Fortnite

Mar

2019

Fortnite

Keeping YouTubers Alive Since 2017

With its active players numbering in the tens of millions, Fortnite has amassed a gargantuan fan base. Its detractors, however, have emerged in equal force, claiming it to be the worst blight on humanity since disco. A good chunk dislike Fortnite on principle, seeing it as a rip-off of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Others despise it due its popularity, dirty hipsters. A certain subset hasn’t even played the game but hates it simply because other people do. If you fall in this mob mentality, your mindset is no different from those that spawn prejudice and discrimination.

It’s stupid to hate Fortnite solely because it’s the popular thing to do, especially when there are so many valid reasons to actually hate it. The game is not amazing—certainly not worthy of Game of the Year—but for many people, it’s fun. Having played over 265 hours, I have both fallen ill to Fortnite fever and suffered its every bug and issue. In the spirit of objectivity, I have designed this review to reflect the myth and fact behind some of the most common gripes with this battle royale.

What is it? Quick Version

Fortnite is a third-person shooter in which you and up to 99 others parachute onto an island to bathe in each other’s blood and guts. Last team or individual standing wins. Weapons, healing items, and vehicles litter the map for you to loot your optimal arsenal. As time moves on, a storm encircles the island, shrinking the playing field. Step into the storm and it slowly kills you, like an 8-5 job. If you die, you’re booted to the lobby to join another game.

Fortnite’s main hook is its building mechanic. By destroying your surroundings, you will obtain resources to construct walls, platforms, ramps, and roofs. You can put up simple barriers to shield bullets or erect immense fortresses to house your ego. You don’t need to build to win, but your chances do increase significantly if you can channel your inner Bob the Builder.

Fortnite is simply a degenerate rip-off of the far superior PUBG.

Fortnite did copy off of PUBG, just like PUBG was influenced by the Hunger Games, which stole from the Japanese movie, Battle Royale. Plagiarism deserves its own circle of hell, but in the entertainment industry, “borrowing” creative ideas is as normal as scratching your junk in public: frowned upon but relatively permitted. Fortnite is not the first one to get the itch, and when everyone starts itching themselves (Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Battlefield), we call it a new genre. Case in point, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is much-beloved despite being an obvious knock-off of Mario Kart.

Although Fortnite does share much in common with PUBG, it certainly plays differently. Apart from the building element, the game strives for over-the-top action compared to its influence’s more realistic offering. Items like gliders, balloons, and hover boards all lend to more maneuverability and frantic action. One moment, you could be sniping from a mountain, and the next, you’re swooping down into an enemy’s base for a close-up firefight. The weapons can range from your typical load-out (shotguns, assault rifles, pistols) to the absurd (bombs that make others dance, rocket launchers, scoped revolvers).

Ultimately, choosing between Fortnite and PUBG is like asking whether cartoons are better than live-action. It’s your preference. I personally enjoy Fortnite’s smaller map, reduced focus on tactical combat, and ridiculous emphasis on wacky vehicles. If those elements make you cringe, then stick with your gritty realism.

The building component gets in the way of hardcore gunfights.

I find this complaint funny. Have you ever eaten a cheeseburger? It basically copies what hamburgers were already doing, but it added moldy cow juice on top of it. That’s literally the only difference. However, some people don’t like how the cheese taste mixes with the burger taste, so they would prefer the cheese to be removed entirely. And if you do that, you got yourself a hamburger. A cheeseburger tastes good because it’s combines cheese and burger. Fortnite is Fortnite because the building mechanic is combined with the shooty mechanic. If you take out the building stuff, it’s just a hamburger. Or PUBG. Whatever.

Building is a vital part of the game, but you don’t need to construct Rome in ten seconds to be able to win. There are ways to punish players who build excessively (mainly explosives). Overtaking an opposing team’s structure can also be exhilarating, so can evading death by placing 10 tons of wood between you and everyone else. Firefights are often determined by dexterity, levelheadedness, and reactivity. Building just adds another layer.

It may not be your preferred way of playing either. I prefer Smash over typical fighters. I like the Binding of Isaac’s rogue-lite gameplay over Dead Cells’. You like what you like, and that doesn’t mean you’re right or wrong, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can pass judgement on something you haven’t given a fair try.

Caught seconds before Solomon threw his controller across the room.

Fortnite has destroyed an entire generation of children with its memes and obnoxious presentation.

The children were doomed long before Fortnite came out. They fell to Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the Sonic-inspired furries. This battle royale simply is the next horseman of the apocalypse.

