Cliff Blezinski's new game. Early Access: 80's inspired Battle Royale game

Look I'm not going to lie. I think this looks like a sequel to Drawn 2 Death and I'm pretty disapointed that Cliffy B has been reduced to a trend chaser. But who knows, maybe it's great.

Welcome to Radical Heights, a free *X-TREME Early Access* Battle Royale shooter. Partake in high-stakes gunplay in a sunny SoCal dome as you loot for weapons, gadgets, cosmetics, and CASH that you take with you - win or lose! Survive to the end or risk it all in this irreverent action game show where everyone wants to be rich and famous! Play for FREE starting April 10: http://store.steampowered.com/app/809... Learn more about the game: radicalheights.com

This is kinda sad. A "me too" battle royale game with an 80s motif that would've felt tired and lame even a year ago. Maybe it'll actually play well...

Nope....

I hope we get some good footage of Cliffy getting mad as hell about people comparing this to Battlegrounds.

Lets wait and see.

I woulda killed for a spiritual successor to Unreal proper.

It looks worth checking out after seeing the trailer.

Is this another million dollar IP that's supposed to be the "Dark Souls of Battle Royale?" What niche does this game even fill? It's probably going to pull another Lawbreakers and enter into a genre too late and get dumped by its playerbase within a week. "Fortnite but with the 80's," doesn't really seem like something that makes any sense when the genre is already dominated by PUBG and Fortnite.

I'm not one to be immediately down on this game. I am not really into Fortnite, and have mostly stopped playing PUBG (even though I love it) because of the hacking issues and remaining buggy performance. If they can put their own interesting spin on the gametype, I'll gladly give it a shot. And if it's insufferable, it'll be quickly forgotten.

This looks really bad. I hope I am proven wrong, but shit dude

The footage alone doesn't look great, but also it's just concept footage. The thing that worries me more is the only real hook for this game isn't a new mechanic or 'twist', it's just...80s battle royale. They need to say *how* and *why* being 80s makes it special, not just say "y'all like arcades?" and be done with it.

Yeah, I really wish Cliffy B & co would just double down on their own ideas instead of copying whats popular. There's tons of things you could do to make a great new UT without adding hero shooter bullshit into the mix. Quake Champions also fell into the same trap. This doesnt look interesting to me but I didnt like PUBG or Fornite either.

Honestly i'd rather they (Boss Key) tried making a single player game that could actually withstand the test of time and not require an active playerbase.

This already doesn't look great, it's got a very weird mod of an old game look to it, the way the environments are detailed and stiffness to the aiming and movement. As the next game after Lawbreakers failed...yikes. At least it's free to play this time I guess.

Well it comes out in early access tomorrow so everybody can see if it has potential or not.

@oursin_360: fun! See you then!

Yea... first thought is "Welp, 80's nostalgia is popular. Battle Royale is popular. Easy money!" Gave it a watch anyway and it doesn't look good.

@handlas: to be fair its early access stuff.

Looks absolutely awful.

The thing is. If they'd used this aesthetic and some of the ideas on a straight up arena shooter. I'd be more interested. Battle Royale just reeks of copycats.

Unless this thing manages to differentiate itself in some sort of amazing way, I feel like Boss Key has a not-insignificant chance of repeating what happened with Lawbreakers. That's... sort of impressive.

This game comes across as completely cynical trend chasing in both genre and aesthetic. I also don't have any confidence that Boss Key will be able to release content at a pace to early adopters engaged. In other words, even if the game is interesting at launch it will probably quickly lose its playerbase.

When I saw the name I thought it would be a battle royale game that took place entirely within an enormous skyscraper. That would have been a cool idea. Unlike this.

This straight up isn't going to work. Fortnite already cornered the tried and true followup tactic of making the art style more cartoony and being free. The only thing a new Battle Royale game can do to break into the big leagues now is shear production value from a AAA publisher. I doubt these smaller efforts are going to cut it.

It looks bad, but probably not the worst move. I have to imagine Boss Key are in a precarious position after Lawbreakers. I have to imagine this was put together fairly quickly, so if this can catch on a bit, it'll perhaps help keep the company afloat.

More than anything, I'm mostly curious to see how much Fortnite has actually cornered the free battle royale market or if this will actually carve out a sustainable audience for itself. Not that this failing would be a definitive indicator that there is no room in the market for another competitor, but it'll be interesting to see.

Also, we're definitely going to be hearing some Internet Dan in response to this thing. The newsreader's tie said "Fuck off" whoooa!

But yeah, if this is anything like Lawbreakers, it'll be Playerbase Unavailable's Battlegrounds.

Why?

The vending machine ideas is new and I have said bicycles in PUBG would be something.

