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How Fall Guys is Reshaping The Battle-Royal Genre & Among Us Breaking Multiplayer Stereotypes?

Breaking the Stereotype, Among Us & Fall Guys are two games proving themselves best in the class of entertaining gamers under Battle-Royale Category.

I and Gaming are like Oogway and Po! Gaming for more than a decade it seemed that for the past couple of years, all that coming was the same game, rebranded and re-skinned. There was nothing new except a bunch of weapons and a few modes. Everything was pulled out from the belly of the developer whose ultimate goal is to trap players in a mindless grinding. Gameplay’s are like chasing their tail to do the same thing over and over again. I was at the end of my wits with constant repetition and boredom.

What’s Next Then? Will there be any game who can carve its way out of hassle to morally entertain the world. If you’ve paid attention lately two unlikely games have surfaced and taken over the gaming industry. It started with Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout that was released recently and then carried over to Among Us that gained unprecedented attention. I decided to try out Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout only because it was free with my PlayStation Plus service.

I remember the time of Wii when everyone played together, where family and friends come together for lighthearted entertainment.

Talking about multiplayer gaming, it used to be reserved for top competing players. Like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Modern Warfare, PUBG, etc. Titles are too serious to have fun. Anyone new who bought these games got beamed out of existence. Where’s the fun then?

I remember the time of Wii when everyone played together, where family and friends come together for light-hearted entertainment. Not seriously talking about load-outs, skins, events, hardware – blah-blah. This where I see games like Fall Guys & Among Us are creative enough to disrupt the multiplayer gaming zone. Giving chance to everyone to be together in a not-so-serious competitive environment with lots of fun.

No longer players have to shoot each other and keep themselves safe from a retracting play area

“Fall Guys on PS4 is like playing with friends in a garden”

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is developed by Mediatonic and was released to great fanfare and attention. Everyone wanted to play this obstacle course battle-royale game and after years of the same thing with Apex Legends, Fortnite, Warzone and so many more the genre finally got a facelift.

No longer players have to shoot each other and keep themselves safe from a retracting play area, Fall Guys gave players the fantasy of competing in a game show with jelly beans for characters and some of the best sound effects and background sound in recent years.

What made things sweet was that you could introduce the game to almost anyone you knew and they’d readily accept at the chance of playing these games. There was no steep learning curve for players to master. No complex button configuration that you had to memorize. All you were expected to do was to have fun.

The core ingredient and requisite of both these games was the fact that it provoked the players to do things a bit differently and have fun. You could dictate what you wanted to experience out of the games and that’s what endeared to a lot of players.

Don’t get me wrong other AAA titles are a ton of fun too and this isn’t to slander them or to justify that these games were better than other titles but I could finally play a game with my mom who enjoyed it just as much as I did.

It was an instant hit, PlayStation promoted Fall Guys to their ultimate extent even going as further as offering the game for free on launch day for PlayStation Plus subscribers. Suddenly, everyone got into this game. Every major streamer was leaving the tried and tested battle-royale genre in favor of Fall Guys because it had something original to offer.

It broke the chains of the genre by creating a new sub-genre like never seen before. The competition was still fierce and intact in Fall Guys and as you progress the levels kept getting more difficult. This created a unique shift in dynamics in the gaming industry not seen for quite a while.

You could lose a game in Fall Guys and within seconds join another lobby and go over a different course bringing new challenges and as everyone thought that there would be no end to Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Among Us climbed up the popularity charts with some aplomb.

With deceit, lies, and trickery to offer, almost everyone gobbled up the fun and yet the gameplay nature of Among Us remains elusive.

“Game that let you Stab your Friends”

Among Us united two different platforms that have usually strayed away from each other by bringing in cross-play and mystery to the foray. You either play as a Crewmate or an Impostor and your job is to fix every problem or stop the crewmates from succeeding in their tasks. With deceit, lies, and trickery to offer, almost everyone gobbled up the fun, and yet the gameplay nature of Among Us remains elusive.

Each game of Among Us is different sometimes, you can bond over things like fixing wires if you aren’t killed in Electricals. You just have to run around the already falling apart space ship in hopes that your fellow crewmate completes their tasks as well and catch the impostors. Among Us is best enjoyed with the people you know in real life because as soon as the game starts everyone becomes a suspect and since you know each person in the game, there’s a lot to deduce and come to conclusions as well.

What these games did in a couple of months can be compared to some of the best AAA titles have been trying to achieve for years spending hundreds of millions of dollars to promote and get attention.

“It unites Mobile & PC Gamers” – FUUUUK the Hardware

Among Us works on a very minimal scale, what it lacks in all of the bells and whistles it delivers emphatically with great gameplay. Players found themselves unable to avert attention away from Among Us and got into the game without thinking twice.

I remember the day I first started playing Among Us and without realizing I had spent over 4 hours and it still didn’t seem enough. After that started a series of compulsively playing Among Us after spending tiring hours at work.

If Fall Guys revolutionized the Battle Royale genre, Among Us flaunted the fact that with a bit of luck and creativity you can achieve greatness in the video game industry, all you need is a great product that can deliver on the promises and works without breaking ever so often.

Having players communicate with the minimal option also worked in favor of both these games as you cannot communicate or you do not have much time to do so, this takes the toxicity out of games have has been plaguing the industry for decades.

If 30 is new 20 then “Multiplayer” is the new “Naughty”

Multiplayer games have been catering to the human competitive nature and both Fall Guys and Among Us delivered on this front. There is a fear factor in both these games as you might get eliminated from the game show in Fall Guys or you might get killed or called out in Among Us.

Both Among Us and Fall Guys somewhat leveled the playing field for veteran gamers and casual gamers who aren’t that much invested by bringing unpredictability and this is a welcome change to take the videogame industry into the future where anyone could get into a game and just enjoy it without having to master controls or even understand it completely.

Having players communicate with the minimal option also worked in favor of both these games as you cannot communicate or you do not have much time to do so, this takes the toxicity out of games have has been plaguing the industry for decades.

Both Among Us and Fall Guys have some of the magic of retro games to them where you could jump in and then have a blast without having to know the lore, the development, and the people behind it. They’re simply some of the most fun games out there and it’s reflecting upon everyone else that maybe if we bring the focus back to the core principle of gaming that is fun instead of all the other useless bits, then maybe a lot more games could blossom out of it.

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Prasad More

Prasad is a crazy writer, lazy gamer, usually depends on the time of the day for it to be in that order. Aside from indulging in excessive movie-binge sessions and gaming, he uploads reviews and impressions of the latest in film and gaming. You can Connect me at contactus@gamertweak.com

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