SITTING COMFORTABLY? LET BATTLE ROYALE COMMENCE!
ONE is the loneliest number, sang Harry Nilsson. So I can only assume that he was never dropped on to an island with 99 other people, forced to find weapons, and then scrap until emerging as the lone survivor. When that happens, one really is the most triumphant number.
This is the premise for battle royale games, a genre that has colonised people’s consoles over the past few years — and is spreading further.
This week, one of the best battle royale titles, Apex Legends (★★★★★, free), is released on Nintendo’s Switch, a couple of years after originally coming out on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
Most battle royale games exist on a spectrum from militaristic to wacky. Apex Legends is in the middle, which makes it a good starting point — and, frankly, staying point — for those wishing to test their skills against dozens of strangers from around the internet. It has got gunplay powerful and percussive enough to satisfy any armchair assassin.
But it has also got a cast of superheroic characters, from fast-teleporting thieves to bomb-tossing antipodeans, whose abilities become your own — and those of your teammates. Apex Legends is more social than many other battle royale games in that it makes you join forces to take on everyone else.
Much of what Apex Legends is has been shaped by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (★★★★✩, PC, PlayStation, Xbox, £14.99-£26.99). PUBG, as it is known, is the game that popularised battle royale and many of its features, including the shrinking ring of death that forces players to congregate — and therefore to fight — as each round nears its climax.
Played now, more than three years after its launch, PUBG feels more sparse and homespun than its rivals — but that is its joy. There is something strangely nostalgic — a reminder of childhood make-believe — about creeping around in its tall grasses and trying to spot others before they spot you.
It is certainly more charming than Call Of Duty: Warzone (★★★✩✩, PC, PlayStation, Xbox, free), a copycat that has been given a manicure and fed steroids.
The genre’s real big beast is Fortnite (★★★★✩, all major platforms, free). It added frantic Minecraft-style building to all the shooting but its main innovation was to make battle royale free yet freshen up the repetitive gameplay with crazy, collectible costumes and new ‘seasons’ of updates — at a price, as parents’ credit card bills will attest.
And the future? Games like the brilliant Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (★★★★✩, all major platforms, £15.99), in which players guide their pill-shaped avatars through a series of candy-coloured challenges, show that battle royale doesn’t have to be bloodthirsty. All we are saying, as someone else once sang, is give peace a chance.