Why I Hate Battle Royale Games

Hey Everybody,

Your friendly neighborhood Sphinx here.

I felt like the time has come for me to leave the movie critic life for a moment and discuss some gaming. After a near decade of being removed from the gaming world, I have fully absorbed myself back into playing video games for the last nine months or so. A lot has changed since I’ve been away - and one of those big changes is the rise of the gameplay known as Battle Royale. And I hate it.

Let me bring this up first and foremost: I am not particularly good at gaming. And being away from games for a decade has made me a little rusty. But during the last nine months I have attempted and failed miserably at 3 Battle Royales - Fortnite, Call of Duty Black Ops (Blackout mode), and Apex Legends. So what exactly frustrates me about these games?

First off, these games are so much more than just run around and shoot people. There’s all these specials/extras that the player can do now, and I’m trying to keep track of all the available things I can do in a given game. But there’s just way too much stuff. I don’t care about pinging someone, or building something, or figuring out my player’s abilities. What happened to the simple days of pick up a gun, pick up some ammo, and shoot? Sure, an armor pack is nice every now and then, and so is throwing a casual grenade, but I am so clueless as to what these other functions are that exist now in gameplays.

What is all this stuff on my screen?

And the learning curve on these games are so intense. With so many controls to the game now, I need time to figure out what to do immediately. But I’m against 60 other people, circle/rings on the map are closing in on me, and all I have is anxiety. So when I join in on a game, I’m against people that have put in 20 hours already of gameplay, and so it’s no surprise why I get my ass kicked. All these games need to retool their matchups better so that the morons (like myself) are all just put in the same place to be dumb in trying to figure the game out. When I tried Fortnite, I remember half the time I died, I was just punching people because I didn’t even have a weapon yet!

The day after Apex Legends came out, I downloaded it, and started to play with strangers on my team/squad. The first game, I dropped us down at the wrong location, and the whole team was dead in about 30 seconds. Fun. Then for the next three games, I literally roamed around the map for what seemed like an hour just picking up items and weapons (of which I had no idea what they did because I’m always paranoid of getting killed) with my team, to the point I was bored out of my mind. Then when it was time for some action, my squad lasted another 30 seconds until we were wiped out. What was the damn point of running around for an hour if I was just going to be annihilated? One of the times, my teammate tried to revive me, but in the process was killed. WTF.

Good news! I’m not dead yet.

A few times I’ve done some team gaming with the Gamezilla Media community, and they are nice enough to deal with me, but every single time I single-handedly brought the team down. They would help me find weapons, and find somewhere to hide. But as soon as I get that moment where I can be a hero and shoot some bad guys, I get wasted. And then the game is over for me. And they all get to continue to play, while I sit there like a loser. I’m not into watching the results - I want to play again. I like re-spawns, because I die a lot.

I’m not a quitter though - I will continue to give some of these games a shot. Maybe there will be one that for some crazy reason I will be good at. It will just click in my brain how to play it, and I will be king. But with all the other games out there I could be playing, and with the little time I have to play games in the first place, I’m definitely going to devote most of my time to games that sell me fun gameplay rather quickly.

See ya out there, and sorry if you get stuck with me as a teammate.

Sphinx

Do you love Battle Royale games? Are you like me and are not a fan? What things do you like or dislike about them? Any game recommendations? Be sure to share your opinion either on Facebook, Twitter, the Gamezilla Media Discord page, or in the comments below!