Arguably the biggest cultural gaming phenomenon since Minecraft or Five Nights at Freddys, Fortnite seems to have taken the world by storm. From PC, to home consoles and even mobile, this game takes the concepts from The Hunger Games and puts them into effect in a lighthearted way.
It seems that the Switch was the only platform the game wasn’t on yet, but leading up to E3 rumors started flying around that it was coming to the Switch too. During the conference, it was announced that it was coming that same day and it was promptly downloaded over 2 million times in the first 24 hours!
I’m a newbie to the game, having never played it on any other platforms, but the fact that it was free to play definitely got my attention. I downloaded it last Tuesday and have been playing it every day since, so here’s my opinion of the game after a full week of putting it through its paces.
Fortnite is pretty simple at its core: join a match (solo, teams, 50 vs. 50, etc) and get dropped into an island to fight to the death against other online players. In solo, you’re a team of one trying to survive as long as you can, while racking up as many kills as possible. I primarily played the 50 vs. 50 mode, where two teams try to eliminate each other.
The match starts with you riding the ‘battle bus’ (an old school bus suspended by a hot air balloon) over the map. Once you reach the island, you can jump out and parachute down to wherever you want on the island. There’s plenty of open space, but you’ll want to head for a town, junkyard, mining facility or other named location. These areas have the gear you need to survive, like guns, explosives, shields and health kits. Your character has 100 health and can add up to 100 additional shield points to help extend your chances.
Image: Nintendo UK YouTube Channel
Weapons are mostly standard guns — handguns, rifles, machine guns and shotguns. Later into the match you’ll find more effective weapons like the minigun, sniper rifle and rocket launcher. Guns all have ‘ranks’ as well, indicating they have higher damage, faster reload and quicker fire than standard versions of the weapons. They come in ranks increasing from common to uncommon, rare, epic and legendary.
Once you’ve found some gear, you’ll want to mine some resources. You start each match with a pickaxe that can be used to mine wood, brick and metal from nearly anything you find in the game. These are used for one of the game’s signature features — building. You can build various structures at will to create defensive walls, bases and ramps to reach rooftops and cliffs. These are very important and having some cover or a way to reach the high ground can be the difference between life and death.
Image: Nintendo UK YouTube Channel
Combat is pretty standard, so expect the same sort of gameplay that’s been common throughout online shooters for years. One interesting aspect is that when you reach zero health, you don’t instantly die. You’re knocked down and can still crawl around while you bleed out. If you can find a helpful team member, they can heal you to get you back into the game.
If all 100 players were scattered around the map, matches would take much longer. Thankfully, they’ve implemented a system where a ‘storm’ constantly pushes players to a central spot on the map. Every so often, the storm shrinks and the playable area gets smaller until everyone in concentrated in a small area. If you find yourself trapped in the storm, you’ll slowly lose health until you die. The storm ignores your shields too, going straight for your health points.
Image: Nintendo UK YouTube Channel
The game plays great on the Switch both in docked and handheld mode. It felt better in docked mode, simply because I had more freedom with the controllers and a much bigger screen to squint out other players. Handheld mode was still a ton of fun, but I felt less competitive when I was holding it in my hands.
While the game is completely free to play, nearly all of the perks require purchases. The in game currency can be used to buy costumes, accessories, dance moves and more. Though none of these items effect gameplay in any way — they’re strictly cosmetic to enhance the game for dedicated players.
The game plays great on the Switch, though I don’t have PS4/XBox/PC versions to compare it to. The framerate is a solid 30fps, which is a deal-breaker for some people but I had no issues with it at all.
For a game that’s free to play, I think anyone who might be interested in it should at least give it a shot.
Image: Nintendo UK YouTube Channel
Fortnite isn’t a graphical powerhouse, but it wasn’t meant to be. The graphics are very colorful and cartoony, rather than using a realistic aesthetic. Trees, buildings and cars jiggle like jello as you harvest resources from them with your pickaxe and the environments, while limited to a single island, have a lot of variety. From small towns to mining caves, there’s a lot to explore in Fortnite.
Sound and music is pretty solid too. Music is OK, and mostly serves as the background for menus and loading screens, but the sound effects are great, with each weapon having a distinct sound. Explosions are appropriately heavy and the rest of the sounds are pretty well done.
Image: Nintendo UK YouTube Channel
I had pretty much ignored Fortnite for a long time, assuming it was pretty much just another game where 13-year-olds scream obscenities at each other and its used by streamers to crank out endless content on Twitch, but its a well-designed and addictive game. It throws enough unique ingredients into the pot to make it something unique and at a price of free, there’s no reason to not give it a shot unless you simply don’t like online games or shooters.
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Cover image: Nintendo UK YouTube Channel