Fortnite isn’t usually the kind of game I’m interested in. It’s a blend of tower defense and horde mode, with that soft cartoonish art style that’s getting very popular right now. Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. It’s also potentially a free-to-play game, so the requisite piles of items and loot to micromanage also come along for the ride. It’s also still in closed beta. The stars were all in alignment for me to completely ignore the game.
However, a buddy of mine lives for these kinds of games, and was commenting on the over-reliance of teamwork with randoms in order to get anything done. He mentioned having an extra code, and asked if I would be interested in teaming up to get some shit done.
I agreed, and after having put a little bit of time into it, I feel like I’ve wrapped my head around it enough to give some insight.
Getting into a game with a free-to-play model is always a bit tricky. Usually you’re inundated with multiple currencies, loot crates, boosters, weapons, armor, accessories, mods, etc. etc., and while Fortnite does keep some of it to a minimum, you’re still left feeling overwhelmed by the amount of menus and things thrown at you at the start of the game. Why developers insist on doing this is beyond me.
The first zone (of which I have not completed yet) consists of multiple pages of missions, and acts as more of a tutorial on the building and crafting system and walks you through building your first fort and fighting off the hordes of- I’m just going to call them zombies, that attack in the storm. The tutorial missions in themselves are fine, but you’re consistently accumulating loot, which is great at first, but by the time you’re on your second page of missions, you’re beginning to amass quite the collection. Before you even know what you’re doing in the game, you’re already managing inventory. You get faced with decisions on whether or not to upgrade weapon schematics, heroes, support heroes, survivors, skill trees, research trees, etc. before you’ve even really done anything significant in the game. It’s definitely a lot to chew on, and it’s a pretty big favor being asked by the developers. If this will be a free game, and they have people playing with little to no monetary investment, it’s a tall order to expect someone to stick around long enough to ‘get it’.
That being said, the learning curve isn’t particularly high, and the game breaks you in slowly through the aforementioned tutorial missions. Make no mistake though, the game ramps up in difficulty eventually, and unless you have a friend to partner up with, you’ll be depending on randoms to get your objectives done. Your solo downtime is best used re-running previous low level missions in order to farm crafting materials for later use.
One major complaint is that your inventory is not available to you via the lobby menu, and crafting is only available while in a mission. This is a particularly odd choice, since 95% of your schematic maintenance, upgrading, etc. happens in the lobby. Why your personal, carried inventory is walled off is beyond me. Once in a mission, the player should be able to focus on the task at hand, not make themselves vulnerable to attack for five minutes while they dig through their inventory to see what weapons they have equipped, which ones they need to craft, and so on. This is something that may be amended before the game goes public, but only if players submit that feedback.
The core gameplay itself is solid, and the maps give off a Minecraft-ish feel, as wandering around farming materials will uncover hidden areas and secret caves with the potential to find survivors and hidden treasure. While there are bonus objectives for completing the mission in under a certain amount of time, there (at the moment) doesn’t seem to be any time restrictions to activate the missions themselves. One exception being a certain mission type where a device delivered by balloon will land in a certain amount of time and must be defended. Even then, the countdown timer is about fifteen minutes, so you have plenty of time to farm.
Farming is a must. While wood, brick, and metal are plentiful, other resources must be found by searching crates and other containers. Ammo must be crafted using Nuts & Bolts, and the game is strangely greedy with them, considering you go through a lot of ammo. It seemed plentiful at first, until you get into some defense missions that last through multiple waves.
It’s hard to criticize certain aspects of the game, due to the fact that it may be too early in my play to see some of these annoyances alleviated. For example, I was lamenting how much farming was required, only to later unlock the ability to send survivors on expeditions. So some things I gripe about might be irrelevant after more playtime, so I just thought I’d mention it.
Closing Comments: Fortnite does not give a great first impression. It’s a deep game. If you are like me, and get quickly turned off by mountains of instructions and micro-managing, you very well might be turned away before even giving the game a chance. If you stick with it long enough to let some of it sink in though, you’ll find a fun game with solid gameplay that grows on you. It’s just a question of whether your average gamer will give it the time it needs.
