Stiff arming its way through the crowded battle royale genre, Fortnite

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Wait, Which Fortnite Is This? Developed by Epic Games, Fortnite was originally conceived as a third-person, co-op, survival game where teams of players could mine resources and build structures to hold off hordes of undead enemies. That version, now a standalone game called Fortnite Save the World, still exists, but it’s not great. But as the battle royale genre started to gain popularity early in 2017, Epic adapted its survival game’s basic systems into something new: Fortnite Battle Royale, a separate, free-to-play game that feels like the perfect home for Save the World’s wayward mechanics.

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On the island are several large and totally unique cities, each with their own style of structures — a quaint suburb of houses, a giant office district filled with skyscrapers, or a retail area with an outdoor mall. Each city is full of vibrant colors, and the map as a whole has hundreds of buildings with randomly spawning loot in the form of guns, explosives, and healing items.Fortnite Battle Royale’s inventory management is, thankfully, simple by design. You get just five slots, so you’re forced to balance your arsenal of guns with your need for healing or explosives to deal with enemy structures. It’s a neat limiting factor that forced me to keep a mental shopping list of exactly what I was on the lookout for as I ran across the island, and to resist the urge to pick up anything else. With such specific needs in mind, every chest came with the thrill of hoping it would reveal the weapons I wanted most. Fortnite gives you plenty of ways to mix and match weapons, so even if that chest doesn’t come up with the exact item you want, you’ll never feel powerless in a fight.

Once you do find the weapons you’re looking for, most fights in Fortnite go about the same way: You start with one shot from a slow-firing heavy weapon like a sniper rifle or pump shotgun in hopes of ending the fight before it really started, then (if needed) switch over to a faster assault rifle or tactical shotgun to carry out the rest of the battle. While it’s far from the only way to play, this combination seems to be the preferred method for almost every player and provides the foundation of almost every fight in Fortnite.

“ It’s a chaotic and fun system that makes fights a little more complicated.

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It’s the stuff around the shooting that helps Fortnite differentiate itself from every other battle royale game and shows off what truly makes it special: The building.

Carrying over the building system from Save the World is a brilliant choice that sets Battle Royale apart not just from other battle royale games, but most competitive multiplayer games in general. Just about everything that isn’t the ground can be mined for wood, stone, or steel, which can be used to create walls, stairs, and floors anywhere on the map (so long as some part of the structure touches the ground). It’s a massive system with so many possibilities that, at first blush, it can be daunting to try to figure out how to build the massive structures that others around you have created. But that’s one of the best things about Fortnite: It always keeps things simple.

“ That’s one of the best things about Fortnite: It always keeps things simple.

The first time I really understood how Fortnite’s building and shooting played into one another came in the middle of a fight in Retail Row, one of the map’s many cities. Another player and I were sheepishly taking shots at one another from behind single walls we had built. After I ran out of ammo in my assault rifle, I was forced to turn to my shotgun – a weapon I had largely disregarded up until this point. With the few resources I had left, I built stairs over my opponent’s wall, jumped off, flipped around, and shotgunned him. Looking back, it was as routine a play as it gets, but it was an absolute revelation for me at the time. Suddenly, everything made sense, and I realized that Fortnite Battle Royale is more about building than it is about shooting.

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While the little things you can use it for may seem obvious – like building stairs to get to the roof of a building, or making a wall to block an enemy’s shots – the system also gives you room to think outside the box. You could build around a downed teammate that you can’t help yet, or create a decoy fort to lure enemies into an ambush while you wait behind a tree. The system even provides some elegant solutions to getting caught outside the trademark random circles of the battle royale genre: If you find yourself on the wrong side of a lake or chasm, no problem – just make your own bridge to the other side.

“ One player lured me into his elaborate fortress of hallways in hopes of forcing me toward his waiting shotgun at the end of the maze.

Creative uses of building become even more apparent in the heat of battle. With every building decision made in a split second, every player develops their own unique techniques. Where one person might build a wall, another builds stairs they can use to rush forward. When I might create a window in the middle of my wall to take an extra shot, someone else might try to flank around the side of the building by adding a new section entirely. What might start as a simple staircase at the beginning of a small fight between me and another person could morph into a twisted modern art spire as more people join in and add their own pieces. Fortnite’s building mechanic is an incredible system that allows for personal expression in a way that really isn’t present in many other competitive games.

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While building is a freeform system, there’s an invisible grid that exists around the entire island that helps every piece that you build snap into place, and it works almost flawlessly. Of the hundreds of structures I’ve placed, it was rare that even one piece landed where I wasn’t expecting, and I’ve never gotten myself stuck or killed as a result. That’s a pleasant surprise, considering how much building happens during chaotic firefights.

All of this adds up to a system that is simply a joy to use. Everytime a fight broke out I’d get a spark of excitement as I started to think about how I would fight and build my way out of the situation at the same time. Quickly doing the math to determine if I had enough resources to build a staircase for a daring rush toward my enemy adds an extra mental thrill to combat. Every new plan felt like I was learning more about Fortnite Battle Royale and the way it would let me play – even if most of them ended with a shotgun in the face, it’s how that shotgun got to that face that mattered.

“ Epic has shown a willingness to make big changes to the weapon hierarchy overnight.

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“ The biggest microtransaction available is the $10 Battle Pass.

The only downside to all of these interlocking mechanics is the initial learning curve. Though each mechanic is simple on its own, making sense of them all together is a bit of a challenge – especially when there isn’t much of a tutorial to speak of. In fact, outside of a few pieces of text, Fortnite Battle Royale mostly leaves you with simple trial-and-error and watching YouTube videos until you’re able to figure out what makes it tick. For most of us, that means the first dozen or so trips out of the Battle Bus are likely to be pretty painful (and often very short) experiences. But, if you stick with it, all the systems start to click.

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That’s Fortnite Battle Royale’s ultimate reward for the process of learning: An immense freedom that allows for a hundred solutions to tackle any problem, and none of them are just right or just wrong. This is the rare game where each loss fills me with more determination to improve than disappointment, and each death comes with a quick realization of what went wrong and where. I’m constantly left eager to queue up for another match and try to correct previous mistakes — it doesn’t hurt that the time between dying and dropping out of the Battle Bus again never takes more than 60 seconds, thanks to Fortnite’s speedy matchmaking and enormous pool of players.

“ Fortnite Battle Royale runs fantastically on every platform I played it on.

It’s also important to mention that Fortnite Battle Royale runs fantastically on every platform I played it on (iOS, PS4, Xbox One, and PC), never stuttering or dropping frames even in middle of tense fights. That’s crucial for the speed of building that it demands, and a distinctive advantage over its chief rival in the battle royale genre, PUBG, which has more than its fair share of performance problems.

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That list of platforms includes mobile, which is highly impressive in that it’s exactly the same game as its console counterparts – to the point where cross-play between PC, Xbox One, and mobile is possible. Even on a device that fits in your pocket, Fortnite Battle Royale still looks fantastic, even if it’s running at a slightly lower resolution than it would on most other platforms. The only real difference is the controls, which, for a mobile game, aren’t terrible. In fact, I could pull off almost all of the same movements I could on PC as on my phone – at about a quarter of the speed. Playing with other mobile users, and thereby operating with exactly the same speed disadvantage, really does feel like playing a slightly slower version of Fortnite Battle Royale. So, while aiming and building skills don’t exactly translate on mobile devices, the iOS version is a great alternative for anyone who doesn’t have access to the console or PC versions – or if you just want to play on the go.