In a multiplayer space saturated with battle royale games, a new title enters the ring and suplexes the competition with flourish. Rumbleverse, developed by Iron Galaxy and published by Epic Games, is a free-to-play, melee-focused PC game that puts your fighting fundamentals to the test against 39 other combatants. The genre staples are still here, of course. You have a sprawling arena, an ever-shrinking ring that limits the map as matches progress, and tiered loot to collect. However, Rumbleverse’s melee combat and nuanced mechanics radically distinguish it from its ilk, making it simpler than other battle royale titles, yet much more engrossing. Rumbleverse has its share of flaws, particularly the odd hit detection that makes combat sometimes feel inaccurate, but the game is tremendously fun.  A New Challenger ApproachesRumbleverse is an extremely cartoony, and at times outright goofy game that catapults 40 players into a wrestle-crazed island city for fist-flinging mayhem. Admittedly, the visual style may not appeal to everyone; the oddly proportioned characters are a bit grating on the eyes. However, once you’re in the brawl, the visual flaws fall by the wayside as you plan your survival. In Rumbleverse, combat trumps all, and the game does combat surprisingly well. Battle royale games generally differentiate themselves by introducing unique gimmicks to the tried and true formula. Fortnite has construction to complement its shooting, for example. Rumbleverse tosses guns out the window, and instead gives you a melee-focused move set. You must come to grips with the rock-paper-scissors fighting before you can expect to win matches. In turn, this creates a higher skill bar to clear than shooter-based battle royale titles, where quality loot can carry you far.How to Play RumbleverseRumbleverse forces players to settle their differences via over-the-top, wrestling-inspired fisticuffs. Regular attacks beat grapples. Guarding beats regular attacks. Grapples beat guards. These are familiar systems that have been at the core of fighting games since the genre's earliest titles. In addition, you can pick up Ability Manuals during a round that teach you special techniques. These are tiered moves, like loot in other battle royale games (higher tiered manuals do more damage). They give you a notable edge in battle, but not nearly as much as the loot in traditional battle royale games. A purple-tiered, Ninja Gaiden-inspired Izuna Drop deals excellent damage, but it doesn’t mean much if your opponent understands how to counter or avoid it. There is an excellent degree of combat verticality, which is unique for a melee-oriented action game. You can clamber up buildings and structures with ease, giving you a better vantage point to view surrounding scuffles. Tossing someone off a high structure deals great damage, and scales depending on how far the victim falls. Likewise, you can deliver some mighty elbow-drops from high elevations to deal even greater damage.There is more to the environment than just height, however. The city is filled with trees, walls, cars, mailboxes, and hazards to leverage in fights. For example, wrestlers get plastered onto walls when knocked into them, leaving them briefly vulnerable for follow-up attacks. Vehicles serve as springboards that help you leap to great heights, but they can also be used to recover from knockback attacks when you’re on the defensive. That’s to say nothing of the detritus you can collect and lob at opponents. In Rumbleverse, you must be aware of your surroundings at all times, whether you’re attacking or defending.Rumbleverse has a co-op mode, Duos, that lets you and a friend battle 19 other teams. The game play is essentially the same as the Solo mode, except that a partner can revive you when you're KO'd by an opponent. Rumbleverse's Power-Ups and PerksYou find power-ups in crates and chests that upgrade your stamina, health, and strength. Rumbleverse lets you max out your wrestler with 10 buffs, so you must pick and choose which ones to pop during a match. Depending on the special attack manuals you find, and the buffs you work on throughout a match, you can build toward a character type. You can go all-in on damage, turning yourself into a glass cannon; opt for a stamina-focused build that lets you attack without worrying about tiring; boost your health to make yourself a tank; or just go for a balanced build that does a bit of everything. Many battle royale games feature similar power-up systems, but Rumbleverse streamlines the mechanics so that they add richness to the action, without being too complex. Naraka: Bladepoint has a robust list of weapons and ability-enhancing gems to find, but it also incorporates tedious menu-navigation in order to swap things to your liking. Rumbleverse is fast and simple, so there are no additional layers of menu management to parse; you either take the power up or you don’t. Power ups are clearly denoted by color, and you can see the effect when downing