Pick your Battle Royale

While it is clear the most popular genre in gaming is Battle Royale, for those new to the space there’s just so many games to choose from. Here’s an overview of the top games around and their strengths and weaknesses to help you get started.

Fortnite
While PUBG popularised the genre, it’s Fortnite and Ninja that really took Battle Royales to new heights. The much more laid back game literally brought Fortnite back from the dead as they pivoted from a Coop Experience to a full on Battle Royale. It’s different from the other Battle Royale’s thanks to its crazy building system that requires players to rapidly build structures while fighting. Another thing keeping Fortnite at the top of the charts is the frequency of content. A new season and Battle pass every few months with weapons, map rework and of course crazy dances is always a good thing. Fortnite is also the only game to have a consistent and quite well made cross platform feature that allows players from PC to play with console and mobile users.

While PUBG popularised the genre, it’s Fortnite and Ninja that really took Battle Royales to new heights.

Pros

• Free to play
• Lots of frequent content updates
• Dances

Cons

• Only one map
• Gunplay isn’t too great
• The base game changes with every content update, which isn’t great for everyone

Apex Legends
The newest entry in what is quickly becoming a saturated market, Apex Legends holds the distinction of the fastest growing Battle Royale with 25 Million players in 72 hours and over 50 Million in less than one month. The Titanfall 2 spin off Battle Royale features super fast movement and gunplay like call of duty but the real winner is its looting and inventory management system. Auto upgrades for better grade items makes it a lot easier to manage inventories and you end up spending more time moving and fighting instead of sorting items. Another brilliant addition is a respawn feature that allows you to recover a dead teammate within 90 seconds of their demise and bring them back into the game from one of many respawn beacons. The selection of champions also makes things interesting, each with their own unique ability making every team composition different; however, some are more useful than others.

Apex Legends holds the distinction of the fastest growing Battle Royale with 25 Million players in 72 hours and over 50 Million in less than one month.

Pros

• Great gunplay
• Matches last less than 20 minutes
• Great selection of characters
• Free to play
• Fresh three player team approach

Cons

• Too many hacks

Call of Duty Blackout
2018 was a big shift for Call of Duty as they moved to a completely multiplayer driver experience, the core of which revolved around their own Battle Royale. It brought us one of the first well optimised fast-paced Battle Royale’s but it was held back by poor inventory management and I personally felt the call of duty gunplay didn’t sit well with a large open map. While the blackout isn’t bleeding players like crazy, it’s not exactly growing but the good news is that the content in the form of new themed seasons seems to be flowing in steadily with additions to the map and new characters.

Pros

• Familiar Call of Duty experience in a Battle Royale
• Regular content updates
• Fairly well optimised

Cons

• Map is too large for COD style gameplay
• Inventory management isn’t great

PUBG
You can’t talk about Battle Royale’s and not talk about PUBG. While PUBG is certainly the game that started the hype and literally built the genre from the ground up it’s not the biggest in terms of playerbase. PUBG stands out from the pack by being the more ‘realistic’ shooter in terms of gunplay and movement. It’s the only Battle Royale out there with four maps giving wildly different experiences across various play styles but that in turn may make your queue time longer if you’re hell bent on playing only a particular set of maps.

PUBG stands out from the pack by being the more ‘realistic’ shooter in terms of gunplay and movement.

Pros

• Variety of maps
• Gunplay is great

Cons

• Too many hackers
• Poorly optimised
• New content comes once every 3-4 months
• Paid game