Red Dead The Royal Battle Online is slow, tense and nothing looks like Fortnite

The explosive popularity of Fortnite and PUBG means that the royal battle has become a genre in itself. This year, some of the biggest names in the game have adopted royal battle, ranging from Call of DutyFast Battles at Supercell Brawling stars. Rockstar now launches into action with Red Dead Online, the multiplayer spin-off of Red Dead Redemption 2.

While the main call to Red Dead Online is its "free" story-based mode, it also offers a number of competitive options, including a BR style mode called "do it count." It may have been inspired by the blockbusters of the Royal Battle, but it proposes something very different. If you feel overwhelmed by the complex nature of Fortnite, Red Dead Online offers something simpler, slower and much more tense.

There are two important things to know about "Make it count". First, his battles with the last fighters are relatively small, with groups of 16 or 32 players fighting each other. Second, you are extremely limited in terms of weapons. This is not a game where you are dropped on an island and you can roam the buildings in search of all kinds of rifles and grenades. Instead, you get a bow and a knife and that's it. That said, it has an increasingly small playing field that forces players to get closer to each other as the game progresses.

This structure means that everyone plays very carefully. There are a lot of things squatting behind the blanket, waiting for the perfect shot. People who run tend to be those who are quickly eliminated. The maps of the mode make this type of game very easy. Every place I played had many places to go to the shelter, my favorite being a tobacco farm with dense fields in which I could go for a walk. There is an incredible thrill when someone runs near you and does not even notice you in the middle of the thick foliage.

"Make it count" has a tension that is largely absent from many other games of the Royal Battle. When I die Fortnite, it's not so bad; at least I gained experience and overcame some challenges. But Red Dead OnlineThe catch has a much more singular purpose. The only goal is to survive and to be the last person standing. I had an amazing time playing yesterday when I reached the last three games, and another player spotted me at the same time I saw them. We both fired our bows and shot simultaneously and we killed ourselves, giving the third player the victory.

The disadvantage of this more methodical style of royal battle is that it is not necessarily fun to watch. Like others in the genre, "make it count" offers a spectator mode after being eliminated from a match. But watching someone sit behind a wooden box for five minutes is not so much fun. With the right viewing tools, I could see it becoming a better viewer experience, but for now, there is not much to watch.

Unfortunately, with the path Red Dead Online manage its competitive modes, you can not just get into a series of "make it count". Instead, the game has playlists, which serve seemingly random modes. Outside the royal battle, Red Dead Online offers a fairly standard list of competitive options, ranging from a team mode where you have to capture a territory to a solo battle where you try to collect the largest number of casualties. That's good, but it's frustrating not being able to play what you want.

Of course, Red Dead Online is still in a fairly early beta; it does not even open to all Red Dead Redemption 2 players until tomorrow. There is a good chance that this will change and improve with time. And I hope that is the case. The heart of the experience is so intense and exciting that "making it count" might be my favorite part of Red Dead Online until there. You only get one bow, but it turns out to be more than enough.