Have you ever pushed a fellow bean into the slime in Fall Guys on purpose? I have. I stood there and watched as their gelatinous body disappeared from view, and for a fleeting second, I hoped that just like in Call of Duty Warzone, Fall Guys had proximity death chat.
I don’t know what that bean would have said to me at that moment exactly, but I imagine it would have been full of screaming, profanities, and disbelief, especially since we were on the final level. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised I wanted to hear what they had to say.
I say this as a person who takes Fall Guys very seriously. Despite the game’s colourful design and playful tones, there’s nothing else in the world that gets me raging quite like Mediatonic’s masterpiece. I’ve played and won countless Warzone matches, eaten far too many PUBG: Battlegrounds chicken dinners, and ended too many lives on Escape From Tarkov, but Fall Guys? It’s a whole different story.
Every time another bean puts their grubby little hands on my perfectly sequined outfit, I take it as a declaration of war. At every opportunity, I’ll do my best to give that overconfident bean a little love tap, hoping that they’ll mistime their jump onto the lily pad or seesaw and fall to their death.
This desire is only increased on games with slime, which pretty much heighten the stakes there and then. If I can push someone off the edge on Slime Climb and make it all the way to the end, it’s a job well done. If I don’t, but I take someone with me, it’s still a win in my books.
But do you know the biggest disappointment in all of this? You can’t hear other beans scream.
Where’s the trash talk when you shove someone off the edge in Block Party? Where’s the scream when you knock someone into the path of a strawberry in Fruit Shoot? I want the thrill of the fight in all of this; I want the drama.
There’s nothing more satisfying that getting the edge over your opponent. In Warzone, hearing someone lob their controller halfway across the room because you bested them in a Gulag fight is like music to my ears, but Fall Guys doesn’t cater for that.
I know in my stone cold heart it’s because Fall Guys isn’t a game that breeds toxicity – at least for normal people. But can you imagine the hilarity of having death chat, even if it was for a limited time? It would make being the last bean standing just that bit sweeter, even if it is for all the wrong reasons.