Skip to main content

Fortnite Caught Me in Its Loop

Fortnite wasn’t a game I was fully interested in. Fortnite has been in development for 5+ years and is now open for paid early access. This made me less interested than the first time I heard about Fortnite. However, once I saw videos and how much fun it looks – I decided to give it a shot without any expectation. Too my surprise, I’m loving it.

Fortnite has many genres that intertwine with each other, some that works and some that don’t. The moment to moment gameplay is a combination of resource gathering, base building, tower defense, and 3rd person shooting. This all surprisingly works well, and has me hooked in its loop.

Gathering is easy and effortless – even with the “weak point” mechanic. Using those resources, you craft bullets, weapons, buildings, or traps. Like gathering, building is just as simple once you get the hang of it. The building blocks can be edited, making it flexible in what structure you and your team wants build.


The tower defense side of the game is more engaging and is always interchanging making every mission refreshing. It takes a while to get an understanding of where the enemies attack from – however, the locations changes throughout the mission. Once you understand the behavior of the enemies you can build tunnels and funnel them in with the traps that you and your team set. Seeing all the enemies grouped-up in a small space with all the damage numbers popping is immensely satisfying.



At the end of each mission everyone is given a chest. This chest is tiered and can be earn depending on how much your team was engaged in the mission. Whether that be – gathering, building or combat. Each of these actions have a bar to fill and is accumulative throughout the party.

Fortnite is still in early access, and that is very clear. Epic is releasing Fortnite as a “free-to-play” game next year, but for now players must pay a founder’s pack to gain access. Everything outside the gameplay is a mess. After a mission, you gain loot ranging from weapons, crafting resources, survivors, squad, and multiple experience points – managing all this is a pain to learn. These systems are cumbersome, but that’s mostly because the game doesn’t teach you anything about its menus.

--

The loop of gathering, crafting, building, and shooting is hypnotizing. It is effortless and mind numbing which is refreshing after the horror show of its UIs and menus. Epic has something great in Fortnite. Adding all these mechanics from other genres is ambitious and interesting, but the difficult part of all this is how well all these systems work as a singular game. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fortnite: Battle Royale: Season 4 Just Made Some Crazy Changes and I in Love with it

Fortnite has become this huge juggernaut in the gaming industry ever since Epic released their Battle Royale mode in late September. The Battle Pass implementation gave the player a progression system that gamify the Battle Royale mode, of which PUBG does not have. Having something to accomplish in-between gathering and fighting during each match creates a sense of accomplishment. In a game where there is a 100-player free-for-all fight, your chances of winning are low, allowing the Battle Pass rewards gives the player this satisfaction of accomplishment even if you lose. Over the past month, Epic has been teasing and creating ARGs in-game for the lead up to Season 4. Hearing about the meteors crashing down on Tilted Towers was cool but I didn’t think anything of it, as I thought it to be a cosmetic choice. But after seeing the video where Titled Towers got hit with small meteors during a match made me believe that the rumored Superhero themed Season Pass might be true. Long a...
Post a Comment
Read more

My 2016 Game of the Year: # 5 Firewatch

#5 Firewatch When I first saw early builds of Firewatch I thought it was a different and new approach in an engaging narrative. The way you can interact with objects and the small clues you can find within the environment provides more life to the world. Firewatch was the first game I played in the genre, but there are other games that have the same kind of first-person narrative. Gone Home is one of the recent and well-received first-person narrative game. The two games are similar in gameplay, you walk from objective to objective trying to put the pieces together in the world. Gone Home is set in a house, and in Firewatch’s case, you’re in an open forest. Campo Santo are the developers of Firewatch and was formed by former Telltales: The Walking Dead developers. Once I knew about Campo Santo and the developers that were working on the game I had a sense of what to expect. Character Building Makes You Sympathize with Henry The game starts strong with a se...
Post a Comment
Read more