Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is one of the freshest takes on the Battle Royal genre, and I’ll tell you all about it. Created by Mediatonic, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is not your typical last man standing wins battle royal. Some of these challenges include trying to steal tails off the rear ends of competing players, or trying to sink oversized soccer balls in the other team’s goal. That doesn’t mean griefing doesn’t exist in “Fall Guys.” The game isn’t always fair, which could be a point of frustration for some.

Editor’s note: This review is based on a copy of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout given to HeyPoorPlayer by the publisher. This is a party game, after all, and in party games, the main draw is more often hectic, zany fun that it is winning. In one of my favourite game modes, you and your team have to roll a ball to the finish line, which sounds simple, until the other team start to get in the way and then all hell breaks loose.

Players can still be jerks in Fall Guys, though. The game is a Battle Royale at its core but presented as a game show. While it might take a couple games to get a feel for how high and far your character can jump, as well as figure out the overly-sensitive camera controls, Fall Guys is simple enough.

Up to 60 online players compete against each other in a variety of game modes in order to qualify for the next rounds and have a chance at winning this fictional game show. Not all of them are engaging enough to hold up long-term, particularly levels with too much downtime or repetitive patterns, but most are.

It’s a clever, well-executed subversion of the battle royale genre that takes the genre’s most deflating aspect (failure) and converts it into fun. A see-saw bridge may seem like a simple obstacle until it becomes clear that, once it flips up, other players’ weight is needed to bring it back down.