Fortnite is all about getting into a colorful world and getting resources to build ultimate defenses and hunker down for a long night. Sounds fun, right? The ultimate objective of Fortnite is to create an impressive and kick-ass defense base and powerup the defense line from other players. Defending successfully against an ongoing attack and preventing your base from collapsing to the ground is the game’s primary motive. You will look miserable and noob at the game if you are not very good at defense and scavenging resources for your progress.
Fortnite became a metaverse and evolved itself more than a game. It became an online space where players worldwide come to play, fun, create great things, and compete against each other in virtual events.
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Epic Games has come forward as a leading brand to push things in the right direction and make a successful battle royale shooter game. Redefining the battle royale like PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds and breaking out of genre, and creating its division is Epic Games’ success.
By looking at the trajectory of the popularity and success of Fortnite, the expectations of many critics show that game will top charts for several years. It remains one of the finest and fun-packed battle royale that get overshadowed by divisive public opinions.
Fortnite battle royale core concept offers replayability and is easily understandable and fun-packed with scrabbling and building the defenses. The real star is its sub-modes and instant battle royale. Fortnite offers going up on a rocket, dropping out of party buses, scavenge weapons before other players, building a strong defense, and take out your competition and get resources from raids. Respawning does not include in gameplay as we have seen in some of the open-world games. But it is compensated by the instant rematch and joining the gameplay.
Fortnite is becoming a cultural touchstone, and its moves are becoming part of society. We have seen Footballers and stars of different sports making Fortnite moves. Originally started as a zombie tower defense game with free to play experience, it is now an example of a masterclass by developers. Fortnite is continuously evolving itself, and the current situation is pretty much different from the initially released version of the game.
Millions of players invested their time and money in Fortnite due to its divine gameplay. Gameplay modes, maps, weapons, and systems continuously evolving and keeping the fanbase bounded to the game. Having continuous popularity among gamers is rare for a game, but this masterpiece kept its worth right. Fortnite is an example of the game which kept its interest for many years.
Thankfully Fortnite offers more gameplay aside from running inside a circle and watching our enemies across the map, as we saw in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The maps are smaller and look compact as compared to PUBG. You do not have to run across the map to survive from an ever-shrinking circle and focus on gameplay, which is undoubtedly more than a relief for the Fortnite type of storyline.
Maps have islands containing uniquely built cities and have impressive structures bounded to each of these cities. They have diversity from suburbs containing houses, malls, outdoor areas, and office districts containing skyscrapers. Each map has random loot in explosives, healing items, guns, and items for inventory. Cities are colorful with vibrant texture and hundred of houses and buildings.
What’s more in Fortnite?
When Epic Games developed Fortnite, the game’s focus was to be a survival game involving third-person, co-op gameplay. Players could mine resources in the form of teams and build resources by killing enemies. It is named Fortnite Save the World, and it still exists as a standalone version, but believe me, it’s not that good. In 2017, a boom in battle royale genre games and Epic Games evolved Fortnite as a battle royale. Till the time of the review, this version is developing and is free to play.
Unlike its competitor PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Fortnite inventory management is straightforward by design. Players have to balance healing, explosives, and guns because of the limited five slots in the whole inventory. Although it is a limiting factor in some situations, it keeps you focused on your goals and prevents any lousy pick-up during the run across the island. You have to keep digging for the better chests in the loot and mix the weapons to balance the entire run.
Fortnite Gameplay: A True Battle Royale
Have you ever played a battle royale? If your answer is Yes, then you are quite familiar with the Fortnite battle royale concepts. Just like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, in Fortnite, your goal is to survive as long as you can in solo, pair, and team modes. There is some clear difference like construction and defense system as well as artistic style of the game. But most of the basics follow the battle royale theme with some minor modifications. If you are reading this review to get an idea of gameplay and haven’t played this great game yet, then buckle up. We will present you with a brief overview of the real gameplay of Fortnite.
There are different modes in the game, including Solo, Duo, Squad of 4, Team Rumble, Party Royale (non-combat mode), and Area mode. With every new update, modes keep changing a bit and can be different when reading this review. There is a quick matchmaking process, and it takes less than a minute in any multiplayer mode.
The pre-match screen is similar to PUBG, where you are on the island and about to take off. But aside from the similarity of the island rest of the mechanics are different. In Fortnite, you can view the entire playable area of the map in a panoramic view. There are a couple of minutes for you to explore the area and ready your strategy accordingly. Further, there is no bridge to the main map, and you carry yourself to the map by a bright blue color school bus.
