No matter how you look at it, the realm of battle royale games is growing at an exponential rate with no signs of slowing down. What started as PUBG and Fortnite competing for your attention has blown out of proportion, forcing the heavy hitters Call of Duty and Battlefield to bring their own version to the table; each with its own hook. Vigor’s claim to fame will likely be the major changes to the tried and true formula of dropping into an open-world map and managing to come out on top against your opponents – you can drop into the map fully stocked with weapons and exit the game without even so much as seeing another player.

You begin the game in Norway circa the 1990s in a run-down shack that serves as your base of operations. Here you can craft items, upgrade the camp, customize your character’s appearance, and manage your inventory between matches. If those options were not enough of an incentive to explore the area, the storefront asking for real money in exchange for loot boxes and items is conveniently housed here as well. If the dreaded micro-transactions are not your thing, it’s worth noting that the game is very accessible without spending a dime. Regardless of whether you drop real-world money or not, you’ll earn crowns which work as the in-game currency that can be exchanged for cosmetics, crafting blueprints, and in-game buffs which are handled in a unique way. Once you opt to join a server and get matched with up to 16 other players (usually around 8 in my experiences), you’ll be given the option to drop some crowns to increase the value of the loot within the game (for everyone, not just you), buy insurance to allow you to keep your inventory in the event of your untimely death, or increase the value of the supply drop.

Once you’re randomly placed into the map, you’ll be set free to explore the area and head towards the designated drop point, exploring and looting as you go. Unlike the competition, you don’t get to select your starting point and will occasionally have a decent haul to get to the designated drop zone. The open-world environments look better than most of the similar games on the market, are a bit smaller than what you may be used to, and make up for the size by including a handful of maps each with their own weather patterns and unique areas that feel more in line with the homes you’d explore in The Last of Us than PUBG, with significantly less cut and pasted textures and rooms. Even with the smaller maps and more varied environments, they are a bit too large for the number of players per game, as I’ve completed more than half of the games I’ve joined without so much as seeing another player.

Each match takes around 15 minutes, giving the players plenty of time to work their way towards the drop point, possibly fighting over the drop, and exiting before the radiation storm kills everyone on the map. Since combat is entirely optional, it’s possible that the other players may just be going on about their business foraging for supplies, but more than likely they will try to kill you and… It’ll be a bit of a slapping match until someone manages to land a shot. The game runs perfectly fine when it comes to just exploring and what have you, but each and every time I ran into another player the frame rate drops to what seems like 10fps and results in dancing around each other as you take pot shots that rarely land; when they do, the results are ugly. Not only is almost every shot a one-hit kill, but the animations also skip the whole falling over dead part, going from standing to laying on the ground in the blink of an eye.

While I am normally the guy who ignores the objectives in most multiplayer games focusing on a kill count, the exhilarating feeling of capturing a drop and hauling ass to the exit uncontested is something that is often missing from other battle royale games. The problem here lies within the extremely slow areas in between, as the drop seems to take a lifetime to finally land with nothing to fill the gaps. With only solo or two-player squad-based modes being offered at the time of writing this, there isn’t much to keep your attention unless you’re really into crafting and upgrading your base. Within the menus, there are some features such as base cosmetic options that are listed as coming soon, so hopefully, new modes and a bigger player count are coming down the pipe.

If you have the patience, Vigor offers a different take on the BR genre that will likely improve as time goes on providing the player base is there. As it stands, you have nothing to lose but your time since this is a free-to-play title; just be sure to keep your expectations in check.

6 out of 10

Pros

• Start Matches Fully Stocked
• Better Looking Than Most Battle Royales
• A Forgiving Paywall

Cons

• Combat is Rough
• Low Player Count Makes for Slower BR Experience

Vigor was developed and published by Bohemia Interactive. It is available on X1. The founder’s pack was provided to us for reviewing purposes on X1. If you’d like to see more of Vigor, check out the game’s official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

 

 

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.