Rumble Club Review (Mobile & PC)

I can’t say I’d ever felt the need to punch a donut in the face before picking up Rumble Club — but that was a date with destiny that I wasn’t ever going to be able to avoid. It took a lot for me to develop that bitter feud with the sugary snack, for sure, but it wasn’t all that long before it lit the flame beneath my saltiness; it had this weird habit of getting under my skin, and it would stop at nothing to ensure that, whatever game it was that we were playing, I wouldn’t be the one to succeed and claim the fruits of my labor. And yes, I am talking about a donut—an annoyingly sprightly, candy-faced bundle of carbohydrates, at that. But that was just the one character who really pushed my buttons, and unfortunately, Rumble Club had a lot more of ‘em.

Rumble Club, in ways, really isn’t all that different from Fall Guys, or Rubber Bandits, for that matter. In a similar vein as the two aforementioned cult classics, players take to a series of vibrant obstacle courses and essentially thrash it out for a spot at the pinnacle of some form of virtual throne. With that, of course, comes a myriad of quick-fire bouts that see you and up to twenty rival fighters brawling till your heart’s content—an experience that comprises fast-paced, physics-based combat, and a ludicrous amount of mindless punching and mere guesswork. It isn’t quite on the same wavelength as Tekken, in the fact that, you don’t execute multi-button combos or trick shots; instead, you kick, punch, and, well, throw haymakers at donuts.

Rumble Club has just launched on PC and mobile, and so, if you are interested in checking it out, then be sure to read on.

The First Rule of Rumble Club…

If you’ve ever dipped your toes into the likes of Fall Guys, then you’ll no doubt already have a good idea of what Rumble Club aims to encapsulate. In short, it’s a twenty-player PvP battle royale game in which budding brawlers create their own rag doll-like avatar, and compete against other characters in a series of creative battles. In a similar fashion to what Fall Guys captured in its primary game modes, each round sees each of the twenty players fighting for the final spot on the board—a feat that is only accessible by utilizing weapons and other inanimate objects. It’s a familiar concept that we’ve seen take shape several times over, and therefore, any die-hard fan of the genre will surely enjoy Rumble Club’s latest iteration. The question is, does it elevate the blueprint, or is it more of a shameless attempt at imitating an established platform? Eh.

The good news is, that Rumble Club isn’t in receipt of only one mode; it actually has a rather generous catalog of mini-games and activities to participate in, such as a soccer-type sport, and even a pinball-type free-for-all, to round off just a couple. At its core, though, it’s a beat ‘em up brawler, and one that touts a continuous flow of maps, characters, and upgrades, all of which are shuffled at the beginning of each new season. To this end, it didn’t take much to coerce me into scraping its barrel squeaky clean and onboarding all of the introductory contents from its core. Needless to say that it certainly sported all of the appropriate bells and whistles, and although it did look a lot like a few alternatives, that didn’t exactly stop me from wanting to take a big ol’ bite outta that donut. And then punch it.

Throwing Fists

Rumble Club plays out in a similar fashion as just about every other game of its kind: you drop into an arena, and start swinging first around until you’ve managed to clobber someone so much, that they’re either ejected from the side of a floating tile, or booted from the lobby due to a spontaneous fit of rage. For me, I found that the latter was the most common; it didn’t take much to agitate the opposition, to be fair. And that’s the thing with beat ‘em up games, really — you don’t need to rely on skill to rack up a few wins; in fact, you just need to be lucky enough to land a few good hits and miraculously evade the spotlight until all but one remains intact. For the record, it wasn’t all that often that I reached the apex — but I was an idiot.

Arguably the best thing about Rumble Club is its accessibility; it isn’t a game that requires a whole lot of experience to be able to enjoy. Thankfully, as the gameplay mechanics are literally a few buttons, prompts, and triggers, it doesn’t take a genius to come to grips with how each round works, or even how to score a sufficient amount of points in a game, either. It’s an easy one to digest, for sure, and so, if you are somewhat new to arena-type games, then you’ll likely find the lion’s share of the game modes in Rumble Club an absolute doddle to play through — even when up against a slew of rival players.

A Couple of Hiccups

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, to be fair, that Rumble Club, being a free-to-play game at launch, has its own cabinet of paid content. With that said, I was surprisingly grateful, in the fact that it didn’t attempt to shovel unwanted perks down my throat for the sake of allowing me to enjoy a higher spot on the roster. As it turned out, the additional bonuses that it did offer were purely cosmetic, which, in short, meant that I didn’t need to stress about earning enough to splash out on all the biggest and most prestigious boosters or in-game upgrades. Don’t get me wrong, it was annoying, to say the least, but nowhere near as invasive as, say, Call of Duty: Warzone. And that’s saying something.

Progression-wise, it’s all rather by-the-numbers and essentially painted for you. In a similar manner as, well, every other online multiplayer game, you acquire XP for competing in rounds, with which you use to obtain higher levels and other forms of bragging power. There are coins, too, but again, these tend to tie in with the whole paid content packs that the game keeps stowed away on the side. I, being the stubborn person that I am, didn’t invest any money into it — but that isn’t to say that you shouldn’t. The question is, how much would you really be willing to spend on a new hat for your farm animal? If it’s a no-brainer, then boy, you’re going to adore splashing your cash in this one.

Verdict

Rumble Club might be a shameless representation of an older game, but it does manage to stand on its own two feet and bring a quality selection of original features to the mix, such as exclusive maps, avatars, and seasonal events. I won’t lie to you, but it is, more or less, a Fall Guys 2.0 — but that’s forgivable, as it doesn’t pretend to be anything less; it even mentions in the description that it’s a love letter to both Fall Guys and Stumble Guys. The fact is, anyone with a heart for these sorts of things can enjoy it, even though it does intentionally “borrow” one or two assets from other, arguably more popular blueprints.

The future is certainly bright for Rumble Club, I’ll say that much. It’s bright, mainly due to the fact that, even though there’s already a substantial amount of content in its world, there are still so, so many avenues for it to traverse in future updates and DLC. If, however, I had to choose which catalog to peruse, Rumble Club or Fall Guys, then naturally, I’d choose the latter, because it’s the product that I’m most comfortable with. With that said, if you were to ask me that exact same question several months from now, then I’d probably wager a different response. Again, perhaps it’s a little too early to tell — so I’ll just go ahead and park that one for the time being.

When all’s said and done, there are plenty of poor excuses for beat ‘em up brawler games out there, and Rumble Club simply isn’t one of them. It’s a clone, true, but as the saying goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.