For dropping off from the bus, you have to choose a suitable place to land, which is away from other players. Let yourself jump out, and you can cover a significant distance just by sliding and gliding towards your desire location on the map. Game physics lets you reach your destination even if you drop off at the wrong location or change your mind about switching to another location after the jump. You have a glider to soften the landing and descent to map and deploy it on will, but it opens automatically, reaching a certain height.
Taking a breath and getting familiar with the surrounding is what players do after landing, but it does not last long. Soon after landing, a storm forms. You have to move away from its direction to survive and win the game. While surviving the storm, you need to focus on gameplay as enemies are all over the map. Two possible way to fight this situation is to eliminate the enemies or avoid your detection. Getting caught to enemy sight or inside the storm can quickly end your journey in this survival run.
All your struggle for resources and surviving to be best do not go vain after getting knocked over. In team mode, you have teammates that can revive you back to life. But it’s tricky in few situations where enemies are right beside you, where you knocked over, or storm is eating your health like crazy. You cannot use any health potions and weapons and totally dependant on your teammates because of knockdown. In case of your death in the round, the camera automatically takes you to your killer or teammates.
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Weapons in Fortnite
When it comes to the weapons’ diversity, Fortnite has lots of weapons located nearly in every location you visit on the map. There are one plus side and one negative side in this situation. Plus side is that you have the chance of getting your favorite weapon quickly in the gameplay. The negative side is that your enemies also have a high chance of getting equipped with an equally deadly weapon. Keep one piece of advice in mind that do not ever try to fight without a weapon or using an ax against an armed enemy; otherwise, this might end your survival for this round.
The accuracy of the weapons, in my personal opinion, is not very good. But new updates have some changes to the weapon mechanics. Distance is critical in aiming and precisely killing your enemy. Closer the enemy, more precisely, you can eliminate them. The same strategy applies for your survival that you should have a reasonable distance to prevent yourself from getting hit by enemy rounds. Grenades and rockets are more fun to use in Fortnite provide a satisfying feeling to kill the foes.
Simple Yet Immersive Gameplay
Primary tiles in Fortnite, including stairs, floors, and walls, seem to be a limited toolset for building, but believe me, it’s what you need in most cases. All you need is to utilize the right type of piece by analyzing the situation. Top-notch players use swapping, and even it is so common that almost everyone is using the combinations. You need to place one platform and jump over it, and in mid-air, without touching the ground, place another platform. This trick scales vertical wall or help you go directly to the mountains and buildings. Agility is what this neat trick provides, and the execution is effortless as it sounds.
Fortnite Battle Royale is more about building than shooting. If you have tricks under your sleeve, this game is a cup of cake for you with a little practice. Imagine playing against an opponent who is hiding behind a wall. You emptied your assault rifle, and you only an option of a shotgun. You probably hate playing with a shotgun against an enemy having an assault rifle, but it is what you have. You pull a trick but building stairs in front of the wall and jump on the other side, killing the enemy. It may look like routine play, but utilizing the building resource to kill an overpowered enemy with just common sense.
Little things like building stairs to get to the mountain or roof of a building, getting an escape from bullets by building a wall in front of you, help you survive just by making things. You have to think outside the box in critical situations using available tools. For instance, you knock down an enemy and build a wall around him; it will prevent his teammates from reviving him. You can make your structure get across hurdles like building a bridge to cross a lake. You can lure your enemies into an ambush by creating a fake castle and waiting for them at another location.
Pricing and Platforms
Mainly there are two versions of Fortnite: Fortnite Save the World and Fortnite Battle Royale. It cost $15.99 to access Save the World, and it will remain paid experience. In contrast, Battle Royale is free to play, involving an $11.99 per month subscription for additional outfit bundles, access to every Battle Pass, and 1000 bonus bucks every month.
You can play Fortnite on your PC and need an Epic Games account. Just create the account by signing up with your email. After completing the procedure, you can download Fortnite for free from Epic Games Store on their website. For a slow connection, it may take a while to download 20GB of game setup. Once installed, you do not have to pay for any subscriptions aside from microtransactions present in the game.
Fortnite is a cross-platform game that lets you match up across desktop, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and Android platforms. Sadly, it is not available on Apple devices due to a legal dispute between Epic Games and Apple Inc. But you can work that around by playing it via Nvidia GeForce Now game platform. Fortnite Save the World is not available on Nintendo Switch and Android devices. Battle Royale version is available on PC, Mac, Xbox One (X, S series), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation (4 and 5), and Android devices.
More added fun is the integration of Fortnite using the Houseparty app, which lets the PC and PlayStation users video chat during an ongoing match. This integration is one more step to bring fun with friends virtually through video calling.
