bots get dropped simultaneously at the tiny map and since there is practically no cover on the map and these bots have a very strong auto-aim with the imprecise weapons, it again creates an unbalance.

The character models of both games seem to be identical and the weapon selection too (This game has an additional Magnum Pistol, but fewer skins. Apart from that I noticed no differences). This means the weapons also handle around the same way. Against crap bots like in Pixel BR that isn't problem, if the weapons are imprecise. In Battle Royale Survival however the Auto-Aim Bots are a bit of a pain, because they can laser you from a 100 meters with a trash weapon, while you have to do your best to even shoot straight (Bots also don't need to jump from a plane and can already loot weapons, while the players are still in the air). With the sniper weapon however or if you take enough cover (in one the very few houses on the map for example), they shouldn't be a problem. Since the Bots are pretty aggressive and the map is so small and with so few cover opportunities, 90% of the Bots die within the first 4-5 mins. My recommendation would be to collect weapons and play cautiously for the first 2-3 mins, till the complete and utter chaos has vanished.

And I haven't even mentioned the earrape problem of this game. The automatic sound volume is way too high and there exists no option to change the sound volume inside or outside the game. This is simply inacceptable...

 

Result:

We have bad visuals, a disaster standard map, rather lackluster gameplay, too aggressive auto-aim Bots and a devastating earrape glitch. Positives are that you can play this game with up to 99 Bots, even if nobody else is online (which is probably going to be the case), the sniper rifle works decently and the second map is somewhat acceptable (even though also way too empty outside of the main attraction).

3/10

Royale Island Showdown (PC) Review

 

Royale Island Showdown released this week as a new Battle Royale game and so I foolishly thought about giving the game a chance, since the pictures of it didn't look so bad (in hindsight I probably should have looked closer).

The first thing to point out is, that Royale Island Showdown may call itself a Battle Royale game for the sake of name recognition, but you can hardly classify it as one. There is a player maximum of 4 players (!), which is ridiculously low for a BR game. The twist of Royale Island Showdown is, that all human players also get 1 AI teammate as sort of a bodyguard. It is true, that I don't know any other game that does that, nonetheless this is certainly not all that revolutionary and doesn't really impact the gameplay. Not every 1 Life Deathmatch mode is the same as a Battle Royale game and I still have a hard time calling it that.

Movement actually works pretty well in the game and fells fluent, but the biggest issue of the game is its hit detection. It is not that great and too many shots don't register appropriately. It certainly extends the length of the matches (which are still short, as you could expect in a 4 player Multiplayer match with 1 life). This issue should be fixed, since it gives the game a bit of a weird feeling. Especially disappointing since the gunplay itself is actually quite alright, but the bad hit detection puts it down.

There are only three weapons in the game (Pistols, AR and Sniper) and no option for melee attacks. The gameplay options are therefore pretty limited. It is also disappointing, that there seems to be no zoom-in function for the sniper rifle, at least I couldn't get any button to do it. The bots may be a nice idea, but i found them to be way too dumb to influence the gunfights in any meaningful way. They keep following their human player and will occasionally shot, but I think they are too weak and they should definitely be improved. 

The visuals of the game are super basic, there isn't much to see in this game. The graphics engine is okay, but the map is simply too empty. There are many grey ramps, some grey empty block buildings and a lot of green conical blocks, which are supposed to resemble trees. The player models are also only coloured mannequin versions, so this basic visual presentation may be on purpose. At least you can differentiate the teams well through the four colours (blue, red, orange, purple). The starting island btw is just a grey block, that has the letters "Starting Island" written on it, which should probably make this game win the minimalism award of the year (Credit where credit is due. The plane at the beginning of the match, from which  players drop off, is a grey alien like space ship, which makes it the coolest looking part of the game).

Another problematic area is the sound department. Except for gunshots there are simply no soundeffects in the game whatsoever. There is no soundtrack anywhere, there are no footstep sounds and no sounds for collecting a weapon or a health item. Weapon shots do make a sound effect and they sound alright, but unfortunately this game also has an earrape-issue. I am referring to the fact, that the sound volume is by default set to a way too high volume and neither sound effects nor controls, visuals or anything else are customizable. The menu is as basic as it gets. You can choose to start an online game, a LAN game or quit. Once you queued up, you are on the starting island and there isn't even an option to get back to the main menu or to quit (you have to alt+f4 to get back to Steam). Same as Element Battle Royale I have to point out, that this game is probably closer to a tech-demo than a real game. 

I queued multiple times within the first week of launch and was only able to once get a match going with 2 instead of 4 players. It is not really a good sign, if the game is already pretty dead within the first week, especially if you consider how few players are required to get a match going.

