A couple (major) grievances I need to air about this season, before I get into why I think it's still their best since SS1 - firstly, this signifying the death of new themed seasons is a heavy effin' blow which can't help but feel like the beginning of the end, in a way. Sure not every past season was a mega-hit, but at least they all had their own distinct identity which lend themselves to greater variety mix during play. I mean I loved this digi-polygon theme at first but now it's feeling stale - even a lot of the creator rounds feel samey. Though taking that into account, general gameplay is better than it's felt in what seems like YEARS. The vaulting bullshit that plagued this game heavy since 2022 feels almost totally muted here; with a ton of underappreciated and sorely missed games being put back into the cycle on a nice schedule. No more getting Stompin' Ground or Speed Slider every single fucking match anymore (though boring Blastlantis still shows up too frequently for my tastes)! And while team games can be fun on occasion, I'm glad they've lessened their appearances which before would totally derail any progress you made that match seemingly at random. The creative mode itself here is honestly also a hoot for what it is, though it still feels like its missing key developments. Still can effortlessly boot this back up and have a good time.

Fall Guys died on August 16th with the article that said no more seasons, same boring digital theme continuing on(and it still continues by the way), more rounds made by the creative tools but a ton more new fame passes so that you can spend your hard earned money in real life on the game. You were a nice friend Fall Guys, sometimes the best. But your time is over now, rest in peace...

The Full Review:

Goodbye, Friend...
It is really the end. I was planning to write this review a long time ago, when I gave up on the game. But here we are. And maybe this was better because we basically saw what happened to the game afterwards.

Fall Guys is a game I have been playing for 3 years. I started back in the original launch with August 2020 I believe on PS Plus and I absolutely loved it back then. I showed it to my father who loved the game and even played a significant amount, my mother who thought that the costumes were adorable and always wanted to see what comes next and basically all my other relatives. Everyone adored the game, they loved it, they were happy to see it.

Unfortunately, part of the journey is the end. And the end of Fall Guys started with the Epic Games' acquisition of Mediatonic, the developers of Fall Guys and then the switch to Free to Play. With Free to Play, the costumes we earned by playing and winning the games turned into a marketplace that changed daily.

The free full costumes we got from in game live events by completing challenges turned to more simplistic, boring and unimaginative rewards; even going as far to just add recolored version of the same rewards to multiple different Live Events.

But still, I kept playing and people around me continued to love it because the new rounds, mechanics and quality of life improvements were worth it. However, with Free to Play's Season 4 announcement; the future of Fall Guys changed forever.

This update promised us the "Creative" where people can create their own rounds. And 3 month long season passes changed to 6 week long fame passes. These were both good additions in my opinion. I loved the fame passes much more than battle passes. Because there is more content to play. And creative was a great way to help Mediatonic in between their usual new round releases.

That, that's where the cycle of good will broke. Mediatonic announced that from Season 4 onwards, they would use the creative tools to create their rounds as well. And the first few rounds they showed looked a lot like user generated rounds. They did not have the interesting mechanics or the different visual design of their previous rounds.

Speaking of visual design, the new theme they chose for the reason was "Digital" and well, it looked boring. It was just a blue sky with pixelised clouds. The original Season 4 release came with 20 rounds made by Mediatonic, more rounds than we've ever got in a single update.

As always, I clicked on the game after downloading the update and curiously waited to play one of the new rounds. I played one of them, and then another and then another. These rounds, they were just nothing. First of all, all of them were races. We got 20 races. And they had nothing unique to them. With a very boring background theme.

And that was, it? I went through the game and completed Fame Pass 1, 2 and 3 which got boring quickly because I wasn't enjoying what I was playing. I was just getting a bunch of cosmetics that looked adorable yes, but there was no excitement around the game anymore.

Also, with the new fame pass system; challenges has seen an update too and for the first 3 Fame Passes I played, we got the same daily challenges every day. They never changed. And weekly challenges was just "Complete X number of daily challenges". With the Marathon Challenges that got introduced in Season 3 I believe which awarded you a special full costume if you completed all the daily challenges for a number of days was gone.

Anyway, I still stuck with the game because I thought that Season 5 could change things. A new and more interesting theme, maybe the introduction of Survival rounds to the creative and maybe, just maybe Mediatonic could have decided to include at least a few rounds made using their own tools.

On August 16th 2023, my love and passion for Fall Guys got killed by an article released on Fall Guys' website titled "The Future of Fall Guys + Summer Breeze Update". Yes, what happens in the future of Fall Guys? TELL ME!

Let me give you a few quotes directly from that article. Quote 1: "We are moving away from Seasons to bring more frequent updates to Fall Guys", Quote 2: "In these updates, we’ll be bringing new features, tools and customisation options to make your Creative chaos reach new heights!", Quote 3: "You will see the Digital 'Creative Construction' theme in the game a little while longer" and final Quote: "Fame Passes will carry on."

No more seasons, more frequent updates that includes things to "Creative", the Digital theme continuing for a little while longer(3 months later and still the Digital theme) and more fame passes. More costumes, more opportunities to spend money in game but no more good rounds, only creative and no more new themes in every 3 months with a new season; Digital theme forever probably. Or even if it's not forever, a new theme in every 7-8 months.

I deleted the game that day and I believe I never downloaded it again, I'm sure I never played it again. And with the more recent news of layoffs at Mediatonic, the main developers of the game, I don't think that Fall Guys will get better. In fact, recent rumors suggests that Fortnite will have Fall Guys inside of it; probably just killing the main game forever.

Fall Guys died on August 16th with the article that said no more seasons, same boring digital theme continuing on(and it still continues by the way), more rounds made by the creative tools but a ton more new fame passes so that you can spend your hard earned money in real life on the game. You were a nice friend Fall Guys, sometimes the best. But your time is over now, rest in peace...

Mediatonic announced today that they are doing away with seasons, and I think that's as good of a reason as any to go ahead and write this review.

The creative mode introduced in this season is... fine? Building levels is easy enough, although it could do for some quality of life improvements. The user-created levels I've played have been mostly okay, although they all give off this sense of emptiness not found in the levels created by the devs in Unity. Hopefully this will improve as people get better at using the tools and as Mediatonic makes more tools available.

Unfortunately, discovering good creative levels is extremely difficult, and even when you find good ones they become a solitary platforming experience without a dedicated group to try levels out with. And without a good way of getting players to try out your levels aside from the one-in-a-million chance that Mediatonic decides to feature it in a playlist, there really isn't much incentive to get me to spend time making them.

As for the game itself, Fall Guys is on autopilot at this point. The same events, same rotating playlists, and no new developer-created levels. There will be new costume collaborations and Fame Passes to spend your money on, but creation of the actual in-game content has been passed down to the players.

It blows my mind that Fall Guys has been around for 3 years and that it has kept me coming back nearly every day for that entire time. It's been a great ride, even with its less than stellar free-to-play relaunch. I don't plan on totally quitting, but I've already stepped back quite a bit the last month or so and don't know that anything will really suck me back in at this point. But I do hope that it will be there for me whenever I do come back around.