Thoughts on Fortnite

I never thought that I would play Fortnite.

I thought of Fortnite as something that young people, youtubers and other influencers play. Not even from a proffesional angle, to analyse one of the most succesful games in history, did I think that I would ever play Fortnite.

Then it happened.

It was after we had been to visit family in northern sweden. We have a nephew that is old enough now that he and his friends have started more mature games, like Fortnite. He had carefully asked me a few times if I wanted to try and play Fortnite with him (we had played other games together before) but I had kinda blown it off as something that I really didn’t have time to learn as properly as I would’ve wanted.

But then, at that visit, he told me that this season was the SPIDER-MAN season! As I explained in my earlier post, I freaking love spider-man, dude, so this was a powerful catalyser to start me in my Fortnite journey. I agreed to play with him and try it out one time, another draw being that I wanted to try it out on the PS5.

I was hooked after the first match (which we won, and then went on a ten game win streak. Just spittin’ facts y’all).

The game had so much more to offer than I first would’ve thought. The map itself almost fell like a small MMORPG with a bunch of tasks and events that you could take on while the actual battle royal is happening around you. The first few hours I treated it pretty much like any other Battle Royale shooter as I’ve played quite a lot of Apex legends, but the game continously evolved as my nephew presented new features. Tents, cars, hens and of course, constructing.

The building part of Fortnite is was makes it really stick out from other shooters. I feel like it’s such an unlikely feature to add to a game like this and it really gives off the vibes that this isn’t the intended form for this game. Seeing more experienced players use constructing buildings in tandem with firing guns. And there is really a great deal of strategy and tactics in using the building aspect, it creating ways to hide, disrupt enemy fire, isolate targets, etc. I’m not sure I’m particularily fond of it, but I respect the mechanic for what it brings to the table.

And then there are the skins. Holy moly, there are so many skins and it feels like a new one shows up in the shop everyday. I mean I have pretty good impulse control when it comes to most things so I only had my sights set on the Spider-man costume, but it’s hard not to get mesmerized by the sheer volume of skins, emotes, music tracks and weapons. Actually that feeling sums out the game pretty much, “a game with a mesmerizing volume of content”.

There is always more, it never stops since Epic is doing a fine job of keeping the game fresh. Mechanics, items and stage hazards are added or removed continously. Each season often brings entirely new areas and NPCs. This season for exampel introduced web shooters which let’s you swing by shooting strings of webbing, like Spider-men. This allows for unprecedented movement capabilities and is new for this season. Each season also brings new storylines with new quests (although both the storylines and the quests are often quite simple).

And beside everything else, Fortnite is still a fine shooter you can play with your friends where each match can be played within an accepted time frame.

Even though I’ve acheived what I set out to do and got enough levels to earn myself the Spider-man skin I might still continue to play the game some more, but not like I have been. This game has eaten up a lot of my spare time lately, but I don’t regret it because it’s been fun and I’m glad I tried it.