Radical Heights - First Look

{Radical Heights} is the latest Battle Royale game to make a play for the growing audience that's building around the likes of {PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds} and {Fortnite}. Like early genre offering {The Culling} it's heavily based on a TV show premise, and it borrows a lot of the staples that have been pioneered elsewhere. However, it stands apart from the crowd thanks to its neon-edged art style, with grainy VHS-era visuals further immersing you in the '80s mood that Boss Key Productions is trying to capture. Straight away you'll be running around in tight shorts and tighter spandex, riding on your BMX, and generally looking awesome/terrible (edit to suit your opinion of '80s fashion) with your aviators on and your perfectly-curled perm blowing in the wind. Throw in the game show commentator who bombards you with rad comments and you've got a game with plenty of attitude.

This latest foray into the world of last man standing online multiplayer landed just days after Boss Key announced that the development of Lawbreakers had been put on ice. After the dust had settled on that piece of news, the studio moved to refocus our collective attention on its next project, and it's fair to say that the tactic worked. For better and for worse.

{Lawbreakers} could yet become a turning point when viewed through the lens of hindsight. It was {Titanfall 2} before it that proved that you can make an excellent shooter and still watch it struggle in the face of the entrenched heavyweights (the likes of CoD, Battlefield, Halo, and CSGO). {Overwatch} is the obvious exception that proves the rule, but then again, the hero format derived from the MOBA genre set it apart from the military-themed crowd and Blizzard are, well, Blizzard. Even the old guard can struggle; people purred about the reboot of {Doom}, but it was the solo campaign that wowed players and the team-based part of the package was farmed out to an external studio and never really hit the mainstream. You could argue that {Rainbow Six: Siege} has mixed things up a little, but that's not strictly speaking a new IP and even then Ubisoft backed it to the hilt. {Lawbreakers} had everything it needed to survive the landscape as it once was, yet it never developed the critical mass of players needed to take off, and so its creators essentially put it out to pasture and moved onto something else.

The top tier shooter franchises are still plenty popular and the audience is definitely there, but the obvious risks associated with going up against the games mentioned above with a new property are going to put off plenty of devs and many of those who brave it are going to struggle. Boss Key found out the hard way. But there is another path, and as PUBG and Fortnite have so aptly demonstrated over the last year or so, there's still an insatiable appetite among shooter fans for online action and excitement. It's just now the landscape has changed and the stakes have been raised, and instead of 4vs4 or 8vs8 squad battles played between polished teams on tight maps with respawns galore, now we're seeing game modes and standalone titles that give each player one life and a selection of weapons, and then encourages them to kill everyone and anyone they meet. Mortal peril is proving to be a simple but effective hook. The rise of permadeath mechanics and their spread into other genres no doubt helped, but it took mods born of the survival genre on PC to completely refocus the FPS space (more on that here) and give birth to the Battle Royale phenomena that we know today.

That's a lot of context for a preview of an early access game with such a simple core concept, but the fact that Boss Key and {Radical Heights} are at the very intersection of this shift between squad-based combat and last player standing chaos makes it an interesting case study. It's no coincidence that a number of these games are themed around TV shows: they're pure entertainment. There are no second chances and mistakes are severely punished, there's always plenty going on, and lots of people are involved which ensures unpredictability. Throw that lot together with guns, explosions, and the odd dash of luck, and as we've established by now, you've got a winning combination.

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A neon skin on a proven formula isn't going to be enough to ensure success though, and Boss Key has addressed this need for variety and individuality by introducing a few twists on the now-established setup. We're not fans of all of the design decisions as they are now, but they certainly change the dynamic. The most obvious is the map, which is split into grids. You jump down into the world, plunging from the skies before landing with a roll (parachutes are for wimps, after all), but straight away certain grids are out of bounds. Once everyone has landed and the game is up and running these zones will then revert to a more traditional system whereby the playing area shrinks inwards, but initially at least players are very much funneled towards one another.

The change of pace at the start is really noticeable, but not always in a positive way. Players are pushed towards one another practically straight away, and we died plenty of times before we'd even picked up a weapon. We liked the quick introduction to the action, but we didn't like dying because we hadn't been lucky enough to find a gun straight away. This could be fixed by either arming everyone from the start with a basic ranged weapon, or by leaving more weapons in the starter areas for players to find sooner. We don't mind dying near the start of a round (it happens often enough), but when it can take several minutes to get back into a game it's not much fun to die without having what we consider a fair crack of the whip. More action, fewer lobbies, please.

That's our main structural concern, but there are other issues that need a lot of work. For starters, while we loved the VHS visual filter, it does mask some fairly boring buildings and scenery. A lot of the structures are mere shells with little or no interesting detail in them, and despite the funky art style we weren't blown away by the rest of the world. There are plenty of fun features, but the same level of personality isn't found throughout the world. It's hard to argue with the way they've gone about releasing the game, it free-to-play after all, but the world needs a lot more polish as it moves through its development.

The game is monetised via a cosmetic unlock system that's convoluted if you're a freeloader, but pretty simple to use if you're a paying player. The cosmetics are, admittedly, a lot of fun, and we enjoyed some of the costumes we saw being worn by other players, and it all feeds into the vibe that Boss Key is clearly aiming for. You can grab new guns and items by punching cash machines and spending the money that drops at stations found around the world, with more interesting weapons available beyond the rank and file guns you can pick up on the ground. If you want to unlock certain cosmetic items permanently you'll have to either jump through some hoops and interact with the system that has been put in place, or you'll need to put your hand in your pocket.

Traversal around the world is largely straightforward, although you can get around via more novel means such as trampolines and zip wires (most of our experience with them was in the loading area - we spent a fair amount of time there). We also enjoyed watching other players peddle around on bikes, although we didn't much like playing with them ourselves. Of all the individual features we interacted with, this is probably the one area that needs the most attention as the physics around the bike-handling are not good at the time of writing. Don't get us wrong, we love the idea, but it needs some serious tinkering if it's going to be a good feature.

It's in ongoing development, so rough edges are to be expected. Indeed, smoothing them out is basically the point. Boss Key wants to build a community around the game while it improves and enhances what's already there. The foundations that have been laid down thus far are very barebones and the studio probably could have fleshed it out a little more before releasing it, but what's there is perfectly functional and we quite enjoyed the time we spent playing it this week. It's rough, it's raw, it's neon-tinged silliness, and it's got potential.

After the missteps made with {Lawbreakers}, Boss Key is a studio with a point to prove. Given how early on in the development process the game has launched, it's a journey we're going to watch unfold over an extended period of time. There's promise in the foundations of {Radical Heights}, certainly, but there's also plenty to do if this take on the Battle Royale formula is going to mix it with the big boys.