Fortnite Early Access preview – Multiplayer co-op build and kill.

Fortnite, which we talked about a bit after E3, is out as an early access title. Epic Games is letting this one take its first steps into the wild and I’m right there to be a part of that journey. There are a few negatives to go with the positives, but it’s been fun so far. If you’re not familiar with Fortnite, it’s an interesting amalgamation of action, exploration, and construction. It’s an entirely co-op game where players are the last survivors fighting against the storm. Like the unholy offspring of a one-nighter between Minecraft, Left 4 Dead, and Warframe. Except fun. 

Fortnite all night

Fortnite has quickly shown me what I’m good at and what I need serious help with. Exploration? I could do that all day. I like to think that I’m pretty damn inquisitive and observant. With each level being procedurally generated every time it loads, I’ve learned the kinds of places to search for treasure. Attics are great for that. And if a house doesn’t have a way into the attic, I just make one. Unfortunately, exploration and material gathering is only the first part of any successful mission.

Build your own hall of death.

Phase two in most missions is the build phase. This is where I’m supposed to take all of the materials I’ve gathered and turn them into an actual fort. Preferably something with a logical layout and traps to help me and my team combat the zombie hordes about to charge us. I really suck at that part. Sure, if you want a box around something, I’m your guy. Four walls and a roof is something I can do. Until I realize that I built myself into a box. I know there was a way to make a door…

The third and final phase is combat. Husks (they’re pretty much zombies and monsters) teleport to the field in waves and it’s up to your team to stop them. Husks generally want to get to the MacGuffin you’re protecting, but they won’t hesitate to tear off your face if you’re in range. The variety and lethality of husks increases as missions progress. Thankfully, Fortnite provides an ample array of death dealing devices for the discerning gamer. Pistols, shotguns, snipers, grenades, or hockey sticks are all available for your maiming needs.

I’m all out of gum.

When I first saw the trailer, I was sure that I wanted to play an Outlander. I figured I’d be all about exploring and gathering treasure. (Who doesn’t love loot?) Now that I’ve gotten some hands-on time with Fortnite, I’m a ninja for life. Guns are nice for those that don’t like danger, but I will slice ‘n dice in the thick of it all night long. Yes, the combat phase is where I have the most fun. I know that my ninja should probably be using a light sword like a katana, but I really like the heavy melee weapons. So I’m a ninja with a claymore. Seems legit, right? Something about the fast pace of action and satisfying destruction of the husks calls to me.

The good stuff

Fortnite has a lot of great parts going for it. The character designs are great and there’s a variety for each of the four main classes. Because of the unique properties of each class, players will immediately recognize who fills what job by looking at their teammates. The procedurally generated levels means that I’m not going to get bored replaying previous missions to complete daily quests. The variety of quests also helps keep me dialed in and playing much later than I probably should at night. And speaking of quests, the Twitch integration that provides quests for viewers (follow DorkadiaPlays, seriously) is inventive and I like it.

The voice acting is really good. I might even say phenomenal. It’s a show I’d like to binge on Netflix at some point. The voice cast (thank you, reddit) includes a bunch of recognizable actors that I already love from their other work. The writing is great and the humor is on point. Fortnite is worth playing for the story alone. Perhaps hacking and slashing hordes of husks is a bonus.

And the ugly bits

I’m really enjoying Fortnite, but I do have a few gripes. The first of these is the inventory system–specifically that I can’t look at my inventory between missions. I can load into my home base while not doing a shield defense mission to use materials I’ve found to fortify my defenses, but that creates significant downtime between actual gameplay. The load times alone are a serious turn off. I’m also getting close to capping out my schematics and survivor inventory, so I’ll need to look at committing things to the record book, recycling, or transforming them. Which brings me to my second point of complaint.

I hate random draws as a method of advancement. I know Fortnite will be free to play in 2018, but I want some way to improve my stuff without relying on random draws. There is an upgrade system that works within tiers of quality, but I’ve not encountered a way to upgrade my common hero to an uncommon or beyond. My options seem to be either buy more llamas (the blind boxes of Fortnite) or to unlock an appropriate tier of transformation. The transformation is still random in both terms of quality output and specific item. So getting that epic ninja hero I want is a matter of chance rather than drive and determination.

Play it!

I like Fortnite and I feel as if I’d like it even more if I were playing with friends. The lack of a built-in voice chat system (it does have a textbox) feels like a limiting factor. But that’s what Discord is for, right? Still, I love the character design and mechanics. I love the randomly generated levels that make exploration interesting. I love getting loot, even when that’s smashing open a llama pinata as much as I disdain the blind box system. The fact that I have my own persistent base that I can build up over time is the best. Multiple skill tree advancement systems I could probably do without, but I’d need to play more to make up my mind on that.

tl;dr: If you don’t want to drop money on an early access game (maybe you were burned by Cube World) then keep this on your watch list and play it next year when it launches as free to play.

Dorkadia was provided with a promotional key for review purposes.