We are right in the middle of the BR craze right now, and it's kinda hard to figure out which ones are worth playing, and which ones are just going to die out super fast, and are not really worth investing time playing and mastering.
So here we are, I've played almost everyone of these, and hopefully I'll be able to guide you into trying out the most interesting ones. There is no particular order, just pointing out which ones are worth trying. I might have forgotten some, it's probably intentional, since I do not consider them worth either due to a price tag being to high, or just an overall pretty crappy experience.
Darwin Project
If it was still a game with an entry fee, I would not have put this game here, but here it is, since it went free to play 2 months ago. It was struggling to gather 200 players, but since the free to play swap, it has an average of 2000 players since may 2018, which is okay, but not great.
What's special about DP ?
The size of the games is smaller than your average BR game. You are with 9 other players, and 1 game master. The game master choses which areas to close, areas in which you slowly die if you stay in them.
You also have powers you can acquire by gathering a certain type or resources, they go from radars to turrets to mobility and escape powers, there is a pretty cool range of powers you can chose from at the beginning of each game, up to 3 different ones.
You can also chose what kind of craftables you want, traps, gliders, and other stuff than will impact your playstyle. You have no other weapons that your axe and your bow, so no weapon gathering in this game.
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| Darwin Project's crafting wheel, customizable as hell |
You also need to take care of your resources, which is a lot like some other games, to craft items, arrows and traps for instance, and you also need to keep track of your freezing bar. if it gets to 0, you start losing HP. That doesn't happen very often, but it forces you to play smart, as lighting a fire signals your position to your opponents, and no one likes to take an arrow in the back when sitting at a firecamp. There are also "clues" that you leave behind you, when for instance you chop a tree, light a fire, walk when bleeding, or craft something, which forces you to play smart.
Darwin Project is a surprisingly in depth BR game, that deserves more attention !
Fortnite
I'm not sure I even need to introduce Fortnite. In terms of players, it is the king of the BR games, largely due to its presence on pretty much every gaming platform that exists, even on your grandmother's flip phone !
It's a pretty basic BR game in concept, you drop, gather weapons, shields and everything you need to win the game.
What's special about Fortnite ?
Its greatest strength, but also greatest weakness, is building. What started as a fun innovative idea of building cover in combat, has now been mastered by good players, and is now pretty much an issue epic games is fighting. Building is what makes fortnite unique, with a lot of updates aswell, and a lot of new stuff coming in every other week. It's a fun experience, but it is indeed quite casual, and gun fights can be frustrating.
It's a fun experience with friends, but it's not much of a solo game.
PUBG
The catalyst of the BR explosion. It was a buggy and laggy mess with barely okay graphics, with a pretty fun gunplay. Now, it's a little bit less of a laggy buggy mess, with a good gunplay and pretty meh graphics. From my experience, and from the reviews, it is highly overrated and shows how the BR genre is missing a really good game. The game has an entry fee of 30 dollars.
What's special about PUBG?
The gunplay, the immersion. Getting into the final circles in PUBG is intense, unless you're like most players and you just hide in the corner of a house. If you're not, you'll be on the edge of your chair, watching every grass movement, listening to any sound, trying to figure out where your opponent is.
It's fun with friends, pretty meh to play alone, can get frustrating due to the issues it is plagued with, and the crazy amount of hackers. When you spend 15 minutes gathering weapons and get killed through a wall, its understandable (not my experience, but I get why people get mad).
Realm Royale
It just came out on Steam a few days ago. It was supposed to be paladins royale at first, allowing you to use characters from the Overwatch competitor in a BR game, but it was scrapped, and is now mostly using assets from Paladins, such as weapons, sounds, spells and map parts, in order to provide an okay experience. It's still in alpha, but I'm putting it up here as a "keep an eye on this one" thing.
What's special about Realm Royale?
Pretty much the same as Darwin Project, it has a class system, that have powers linked to them, like radars, mobility spells, damage spells, and some other stuff, that allow for differences in stats and gameplay. There are also class weapons with different stats, purpose and gameplay, which allow for different experiences through the game.
The game is still pretty laggy, and because of server issues, I have not been able to try it in duo or than with randoms, and haven't played squads, but it seems overall okay. Wait and see.
Okay-ish contenders :
H1Z1/CAR1Z1
It's okay, lack of players, feels dated, and the combat is kind of interesting with shotguns, other than that, just move along, there isn't much here that other games don't do better, except maybe the amount of players, but more players doesn't mean it's better. CAR1Z1 is pretty fun with friends, but you won't play a lot of it as it gets pretty repetitive and looks pretty dead according to steamcharts.
Rules of survival/PUBG Mobile, and all the other mobile games.
If you are a console gamer, you'll get frustrated, if you are a PC player, even more. These are not really worth your time, with clunky laggy interfaces, HUD, and gameplay, you will get more frustrated than you'll have fun.
DayZ
Well it's the grandfather all of these guys, but it got old, and isn't really worth playing anymore, since new ones are doing better what it was doing.
Conclusion
Even if we have a lot of games out there doing the BR thing, none of them is really the best awesome experience. Most of them are okay, but we lack a great triple A title, with tight gameplay, mechanics and netcode. The fact that a game like PUBG is and was so popular shows that.
I'll get an article out on BR games that are incoming and might be interesting, but until then, leave a comment, follow on social media, and thanks for reading me !
Tisba,
Out.
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