Sure, why not? I'm in and out of this idea lol Part of me feels like it's Cliffy saying "Fine! Lets just make the most popular crap out there right now because that's all anyone cares about!" so he picked Battle Royale and 80s retro stuff which seems to be all the rage. Kinda seems tongue in cheek.

And unlike everyone else here, I don't see why this is so bad compared to all these other Battle Royale games. PUBG and Fortnite both look "bad" to me.. This one just has a fun 80s paint job on it and maybe some silly extra elements in there like bike tricks and stuff. Be sweet if its got a bunch of awesome 80s themed knock-off music too haha Will I try it? Highly doubt it as I had my fill of the genre with PUBG for a week.

Love the 80s though.

please don't insult SO like that :(

I was going to make a joke about 100 MArcus Fenixes dropping onto an island, then I read the world X-TREME! and my stomach turned and couldn't go through with it.

This thing looks only slightly better than one of those Unity engine asset flips that comes out on Steam every 5 minutes. Embarrassing.

This doesn't look *terrible*, and I don't blame a small studio like Boss Key to jump on the PUBG wagon after their debut game flopped, but there's something about seeing once-legends like Cliffy or Jaffee putting stuff like this out that just feels wrong.

I mean, until Unreal happened and changed everything, Epic always felt like "Discount Apogee" save for some quality outliers, so Dude Huge having his name tied to some low-budget stinkers is nothing new. But maaaan... this just reminds me of Romero making NGage games and such after Ion Storm wanged it.

I just hope Cliffy never puts out an app where you have to chip away at a cube until a tiny Cliffy steps out and gives you a "life-changing" prize that turns out to be worth less than an expired Applebee's coupon.

Epic could probably put their millions of dollars of money into Fortnite and throw out a map based on an arcade and 200 80s themed weapons, skins and clothes in the next few weeks and completely steal whatever little thunder this thing has.

At least the price is right.

Tbh everybody was saying similar stuff about epic and fortnight. Battle royal is the thing now, their original idea almost bankrupt them(probably epic too actually). People claim to want originality yet the money doesnt lie.

@andythemez: GTA online actually had a PUBG like mode, played some of it didn't like it.

@shagge: Say what you will about Jaffe, at least Drawn to Death was unique. Radical Heights is the exact opposite.

Everything about this trailer feels as though it is too late to the party. Even the way they use the 80s theme feels dated, somehow. But hey, might turn out alright when it’s done. But looking at Lawbreakers, my faith in it’s viability isn’t huge.

this feels cynical, like Cliff got pissed off at the Battle Royale success and the 80's "nostalgia" so he slapped the two together...

if this is genuine then I feel like an asshole, but ugh...

This looks like the RPO of Battle Royale games.

Okay, actually it seems like they have an alternate history thing going one here, and that's cool. I mean, it seems like a lot more backstory than any other BR style game gets.

Are people really looking for another Battle Royale game right now of all times? I assume as more of these come out market saturation will quickly reach a high and you'll see a handful of failed BR games, just like what happened with the TF2 style games where Overwatch struck it big, but the other slowly faded away. Lawbreakers being one of them. You know, his last project. Seems crazy Cliffy is setting himself up for the same (possible) failure again. I wonder if he'll alienate his audience again before this one launches too.

This looks so, so bad.. as one of the few people that liked Lawbreakers, this is not where I expected them to go.

Blezinski is credited with Fortnite on his wiki page, my man can't get enough battle royale.

@chaser324: Playing decently didn't help Lawbreakers at all.

@theflamingo352: based on this footage, thats all they have going. Thats what turns me off, it doesn't seem to have anything interesting going on. PUBG and Fortnite both have very strong identities. This doesn't, not yet anyway.

Cliff seems to be weirdly out of touch with the gaming trends these days. Lawbreakers was a weird 90’s type arena shooter with a hero system slotted in and an awkward gravity gimmick. This looks like another strange move to have this Retro aesthetic but no other real distinguishable traits. Maybe it’s time to take a step back for Dude Huge.

This reminds me of all the failed WoW-chasing MMOs that came out from around 2006-2009 and are almost all completely forgotten about now. What I wonder though is, how many of those games actually "failed" in the sense of losing money and how many actually made a decent profit before fading away. I know there were some high profile flops, but I suspect a lot of them ended up in the black even though most people dismissed them as also-rans.

Point being, so long as the development costs are cheap, I could easily see this being a successful business move for Cliffy B, even if the mainstream gaming media and fans dismiss it as trend-chasing bore. And if it does make a profit, I hope that fuels the development of something more interesting.

True that. And Drawn gave us Internet Dan, so I can't trash it *too* hard, even if I can barely look at that game in motion without getting a headache.

Even the name is a tragedy.

I wish. I would actually play a battle royal game like that.