Fortnite’s dead memes, trademarked dances, or llama obsession cover up the real issue: the game doesn’t have an identity. The building mechanic is there, but it has very little impact on the tone or art direction. Instead, we get a wacky, cel-shaded world which is about as unoriginal as the 8-bit inspired graphics that currently plague the indie world. Rather than develop an overall aesthetic, the developers just threw every possible idea in the game, from pirate ships to deserts to Vikings to shark people to robots to sinister masked figures to busty cowgirls. If someone was keeping track with a Bingo card, you’d have blackout by now.

Worse still, the developers continually change the game itself. With new modes, locations, and weapons rotating almost weekly, you have to play almost continuously to stay acclimated. Some might say this constant change keeps the game fresh, but it more often makes the game feel inconsistent. New bugs come with each update; weapons aren’t always balanced; and new locations often don’t live up to their predecessors.

Epic could have fine-tuned its existing map and items (or just slowed the update process), making everything feel more purposefully designed and finished. However, they seem terrified of the game growing stale. I can only imagine a room full of developers staring at a blank whiteboard titled, “How Do We Stay Relevant?”, as they worship fidget spinners and social media while Pewdiepie plays in the background.

The Switch version of Fortnite is a Cro-Magnon compared to more playable versions on other consoles.

This is true. I can’t think of any reason to play Fortnite on Switch because it runs so poorly comparative to other consoles. Sure, it’s portable, but I could crap in a paper bag anywhere I want, and that doesn’t make the paper bag better than a toilet. With a lower resolution, a lower frame rate (maxed at 30 FPS), nearer draw distance, and muddy textures, the Switch rendition does not nearly offer the best experience.

This is not to say the game is broken on Switch. It’s very playable. It’s also maddening when you lose to a performance issue. When the game stutters during a firefight or your bullets phase through enemies or you take damage from bullets hitting a two-foot bubble around you, you get salty. Epic has practically given up on improving the Switch version, and their laziness only serves to pour more crap into your paper bag.

What’s the verdict?

Fortnite neither murdered your parents nor cured cancer. It offers a fun, free-to-play experience, and with the famine of good online multiplayer shooters on the Switch, it’s one of the best we have. Despite defining a whole market of paraphernalia and clothing that would make Hot Topic feel inadequate, the game lacks the creativity to make it feel like anything more than a fad. There’s also no harm in enjoying this fad. Just don’t bother with the Switch version if you have another means to play.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8
Time Played: Over 265 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Tetris 99 (Somehow?), Splatoon 2

Scoring Policy

Nov

2018

Evaluating Your Skill as a Gamer

Or: How I Judge Myself Based on Someone Else’s Opinions

Not all entertainment or hobbies can be enjoyed by everybody. If you don’t have a basic understanding of film history, you’ll probably not like most arthouse movies. Poetry might be a poison if you believe symbolism and rhythm are conspiracies made by English majors. Things like cooking or sports can be torturous if you don’t have the ability to do either. Even Russian avant-garde classical music is inaccessible if you don’t have a stick up your ass.

Similarly, with video games, your skill level may limit which games you enjoy. Dark Souls Remastered has received considerable praise, but it’s geared more toward seasoned gamers. For any new players, Dark Souls’ immense difficulty will skewer and roast them. No one wants to be punished for trying to have fun. Even masochists can agree with this. I think.

So how do you figure out your skill level? You could use online leaderboards or track your win-loss ratios, but that amount of objectivity is exhausting. Fortunately, I devised a completely arbitrary collection of attributes to judge your gaming abilities. For each attribute, I will give a brief explanation, and you must rate your mastery of that attribute on a scale of 1-5.

A “1” means a sentient garbage fire is better at this skill than you are. A “5” means you kick ass so hard that the donkey population is on the verge of extinction. A “3” shows your ability is somewhere between a living, flaming pile of garbage and unnecessary levels of animal abuse. Your overall score across all categories is irrelevant. Instead, this system reveals your best skills, and this may help you determine which games are for you. It’s like you’re completing one of those Facebook quizzes except you won’t feel shame after this one.

Dexterity

Perhaps the skill most associated with gaming, dexterity determines how well you handle a controller. In a game like Rocket League, you must juggle boosts, the angle of your car, drifting, and successive jumps to pull off spectacular goals. For Fornite, victory favors those who rapidly flit between building components and weapons. In fighting games, stringing together combos will more likely guarantee a win.

If your magic fingers can dance across complex button combinations without errors, you have dexterity. If they can’t, then we don’t want to know why you call them “magic fingers.” Accuracy and precision platforming also fall under this category.

