Rumbleverse is the latest Battle Royale hit and is already thrilling hundreds of thousands of players shortly after its release. We explain the phenomenon to you.
Battle Royales are a dime a dozen, almost every major publisher has tried their hand at it in recent years: EA is betting on Apex Legends, Activision-Blizzard is celebrating great success with CoD: Warzone, Ubisoft fell flat on its face with Hyperscape and had to discontinue the title after 18 months – and Epic Games” Fortnite has been the biggest shooter in the world for years anyway.
Landing, looting, shooting – that”s a tried and tested concept. But sporadically, the genre is enriched with unused ideas. After the two successful titles Fall Guys and Naraka Bladepoint, Rumbleverse now wants to bring a breath of fresh air into the genre. We have played for over 20 hours and – despite the silly comic look – are extremely impressed.
What”s Rumbleverse about?
As mentioned at the beginning, Rumbleverse belongs to the genre of Battle Royales: Forty players are dropped onto a map and then duel on the ever-shrinking battlefield to crown a single champion.
But unlike the genre greats already listed, Rumbleverse has a distinct identity of its own. In Grapital City – the name of the game”s setting – everything revolves around wrestling.
So it”s not surprising that the fights here are fought with spectacular close combat moves instead of firearms. Each player always has a basic moveset that can be improved with loot. Simple punches, drop kicks and slams can be used directly after landing, special attacks like hard-hitting uppercuts and powerful choke slams must first be learned with found books.
Is it worth taking a look at Rumbleverse?
Rumbleverse does a lot of things right. Even the beginning of each game is much more entertaining than in Apex, Warzone and the like – instead of looking for weapons first, you can jump straight into the first fights.
These are based on a quick-to-learn rock-paper-scissors principle: blocking deflects blows, slow, powerful grappling attacks break through cover and fast blows break grappling attacks – and that”s fun as hell and works brilliantly.
As in any good fighting game, you have to make the right decision in a split second, anticipate your enemies” next move and avoid your own mistakes. For example, if your Shoryuken-style uppercut is blocked by your opponent”s block, you are helplessly exposed to a counterattack.
With its mixture of Battle Royale and pro wrestling, Rumbleverse is probably not for everyone – the comic graphics in particular are likely to be eyed particularly critically by many. But the game convinced us both mechanically and with its Free2Play model.
Pay2Win is not an issue at all, similar to the big competition Rumbleverse relies on an ingame shop with skins, emote and other cosmetic customisations that do not grant any benefits.
Therefore our tip: If you don”t expect a deep wrestling simulation and just want to let off steam in really entertaining brawls, take a look. It doesn”t cost anything and the download is quite manageable at just under 6 GB.
Editor”s verdict
Why do I enjoy Rumbleverse so much? It”s simple: the fights just work too well! For every frustrating moment here, there are ten terrific ones. There are few things cooler than jumping off the tallest building in the city (called the Body Building, hehe), falling a hundred metres and giving an unsuspecting enemy a fat elbow drop.
