As a casual who only dips into this when they add a funny new skin, Zero Build Mode finally brings the streamlined experience I always wanted from the game: a massive reduction in the number of quiet and confused moments that sat awkwardly among the insanity of an average match’s moment-to-moment survival. Stripping away the construction materials and mechanics (save for the tactile and tactical satisfaction of demolishing walls and floors) improves the pace of play so much, turning a battle for building materials into a more focused super-arena shooter that spans an entire island and at least three hundred multimedia franchises.
As the number of included IPs continues to balloon-bus exponentially, there’s really no reason I should be bored on the plains overlooking Tilted Towers, and Epic are happy to provide me with literally any excuse to avoid playing the game properly - it’s an overwrought joke at this point, but just standing around watching Goku hit the griddy is genuine unpretentious whole-hearted all-American entertainment, and I’m oddly proud of the devs for taking a shitty zombie wave-defense game all the way to this, cultural implications be damned. There’s just something about our programming as a species that makes us predisposed towards finding anime mascots doing club dance moves funny and we have to accept that and move on in enlightenment. Drop the vain expectation of good taste and come as you are to this cocaine-insane royal rumble where you can drive-by kamehameha Indiana Jones while he’s listening to Doja Cat on a jukebox shaped like Darth Vader’s head. It reminds me of Jedi Outcast roleplay servers in the early 2000s, where people would import the Dr. Dre and Doomguy skins from Quake III: Arena and challenge you to lightsaber duels in a map based off that Jim Carrey Grinch movie. If you like Smash Bros. or Multiversus or Gmod or Dante From The Devil May Cry Series, you’ve really got no excuses. It’s all the same thing.
These moments of maximal franchise expression do genuinely seem to lead to something bigger, sometimes, though… Today I did a random Duos with a guy dressed as the stonks meme and instead of gunning for glory we just drove a Major Lazer-themed speedboat along the coast while listening to an Eminem song about drug addiction and wanting to kill yourself (PEGI 12+). When the song was done, the radio faded out to a voice clip of Travis Scott telling us that he really believed we had what it takes to get that Victory Royale. Despite his pride, we died unceremoniously on a trampoline moments later. As our corpses bounced up and down with comic timing, the killcam revealed that Vegeta had been in a water tower with an AWP the whole time, watching the shore from a safe distance. What even is this? I genuinely do not believe there is another game out there that is offering these deeply stupid and satisfying emergent experiences.
As the number of included IPs continues to balloon-bus exponentially, there’s really no reason I should be bored on the plains overlooking Tilted Towers, and Epic are happy to provide me with literally any excuse to avoid playing the game properly - it’s an overwrought joke at this point, but just standing around watching Goku hit the griddy is genuine unpretentious whole-hearted all-American entertainment, and I’m oddly proud of the devs for taking a shitty zombie wave-defense game all the way to this, cultural implications be damned. There’s just something about our programming as a species that makes us predisposed towards finding anime mascots doing club dance moves funny and we have to accept that and move on in enlightenment. Drop the vain expectation of good taste and come as you are to this cocaine-insane royal rumble where you can drive-by kamehameha Indiana Jones while he’s listening to Doja Cat on a jukebox shaped like Darth Vader’s head. It reminds me of Jedi Outcast roleplay servers in the early 2000s, where people would import the Dr. Dre and Doomguy skins from Quake III: Arena and challenge you to lightsaber duels in a map based off that Jim Carrey Grinch movie. If you like Smash Bros. or Multiversus or Gmod or Dante From The Devil May Cry Series, you’ve really got no excuses. It’s all the same thing.
These moments of maximal franchise expression do genuinely seem to lead to something bigger, sometimes, though… Today I did a random Duos with a guy dressed as the stonks meme and instead of gunning for glory we just drove a Major Lazer-themed speedboat along the coast while listening to an Eminem song about drug addiction and wanting to kill yourself (PEGI 12+). When the song was done, the radio faded out to a voice clip of Travis Scott telling us that he really believed we had what it takes to get that Victory Royale. Despite his pride, we died unceremoniously on a trampoline moments later. As our corpses bounced up and down with comic timing, the killcam revealed that Vegeta had been in a water tower with an AWP the whole time, watching the shore from a safe distance. What even is this? I genuinely do not believe there is another game out there that is offering these deeply stupid and satisfying emergent experiences.
BeachEpisode
1 year ago