“Maybe this will be the perfect time to come back” I thought, “everyone will be on a level playing field with all the new additions”. I was very wrong. I should have known that as soon as I walked into the lobby and realized I had no idea how to get into the game.
The ‘Game Mode’ box which contained the likes of ‘Solo’, ‘Duos’, ‘Squads’ and the odd special event at the time was just an empty rectangle, with none of the above options. After about five minutes of searching the menu (remember that the font especially small on the switch) I eventually found the option to select a game mode. I couldn’t believe what I saw.
If, like me, you’ve also been on a Battle Bus hiatus for the past few years, you may not have seen the game mode screen for a while, so check out the screenshot above. I was looking for something that vaguely resembled a ‘Solo’ match and was met with a bunch of words I didn’t understand, celebrity faces I didn’t recognize, and more tie-ins than a phase-ending MCU movie could imagine.
I vaguely remember the announcement that you would be able to make your own islands in Fortnite, but I didn’t expect the amount of options that are now present. Eventually I was able to find the ‘Battle Royale’ mod in the ‘Popular’ section of the search screen. God knows how long I would have searched if I had just started aimlessly scrolling through the sensory overload that hit me upon arrival.
With that first hurdle out of the way, I dove into the game (after a fairly long load time) and ran some real playing. On the surface, this is thankfully the same old Fortnite – you land on an island with 100 other wretches, frantically collect the best weapons you can and then start dispatching your competition to be the last man standing. But it didn’t take me long to realize that almost everything else had changed.
In Fortnite’s defense, I haven’t been up to speed on the game’s story (yes, there is a plot) for the past four years, so I had to take a quick online refresher course after realizing I knew absolutely nothing about the map’s location. Dusty Depot, Tomato Town and Fatal Fields are gone, replaced by similar alliterative spots such as Lazy Lagoon, Coney Crossroads and Rocky Reels. And the Battle Royal card is now absolutely massive.
It turns out that the original map — known as the Athena Map or Athena Royale — has been blown up and reassembled several times since I last played. The island as we currently find it is a fusion of several different worlds all joined together (I think) and is known as Asteria (could be?).
Anyway, for my first few games I proceeded as I always do: find a relatively remote spot, take out anyone who decided to land near me, and then spend the rest of the game just skirting the edge of the storm boundary trying to avoid as much combat as possible. I had no idea where I was most of the time, but getting down to the last few survivors is still a pretty exciting experience.
What took me a while to realize was just how much there is things the game has become. There used to be the odd quest or mission you might stumble upon while playing a match, but now the world is full of XP bonuses, weapon modifiers, ‘Capture Points’, gold bars, job offers, NPCs, rewards, etc. I could I could go on listing them, but the important thing is that I had no idea what to do with most of these things.
Even the things I considered basic have changed. Think you know what chests are? Some of them now need keys. Do you know how to drive a car? Apparently you’ll have to top it up with gas. It’s still a very fun time, but I can’t help but think that the simplicity of the original “100 players start, one stays” format has been lost a bit.
But maybe that’s the point. From my brief return to the game, it’s clear that Battle Royale is no longer the be-all and end-all of Fortnite. The other game modes, while staggering in number, have managed to create a platform for any type of gaming experience you can imagine. These range from standard game modes with the addition of ‘No Build’ battles where it’s the same game but (you guessed it) you cannot build
Has Fortnite really become platform for playing and not for the game itself? Could be. Not sure what’s going on in 90% of my Battle Royale matches anymore? Definitely. But it still gave me a good time, even though I did watch Ariana Grande pull a shotgun on Spider-Man before viciously tapping his dematerializing corpse…
Are you still playing Fortnite or did you quit a while ago as well? Are you tempted to dive back in? You can fill out the following surveys and then get off the bus in the comments and let us know.