the performance-enhancing drinks. Plus, the power gauge on the bottom right of the screen keeps an easy-to-read tally of your collected powers in your sight at all times.You also earn random, passive perks as you fight. These last the entirety of the match, and you earn them by dealing damage or eliminating foes, which is reflected in a designated perk meter. When the meter fills, you're assigned a random perk. These modify certain attacks to make them more powerful, like increasing area-damage from an elbow drop or reducing stamina when dashing. There are 15 perks in total, but you can only accrue 10 during a match. The perk meter also increases the cap required to fill it every time you earn a perk. As a result, it's highly unlikely that you'll max out your Perks before the end of a match. These elements balance the perks system.Collecting blue stars or attacking opponents builds up your super meter. Activate it when full, and you gain a notable damage boost and passive health regeneration. You also gain access to an impressive spinning piledriver finisher, which deals massive, KO-potential damage. You can even increase the damage by trampolining off cars to gain extra height for an even more potent and impressive finish. With so many options at your disposal, this seemingly simple-looking game feels shockingly rich and nuanced. It has an addictive quality that keeps you coming back for one more round.That said, there can be some wonkiness with priority and hit-registration at times, which makes the otherwise solid rock-paper-scissors combat feel inconsistent and irritating. Attacks are all labeled with clear designations (Power Priority or Special Priority, for example) that denotes which move lands if two players initiate an attack at the same time. Most of the time this works as intended. However, there are instances where, perhaps due to connection issues or latency, these trades don’t work exactly as you would expect. Or, as another example, an opponent may grapple you as you're dashing away. It can look a bit like the laggy backstabs from found in Dark Souls' PvP mode. With a melee, grab-happy game like Rumbleverse, this issue crops up in many ways and situations. It is an irritation, especially since the game relies so heavily on its action combat fundamentals. As Rumbleverse is a relatively new game, we hope Iron Galaxy can iron out some of these kinks as the game ages.  Can Your PC Run Rumbleverse?Rumbleverse offers a suite of graphics options, but it is not a graphically intense game. To run the game at minimum settings, your PC must have an AMD FX-8350 or Intel Core i5-3470 CPU, AMD Radeon HD 7790 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti graphics card, 6GB of RAM, 7GB of storage, and the Windows 10 operating system. The recommended system specs demand an AMD Ryzen 3 1300X or Intel Core i5-4570 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon HD 7870 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2 GPU. Our test PC, one equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, and 16GB of RAM, ran Rumbleverse at 60 frames per second (at 1440p resolution).On PC, Rumbleverse is an Epic Game Store exclusive, so it cannot be played officially on the Steam Deck. That said, you can install the Heroic Games Launcher on a Steam Deck to let the system run your Epic Games library. Rumbleverse features both cross-play and cross-save functionality. This means you can play with anyone, regardless of their platform. Likewise, you can also play on your system of choice, and carry over any progress you've made using an unified account.Rumbleverse is free-to-play, and monetizes its cosmetics, emotes, and experience gains. As you play, you gain experience towards the free battle pass that offers a few cosmetics and emotes. To get full access to all cosmetics and bonuses available throughout the game season, you must purchase the battle pass, which costs 1000 Brawlla Bills (the premium currency, which is equivalent to about $9). You can also buy specific cosmetics from the cash shop, which range from 250-1250 Brawlla Bills (roughly $2-$12). Brawlla Bills are sold in $10, $20, $50, and $100 increments, which award 1100, 2500, 6500, and 14,000 Brawlla Bills, respectively. Goofy Multiplayer FunIf you find that the shooter-heavy battle royale genre is starting to feel a bit stale, Rumbleverse may shake up the formula just enough to rope you back into the fold. Bold melee action, a rock-solid mechanical framework, and easy to grasp systems set the game apart from its contemporaries. Granted, the visuals are garishly cartoonish, and the odd hit detection can lead to genuine frustration in an otherwise mechanically sound game. Still, Rumbleverse is free to play, and the game offers surprisingly addicting multiplayer action. For more video game recommendations, check out PCMag’s Pop-Off YouTube Channel. For excellent Steam recommendations, be sure to visit PCMag's Steam Curator group.

weiterlesen: RSS Quelle öffnen