 

Pro:

- Bot teammate idea is not bad

- Online and LAN matches

- Movement and gunplay essentially work well

 

Contra:

- Bots are too stupid

- Visuals are very basic

- Sound is nearly nonexistent/ too loud

- No customizability of anything/ no options

- Hit detection needs to be improved

- Small population

 

Result:

Royale Island Showdown is probably a one person project and in its current state closer to a Tech-Demo than a full game. The visuals are very basic, sound effects are nearly nonexistent, customizability is nonexistent and it can take a long time to find another player to start a match. The gunplay functions well enough, but hit detection needs to be improved. The concept with Bot-Bodyguards is okay, but this game would need to get polish in every department. As it is, I can not recommend Royale Island Showdown. It may be worth a shot for 4 friends trying to play a new shooter, but even than, there would be many, many better ones out there.

3/10

Trash Battle Royale Games and some of the rest: Including Last Tide (PC), Fractured Lands (PC), Banzai Royale (PC), Rules of Survival (PC), Rideout Heroes (PC), Super Mecha Champions (PC) etc.

 

I have written reviews for some really good BR games (like Darwin Project, Fortnite), some  more mixed ones (CSGO Danger Zone, Warface BR) and some pretty bad ones (Culling 2, Survival Frenzy) and I am going to continue that in the future. There are however also a couple of BR-games I am very like never going to play or review for this blog. I will in the following article give super short characterizations of them and explain, why I won't play them.

Some of them, like Fractured Lands (Mad Max Battle Royale), Last Tide (Underwater BR with sharks) or Banzai Royale (Birds eye view round based Samurai Royale), seem to have somewhat decent gameplay (however still far away from the really great games), but I am just not willing to invest money in order to try them out, if there are at least two dozen free games, which are more fun.

Even more audacious are Rules of Survival (Netease version of PUBG), which looks exactly like all the other free mobile BR-games, but actually needs to be purchased on Steam (apparently there is also a free version like PUBG Lite...), Survival Games (P2P version of a crappy Minecraft Battle Royale attempt), Bean Battles (Round based BR game with Bean characters) and The Prison Experiment: Battle Royale (horrible prealpha version of a prison BR game), which all have a asking price.

The other group is the seemingly endless conglomerate of F2P mobile BR games, that for some reason were ported to PC as well. These games often offer some of the most generic gameplay you have ever seen, are horribly optimized for PC and look like absolute trash. I have already reviewed games like Creative Destruction (Fortnite like BR game with building elements and a fantasy world = Netease version of Fortnite) and Modern Combat 5 Battle Royale (Generic First Person Shooter game) and simply don't see what the others could have to offer.

These games include Hopeless Land (Inferior version of Rules of Survival aka Rip-off of a Rip-Off...), Crossfire Legends (Looks nearly identical to Hopeless Land), Scarfall (Trash version of H1Z1), Survival Squad (Another really bad PUBG clone), Bloodrivals Battle Royale (Generic First Person BR, that manages to look worse than Modern Combat 5), Battle Royale 3D - Warrior 63 (Windows 95 version of a BR game. It makes my eyes hurt...), Garena Free Fire (Yet another PUBG copy), Die Pig Die (Unfinished mess, that only loosely resembles BR), Project Battle (Inferior version of Creative Destruction), Red West Royale (Wild West BR with Pixel graphics and Fortnite building elements), Super Mecha Champions (Anime Battle Royale with Mechs) and Rideout Heroes (Netease version of Realm Royale). The last two games you can at least give credit for not being 1:1 copies of the inspiration sources.

Modern Combat 5 Battle Royale (PC) Review

 

Modern Combat 5: Blackout is a popular Shooter game on Mobile devices. The game also got a Battle Royale mode, which we are going to look at today and thankfully also a PC-version (Otherwise I certainly wouldn't have reviewed it). Modern Combat 5's developer and publisher is a company called Gameloft, which has focused on developing either mobile ports for games of other companies or their own franchises, which are often being accused of copying popular franchises (which doesn't seem far fetched). 

Modern Combat 5 is one of their few games, which was also ported to PC, unfortunately they didn't put much effort into it. The visuals haven't been improved and look really hideous on PC. Even most 20 year old true PC-games look much better in my opinion. The whole graphics engine just looks washed out, blurry and rough around all edges. The texture quality is also in the best case hugely disappointing.

MC5 also got a story mode (Short campaign, that is severely limited by its mobile origin. Presentation and gameplay are subpar for a PC game) and various other Multiplayer modes (Probably the best part of MC5 and still suffers of sluggish gameplay and huge P2W problems), but I will really focus on the BR mode in this review.

Modern Combat 5 is a First Person Shooter and one of the aspects I disliked the most about the game is the UI. It does give you all the information (like your minimap, the weapons and items), but it is all still arranged like in the mobile version. There is no need for a symbol of the Run, shoot or grenade activity, since you are simply going to press a button on the keyboard or the mouse instead of using a touchscreen. The UI is therefore unnecessarily filled up with big useless symbols.

