Anyone play this? I picked it up for $25 during the Black Friday sale.

From reviews I got a sense of "it's mostly a return to form but not quite at the level of the GC originals" and so far I'd say that feels about right.

The single player is well, about what you'd expect. I'm not super far into it. Good so far, if a bit easy (again, very early in.) The only odd thing to me is that there is not really any penalty for failing, since there is no lives / continue system, if you die you just restart on the course you are on. The old way wasn't ideal but it felt like it demanded really getting to know the stages. I'll probably just burn through them all this way.

With that said when you finish a world (10 stages per world it seems?) it unlocks a time trial mode (with leaderboards!) which does demand more perfection if you want to actually do well on the leaderboards, since your time is for an entire world, not a single course. But I only have 1 other friend on my leaderboards, come on people, join me!

The online multiplayer is... interesting. They clearly tried to tap into the Fall Guys thing where it just selects a match type / stage for you and adds a ton of players (except less players, looks about 20 per match?) Some of the modes are neat, some are sort of so so, all of them are chaotic. I'm enjoying it. HOWEVER. It's pretty clear that it's basically all bots. I think maybe 1 or 2 other real people at most. Sometimes probably 0. Not sure much can be done about that if not a lot of people are playing.

It also has a (totally free) battle pass / shop system and that's kind of fun, a TON of customization for your characters / balls / etc.

Haven't played the offline multiplayer, not sure how it works, the same games just a lot less people? (Or does it also fill in with bots?)

Biggest missed opportunity: WHY IS THERE NO 20 PLAYER MONKEY TARGET? That would have been the most hilariously awesome thing ever. Even if they are all bots!