Problem-Solving

Being smart doesn’t mean you know how to problem-solve. Just look at the US federal government. Gamers skilled at problem-solving can look at all the components in a situation and recognize how to use them to win. In Death Squared, all the puzzle pieces are contained on one screen, and good problem-solvers don’t need the internet to find the answer. Strategic skill is one’s ability to address future problems, so those without good problem-solving skills will struggle with the tactical challenges posed by Mario + Rabbids or Disgaea 5. Even resource management in games like Pixeljunk Monsters 2 requires some level of problem-solving.

Note: understanding “video game logic” doesn’t necessarily mean you are an Answer Master. You may know that a crowbar combined with duct tape and a butterfly will get you to the next stage in a point-and-click adventure. This doesn’t mean you know how to solve problems. It means you make sense out of nonsense and could be a good philosopher one day.

Reactivity

Your “twitch” ability relates to how quickly you notice new threats and act against them. Celeste is among the genre of “twitch platformers” which challenge your ability to react to new threats. Of course, you can practice a stage an infinite number of times until you nail the move sequence, but those with good reactivity are more likely to pass a series of obstacles on their first try. With enough desperation, anyone can plod through Thumper, but the real pleasure comes from clearing the entire hellscape with few or any deaths.

Some of you may argue that reactivity is just one aspect of dexterity, and you’d be partly right. Both skills are heavily dependent on each other. You could plow through opponents in DOOM multiplayer purely because of your accuracy, but without good reaction times, you’ll be taken out by the next person to shoot you from behind. It also doesn’t matter how quickly you react if you do nothing. Good dexterity and reactivity are what separates the hunters from those unfortunately killed by wild animals.

Endurance

Sometimes it’s not about how big you come in but how long you can keep it up. Your endurance skill measures your ability to play well over an extended period of time. Take Puyo Puyo Tetris for example. Against a similarly-skilled opponent, the winner isn’t based on who makes the flashiest moves but who screws up fewer times. The longer the round, the more exhausted you feel, and the more likely you’ll put that I-shaped tetromino in the wrong column. Other puzzle games like Lumines and Tumblestone require similar levels of stamina to win the long game.

Endurance also captures your level of patience. In Payday 2, a successful heist depends on waiting for the most opportune moment. For Arena of Valor, your team’s victory may hinge on whether you can defend your lane, regardless of how many opponents bully you. Because many of us are fed on a diet of instant gratification, fast gameplay, and cocaine, patience is not our forte but still massively helpful. As the saying goes, good comes to those who wait and spawn camp.

Flexibility

Some games require you to use every type of skill listed so far. Look at Crawl. You need dexterity to fight well, problem-solving skills to exploit your environment, reactivity to prepare for stage hazards and monsters, and endurance to survive and clinch the victory. Your flexibility skill determines how easily you transition between these skill sets and adapt to your situation. Those without flexibility are easy to read and struggle to win outside of ideal conditions.

You can also measure your emotional stability here. If you panic or get angry when things don’t go your way, you’re inflexible. Apart from ruining the game for others, intense emotions can lose you the game. As such, maximize your flexibility by striving for soulless apathy.

Luck

Ancient tomes speak of three witches who decide how lucky each person is. When a child is born, each witch rolls a six-sided die. If each die lands as a six, that child will forever be gifted with good fortune. If each die falls on a one, the child is named Solomon Rambling. Nothing can change one’s luck. We can only learn to live with what we’ve been given.

Because your luck stat can’t improve, many don’t consider it a skill, but these people don’t play Mario Party. Luck can win games, and those who risk their success on chance may walk away with bigger rewards. Alternatively, if you’re the type who never won Bingo as a kid, you learn to never trust that sociopath called “Lady Luck.” You instead expect bad items in Mario Kart 8, awful RNG in your roguelites, and constant disconnects in Splatoon 2.

You’ve Now Reached the End of the Survey

You now have six numbers. Good job. If you have any ones or twos, this doesn’t mean you’re a bad player, but you may not enjoy games requiring your lacking skills. On the opposite end, a handful of 5 scores means your ego deserves some stomps to the kneecaps so that you can reevaluate your true ability. Whether you use your digits for bragging rights, game recommendations, or to compensate for something, you now have a gauge on your gaming skill set. You can also now buy Spacecats with Lasers without worrying you’ll suck at it.

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I haven’t done this italics thing in a while. Supposedly I ask your opinion about this article now. Go and complain about your scores if you want.