During the height of the pandemic last year, one game had come out of nowhere to take over Twitch and the wider online gaming landscape. And no I am not referring to Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Among Us, even though both games had also found tremendous success on the streaming platform. The game I am referring to is Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, which made its debut on both Steam and PlayStation Plus in the month of August. The game drew in all kinds of gamers with its colorful graphics and unique take on the battle royale genre, wherein up to 60 players compete in several rounds of game show-style gauntlets.
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Its runaway success had led many to wonder when it was going to make the move to other consoles, and even though its developer Mediatonic had maintained that there were no immediate plans to bring the game to the Nintendo Switch, most gamers knew it was simply a matter of time. So no one was really surprised when a Switch port was finally announced back in February. But following that port's indefinite delay, now seems like a good time to speculate on which version of the game would prove worthy of its "ultimate" qualifier. What follows are the perceived pros of the PC and Switch versions.
Pick Up and Play: Nintendo Switch
One of the key selling points of the Nintendo Switch is of course its portability. Gamers on the platform are no longer tethered to their couches or computer desktops when playing their favorite games. And it is this particular feature that would make it even more suitable for a game like Fall Guys, where players can hop in and out of matches with relative ease.
Switch players will be able to start up the game and join a match whether they are in front of their TVs or on the go. The PC version by comparison will require launching Steam (not to mention closing down any CPU guzzling programs not currently in use), before launching the game itself and connecting to a match.
Visuals & Performance: PC
Let's face it, the Nintendo Switch is not exactly a gaming powerhouse, with most games on the platform struggling to maintain a rock-solid framerate on the current hardware. And while a game like Fall Guys might not be considered particularly demanding in that regard, with its simplistic aesthetic and design, it would still be hard for the portable console to match the near buttery smoothness gamers have come to expect from a decent PC gaming rig.
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Most Nintendo Switch ports have to resort to heavy use of techniques like dynamic resolution scaling and reduced level of detail in order to match the capabilities of the hardware. So it would come down to how well optimized for the platform the Switch version of Fall Guys ends up being. But it is safe to assume that a 30 frames per second cap would probably be needed just to keep the game relatively playable.
Controls: Nintendo Switch
Nintendo were one of the pioneers of motion controls, having built the games on their Wii console around that particular control scheme. And each one of their consoles since then has included similar options. On the Switch, in particular, players can choose to play with the included joy-cons, a pro controller, or any other supported third-party controller. And in addition to motion controls, it also supports touchscreen controls, but only while playing in handheld mode.
The Nintendo Switch version of Fall Guys would hopefully take advantage of some of these additional control schemes, opening up even more options for players to choose from. Players playing Fall Guys on PC on the other hand are limited to a more traditional control scheme, either using a gamepad or a mouse and keyboard. Thankfully, the game itself is relatively easy to play with either one, requiring only three action buttons to jump, dive and grab.
Online Connectivity: PC
The Nintendo Switch's online capabilities, and its Nintendo Switch Online service specifically, has been severely lacking ever since the console launched in 2017, especially when compared to other competing consoles and services like Xbox Live or PlayStation Plus. Not only do most online games lack basic features like voice chat, but gamers also have to deal with connectivity issues, especially those playing over a Wi-Fi connection as opposed to LAN.
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By contrast, PC players have access to a more robust online experience, where features like party chat are integrated into the Steam client. They also have the option of using third-party apps like Discord to facility voice chat in games that do not support it natively. Switch players on the other hand have to resort to using their smartphones to access similar features through the Nintendo Switch Online app.
Cheating: Nintendo Switch
Some of you might remember the aptly named Cheater's Island, a seperate server where all the players that were found cheating in Fall Guys were lumped together. It was eventually discontinued in favor of more traditional ways of cheat prevention. But all that is to say that the game, like any other popular game, had a problem with cheaters.
Cheating, by default, is more prevalent on PC, because of the platform's comparative openness, giving would-be cheaters easy access to source files that can be manipulated or injected with external parameters. Thankfully, this would not be the case whenever the game launches on Nintendo Switch, where it is harder or next-to-impossible for those same techniques to work.