The gameplay of MC5 doesn't feel great, but at least it isn't completely stiff or broken. Movement is not as fluent as in a COD game or Apex Legends for example and sometimes a bit clunky, but it gets the job done well enough. The camera actually works well with the mouse, so they at least implemented this aspect well. Most BR games have usually 1 or 2 aspects, that differentiate them from the rest of the crowd. MC5 on the other hand doesn't do anything remarkable or really interesting, that could persuade players to give the game a chance. One might point out, that it also doesn't deliver any completely terrible gameplay ideas, but i would not share that line of argumentation. The foundation of the game might be acceptable, but it is way too bland to justify a recommendation or a positive judgement. Not screwing up in a major way isn't enough to earn a praise. I rather play a game, that has a couple of significant flaws, but at least some elements that are enjoyable and worth playing for. MC5 BR is limited to a solo mode, so you can't even play with friends.

A weird gameplay aspect is also the lack of a jump button. I don't remember having played any BR game, in which you couldn't jump. It certainly may not be the most important action, but it feels weird to lack that mobility option.

The weapon selection is pretty small. There are pistols, SMGs, ARs, Shotguns and Semiautomatic Snipers in the game. There is  nothing to surprising. Pistols are rather weak, as they should be. SMGs and ARs are actually feeling a bit to similar and there is no real difference in their range. The Snipers however are a bit too strong in my opinion. Since they are semiautomatic, there is no reloading after every shot and they do a lot of damage. A headshot for example is always lethal and even against level 3 armour it doesn't take more than 3 or 4 hits to put the player down. Since some areas of the map have a lot of open space, the snipers are essentially mandatory to win the match. I would have preferred a better balancing of the weaponpool. What i however have to praise is the weapon customization. There are multiple attachments like scopes, grips, magazine sizes, single vs burst shots etc. for every weapon. If the rest of the game was as extensive and satisfactory as this area, than MC5 BR would look a lot differently. The itempool consists of health packs, adrenalin boosts, grenades and landmines for example (so the usual stuff).

The map is actually one of the better aspects of MC5 Battle Royale. The POIs (Large scientific institute in the middle of the map, harbour in the east, airport in the southwest and villages in the south- and northeast and a couple of smaller building blocks all around) are pretty diverse and scattered well across the map. Unfortunately there are also a few too many unoccupied empty areas on the map, that because of the lack of cover turn into a sniper's paradise. The hills around the institute for example have practically no cover elements and make it difficult to traverse this place without being an easy target. The majority of buildings in the game are also way too empty and only have 3 or 4 different versions, that keep repeating. Nonetheless I thought the map was despite its shortcoming probably one of the strongest aspects of the game.

There are also a couple of annoying bugs and glitches in the game. Sometimes if a player receives too many shots in a short amount of time, he will get invisible for a second, which is quite disturbing, since you don't know whether he died or is still shooting (I experienced the glitch both for enemies, who died and those who survived and won the gunfight). Sometimes I got stuck into the environment for no reason and one time my game crashed out of the blue (one might say this happens in other BR games too, but I would point out that it shouldn't).

Even more annoying than these game-related glitches is the massive amount of cheaters and hackers in the game. I hear that this can also be an issue in regular Multiplayer, but I found the amount of cheating players to be extraordinarily high in comparison to all other BR games  I played (Even in Warzone I experienced far fewer hackers). In a handful of hours I saw players using auto-aim, wall-hacks (where they identified idle players behind a wall in an upstairs floor and shoot them through the wall) and one time a player teleported 20 meters to the side multiple times after I shot him. The saddest thing is, that some of these hackers still managed to lose their games, but this can be no excuse for allowing something like this to happen. I have heard from other players, that there is no anti-cheat system whatsoever in the game and hackers only get banned for a very short time, after they have been reported by multiple players. The developers seem to not want to displease the cheaters, since they could be potential paying customers...

 

Pro:

- Gunplay essentially works

- Extensive weapon customization

- Map is for the most part decently designed

 

Contra:

- Really hideous visuals

- Bad UI

- Gameplay is too stale

- Weaponpool a bit unbalanced (Snipers too strong)

(- Solo only)

- Annoying Glitches

- Way to many Cheaters and Hackers

 

Result:

Every competitive game, that isn't completely broken, can be fun in some way or another. The same is the case with Modern Combat 5 Battle Royale. If you eliminate a couple of other players or win a match, it can be entertaining for a short time, but that doesn't make MC5 a good game. The visuals are an insult even to people playing on a Potato-PC and the cheater situation is a mess. The gameplay is stale, but at least not broken in any major way. Since you can't even play with friends in a squad, I wouldn't recommend this game to anybody. There are worse games out there, but MC5 BR is still not worth a try.

4/10