What I love about BattleBit isn't that it's fun. It's not that it's tactical, either, and I don't find it particularly compelling as a platform for teamwork. As much as I like sticking it to the man, my admiration also doesn't stem from it being a cheaper, more approachable version of Battlefield.
BattleBit makes dying a therapeutic form of art.
All too often, I find death in these games frustrating. You're pulled in by the punchiness of the guns, the gorgeous vistas, and the hard-hitting combat. But all too often, that realism compounds frustration. I want to be immersed in the world in front of me, but I can't because I'm stupid, part of my disability is a reduction in motor capability, and I have this constant, nagging feeling that I'm worse off than the others around me.
What BattleBit does to address this is three-fold: its dedication to a simplistic art style means you take it less seriously, everyone is as vulnerable as you are, and toxicity is actually dealt with. I wrote in my review for Unturned over a year ago that one of the key features of a blocky art style is that it's inherently goofy. It's a flavor of minimalism that favors a more tongue-in-cheek approach, whether or not that was the intent. And it works a lot here! Roblox comparisons are inevitable, and as long as they're welcome, I'll say that this reminds me of the string of really fun First Person Shooters on the platform before it became a shamelessly commercial enterprise. BattleBit might not have the originality of Framed! or Very Important Person, but it's far more polished than either of those ever were and doesn't need to rely on any Freemium trappings to get the job done. If I were to make a serious comparison to any of the games on Roblox now, the obvious candidate is Phantom Forces. I don't find the movement to be as smooth here, but what BattleBit manages to smooth over is a lot of the frustrating aspects of Phantom Forces. Phantom Forces is a game where, roughly eight times out of ten, the optimal strategy I find myself using is to pull an automatic shotgun with a twenty-round drum and unload. It doesn't work to the degree that a sniper would, but still manages to be lots of fun to use. While that's entertaining to a degree, it doesn't fix the fact that Phantom isn't the most balanced of games. You'll have rounds where that strategy can do wonders for you, but you'll also have games where you're always just absolutely being stomped on by players who have had hundreds of hours more experience than you have. It's to BattleBit's benefit that the first time I decided to snipe, somebody from halfway across the map got me. If anyone wanted to do the same to them, they could without hesitation. While, in theory, this sounds ridiculously frustrating, I find that the larger servers create an entirely different beast. Death is not an exception that good soldiers dodge, it's the expectation. You're not playing to win or to even see if you can, but to see how far you can push yourself before something gets you. In that sense, the rules of the game fade into the background. Winning or losing just kind of happens; everything else around them may fade into a blur at some point, but generally speaking, it's kind of a relaxing experience overall. It's super strange to say that about a game whose overwhelmingly chaotic nature will turn anyone expecting a fast-paced, Call of Duty-like arcade experience at the gate. But genuinely, I find losing to be fun here. And I think what reinforces that is that, at least at a cursory glance, the developers seem to be aware of what these kinds of games devolve into. Before entering any of the official servers, you pretty much have to click on an agreement where you promise to be a civilized little gamer and comfortably enjoy your time playing without needing to take casually trash-talk too far. The Steam forums are, predictably, not happy about this. But the people who frequent those have an unhealthy relationship with the word Woke that borders on limerent, so I don't care.
If you really don't care for multiplayer shooters, this isn't going to do much to change your mind. But otherwise, I highly recommend this.
BattleBit makes dying a therapeutic form of art.
All too often, I find death in these games frustrating. You're pulled in by the punchiness of the guns, the gorgeous vistas, and the hard-hitting combat. But all too often, that realism compounds frustration. I want to be immersed in the world in front of me, but I can't because I'm stupid, part of my disability is a reduction in motor capability, and I have this constant, nagging feeling that I'm worse off than the others around me.
What BattleBit does to address this is three-fold: its dedication to a simplistic art style means you take it less seriously, everyone is as vulnerable as you are, and toxicity is actually dealt with. I wrote in my review for Unturned over a year ago that one of the key features of a blocky art style is that it's inherently goofy. It's a flavor of minimalism that favors a more tongue-in-cheek approach, whether or not that was the intent. And it works a lot here! Roblox comparisons are inevitable, and as long as they're welcome, I'll say that this reminds me of the string of really fun First Person Shooters on the platform before it became a shamelessly commercial enterprise. BattleBit might not have the originality of Framed! or Very Important Person, but it's far more polished than either of those ever were and doesn't need to rely on any Freemium trappings to get the job done. If I were to make a serious comparison to any of the games on Roblox now, the obvious candidate is Phantom Forces. I don't find the movement to be as smooth here, but what BattleBit manages to smooth over is a lot of the frustrating aspects of Phantom Forces. Phantom Forces is a game where, roughly eight times out of ten, the optimal strategy I find myself using is to pull an automatic shotgun with a twenty-round drum and unload. It doesn't work to the degree that a sniper would, but still manages to be lots of fun to use. While that's entertaining to a degree, it doesn't fix the fact that Phantom isn't the most balanced of games. You'll have rounds where that strategy can do wonders for you, but you'll also have games where you're always just absolutely being stomped on by players who have had hundreds of hours more experience than you have. It's to BattleBit's benefit that the first time I decided to snipe, somebody from halfway across the map got me. If anyone wanted to do the same to them, they could without hesitation. While, in theory, this sounds ridiculously frustrating, I find that the larger servers create an entirely different beast. Death is not an exception that good soldiers dodge, it's the expectation. You're not playing to win or to even see if you can, but to see how far you can push yourself before something gets you. In that sense, the rules of the game fade into the background. Winning or losing just kind of happens; everything else around them may fade into a blur at some point, but generally speaking, it's kind of a relaxing experience overall. It's super strange to say that about a game whose overwhelmingly chaotic nature will turn anyone expecting a fast-paced, Call of Duty-like arcade experience at the gate. But genuinely, I find losing to be fun here. And I think what reinforces that is that, at least at a cursory glance, the developers seem to be aware of what these kinds of games devolve into. Before entering any of the official servers, you pretty much have to click on an agreement where you promise to be a civilized little gamer and comfortably enjoy your time playing without needing to take casually trash-talk too far. The Steam forums are, predictably, not happy about this. But the people who frequent those have an unhealthy relationship with the word Woke that borders on limerent, so I don't care.
If you really don't care for multiplayer shooters, this isn't going to do much to change your mind. But otherwise, I highly recommend this.
SNESmapper
10 months ago