Minimum PC Requirements for Fortnite
Fortnite has animations, cartoon graphics, and added bright colors with wacky locations that surely put less strain on PC. Unlike PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, graphics are more realistic, crispy, and have details in buildings and overall maps. Coming towards the maps of Fortnite, they are clearly less detailed, short sized and have locations that lack actual rendered details. All this stuff lifts off the CPU and GPU strain but still needs a good PC to run all the stuff without getting caught in lags and restarts.
Minimum requirements for Fortnite include an Intel HD 4000 GPU, an Intel Core i3 2.4 GHz processor, at least 100 GB space in the main drive, and 4 GB of RAM. You can play the game on a lower-end specifications PC by turning down the graphics for smoother framerate. Recommended specification to run Fortnite includes at least Nvidia GeForce GTX 600 or AMD Radeon HF 7870 GPU, an Intel Core i5 CPU with 2.8 GHz, and at least 8GB of RAM.
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A decent internet connection is required to run Fortnite smoothly without any interruptions. You can play on your home WIFI without any issues. In case of latency issues or disruption in the connection, you may need to use an ethernet connection or changing your network. Bad connection and lags ruin the gaming experience.
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The secrete of Fortnite to survive all these years on top of the charts is its continually evolving gaming experience. For example, Playground mode in the game is replaced by Fortnite Battle Lab in the past that enables players to produce custom matches according to their rules. Different community members contribute towards new custom maps that are easy to access by creative mode.
Unlike Call of Duty: Warzone, in Fortnite’s constantly expanding gameplay and evolving strategies, new modes are only a small part of the change. In every season of Fortnite new characters and weapons get added, like publishing Season 5 are going own, which is also named Zero-Point and has crossovers from Halo and God of War. We have seen more than 40 Limited time events in Fortnite since its launch, which is a staggering figure.
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Changes in Fortnite are not monthly, and sometimes it gets multiple updates per week. Most of the small updates are improvements in the performance scale. Some updates change the regions in the maps and bring exciting vehicles like we saw Drift board. Limited-time events are also an integral part of updates, and new weapons include inside them like Grappler. Nothing seems to be permanent when it comes to Fortnite, and it seems to be always evolving and bringing new things.
Each season brings a new change in the maps, as we have seen throughout this journey with Fortnite. Maps manipulation is a crucial element used to work with sand, snow, lava, and exciting events in each season. Every map uniqueness is guaranteed, and we have already seen lava in Season 8 of Fortnite in both the main map and entire limited-time Floor in Lava mode. These advancements are a clear signal of continuous development and keeping the game alive and exciting.
Fortnite has engaged fans and players around the world with its exciting events throughout the years. Capitalizing on every opportunity and cashing the fame and interest of the players from it remained the strategy. For example, Fortnite launched the “Infinity Gauntlet Limited Time Mashup” mode during the craze of Avengers Infinity War, and lucky players can mimic the Thanos role in the game. Fortnite also sent the players through a black hole and hosted several virtual concerts to engage the audience. Strange events like Kevin the Cube, taking players to the white void, and the famous meteor that crashed into the Dusky depot kept the players hooked.
Fortnite is a great Battle Royale shooter game exciting the players from its ‘What’s next” content strategy. We have already mentioned about marvel event, which exactly brought twice as Infinity Gauntlet Gameplay mode. Epic Games has partnered with big-name like NFL and Marvel for the new events in the game. With an NFL partnership, a 20v20 limited-time mode was launched with NFL jerseys for the teams.
Fortnite is promoting seasonal content and changes the game’s overall event in these seasons. The events involve challenges to be completed in said time to get exclusive prizes like skins. Rewards are given based on meeting daily, weekly and seasonal challenges. With ever-evolving content, the players remain engaged and keep coming back in masses.
Free Fun vs. Microtransactions
The free-to-play structure keeps Fortnite Battle Royale ahead of the competition in many ways. The items that are purchasable from the game store are cosmetic. They are mostly skins of characters and designs. No weapon upgrades and other tools to give an advantage to the competition are involved in microtransactions. There are two types of shops in Fortnite: daily shop, which contains the skins and materials that refresh every 24 hours. In comparison, the second one is a legendry shop that updates weekly and by an event. Legendary shops have much better skins and items that are not likely to come again and carry a rarity essence.
Microtransaction in Fortnite is usually low cost involving the biggest of $10 purchase to access Battle Pass. This pass enables access to a 100 tier reward system where players complete unique challenges to get to the higher tier and unlock the rewards. So, it’s a small fee to open more tasks and get extra exciting stuff.
Verdict
One of the most significant achievements of Fortnite is its unique Battle Royale experience. Mastering the game in the solo, squad, or team mode gives you excitement, and the never-ending game development keeps the players hooked to the content. It may not be your first game and won’t be last, but its unique gameplay, fun-oriented events, and seasonal activities make your time investment outstanding.
