So... this was not a review I expected to be posting. Nor was it a game I expected to be playing again, ever. Whilst this game as a whole really needs no introduction at this point, my history with it is a little weird. I tried out Fortnite BR a little bit before it became a huge hit with the mainstream due to exposure from my brother who was playing it and loving it, and I personally was not a huge fan of it. I didn't hate it but I wasn't engaged too much by what I was playing and so dropped it after trying to give it an honest go for a few days. But a few years back I made a bet to a friend that I'd start playing Fortnite again if they ever added Peter Griffin to the game, which finally happened with this season's battle pass. I'm not even a fan of Family Guy, far from it, I was simply unconvinced that they'd ever put him in the game. But as I saw collabs such as Futurama and Invincible pop-up I realized my bet from years ago was likely coming to reality sooner rather than later, with that same friend instantly reminding me when we had official confirmation of Peter Griffin in the game. So I honored the bet, and... fuck. I really wish I'd gotten back into this game sooner, man. It's way too much fun.
I'd like to highlight upfront that I am primarily if not entirely a zero-build player. Whilst I did spend my initial matches playing the default builds mode to try and refamiliarize myself to the game that way, I was reccomended zero-build due to my openness in not having interest in the game when last I played it. My opinion on builds has improved a fair bit and I think it's a solid mode to hop into a couple times, but I simply prefer playing zero-build and it's thus where I've spent much of my time with the main game. Fortnite is a third-person shooter with building mechanics whilst zero-build simply disables the building options to make it a more traditional battle royale experience, but this one change did end up giving much more of a new perspective on the game than I had originally expected. Whilst in the default builds-on mode much of your strategy and planning will come from how you utilize the build functions to create preemptive cover and defensive movement options, zero-build instead runs you through the risk of being in an open world with limited cover options yet instead finding out how to gear mobility tools to your advantage. Things such as the grapple blade (my personal favourite weapon thus far) and shockwave grenades that have multiple purposes, with one purpose being to aid in your movement options when vehicles are not easily accessible. It keeps the traditional shooter elements that I like whilst adding more of an involved feeling to the gameplay with it especially helping in making the massive maps traversable whether or not you actually have a vehicle. It's genuinely quite impressive how many times I've just walked and sprinted across the world without ever really thinking about how far of a distance it truly is, because it all blends together so well and works as a connected open space. Inversely to your movement options, you can also destroy most existing structures with your guns or explosives to instead limit where other players can hide behind and bait them into having to face you head-on; whether or not this works in your favour is a gamble, really, unless you know the other player is in a pinch already. It adds more on the fly thinking to the gameplay in what is otherwise a simple but very solid third-person shooter battle royale game, and given this is a genre I'm not the most familiar with (this, TF2, Garden Warfare 1/2, and the classic Battlefront games are really the only shooters I can say I'm a fan of from the top of my head) it's something I can very easily get behind. I find the reliance on cleverly utilizing movement options and your momentum both in and out of firefight situations to be a lot of fun, plain and simple.
The weapon variety in the game is very good too and makes it very unlikely that you'll get similar starts across games, with a lot of the fun for me coming in trying to work with whatever it is you can get your hands on and gaining an ever-expanding arsenal as you traverse the map and eliminate other players to potentially collect their inventory items for yourself. Mod benches (apparently a new addition) can give you an edge when coming across them too as you can equip a number of weapons with useful modifiers such as zoomed-in scopes for ADS or reduced weapon recoil. This is all pretty standard stuff in shooters from what I can gather but I like it a lot, even if certain weapon types should near-always run the same few mods unless you're trying to catch opponents off-guard with something different. Weapon variety expands further beyond your basic kinds of assault rifles and shotguns though, with more unique items for your loadout including the likes of anvil rocket launchers and lock-on pistols (my favourite firearm thus far) and these particular weapons add a lot of spice to your average match. Whilst a lot of the 'best' weapons do come back to just being those more simple firearms, I'm not the kind to sweat too hard about what's in my loadout so long as I can have a good balance to it. I'll use what I can get my hands on or ideally what I find most fun to use, which these other kinds of weapons tend to do for me. All in all the sheer variety of weapons to be found makes for a very chaotic game that can hardly be predicted, especially as items come and go from the loot rotation throughout the season. However, I feel this is where I can also talk about what is my main negative of the game thus far; weapon balance, or the occasional lack of it. Any game is going to have some kind of internal 'meta', where something is far better than the rest and something is far worse than the rest. Even in metagames where just about everything can be considered viable that won't stop this fact from occurring, there's no way to evenly balance everything without making everything function 1:1 to the same. That being said, Fortnite's balance of weapons generally works out and I've bear witness to a number of changes across this season but a couple of weapons stand out to me as being particularly unbalanced in one way or another.
First up in this regard is probably now the smaller offender, the ballistic shield. This was once a top-offender for me but they changed this thing in a meaningful way late into the season that makes it feel much more manageable although still a weapon I find to be more annoying that anything else. You have a small pistol and a large home-made shield of sorts, able to pull-up the shield as extra cover whilst utilzing the weapon in ADS where you can block incoming hits and still make use of your pistol for some damage. Fun fact, this was the first weapon I found when playing a match which made it all the more prophetic that it would wind up as one of my least favourites to come across and one I won't willingly pick-up. Initially, the shield's HP was seemingly infinite and wildly inconsistent on when hits would stun the user for a punish window; this would mean that even the proposed counter to the shield in a Hyper SMG was not guaranteed to work, with even full magazines not granting a stun in some scenarios. So you'd instead basically need to sacrifice an inventory slot for one of the more consistent counters, the grapple blade or a pack of cluster clingers... and whilst I do love both of those weapons, part of the fun of Fortnite to me is not having to use any specific kind of weapon and rocking what you like most out of what you can find. But the shield would basically demand you have a specific kind of item for something you may or may not end up running into at some point, since not running either weapon could leave you to be screwed over. Thankfully they since changed the shield to have a damage limit and although it's still a little much in zero-build (your max HP is 250 and the shield's max HP is not far off with 150) you can at least consistently counter the shield with more weapons now. Yes, other fringe scenarios existed such as being able to target the hand or feet of the shield user but these are situational at the best of times. I still find the weapon annoying to come across and think it could require taking-up two inventory slots given you're using both a shield and a gun on top of doubling your health (for zero-build) but it's now possible to beat it out with a number of options, making it less of a 50/50 encounter unless you unfortunately run into it early-game.
The weapon that has been trouble for this season from early on and is still trouble now, though, would be the reaper sniper rifle; I straight-up think this weapon is on the overpowered side, at the very least in zero-build. I'm probably not in the best place to compare this one to prior sniper rifles given this is my first proper season but I will say I did at least wait to hop on the hate bandwagon for this weapon, people complaining about it close to the start of the season felt like "people don't know how to counter this weapon so it's overpowered by default" and I had this same mentality with the ballistic shield. As mentioned I just think the shield is annoying rather than overpowered, but the reaper definitely hits both of those marks. Along with every other mark you could dream of because I find this weapon quite easy to learn with extremely rewarding payoff, even post-nerf (if we can call it a nerf). Three bullets per magazine prior to upgrades(!) with the capability to deal OHKO shots even at the lowest rarity, as well as the option of removing glare. This thing is nasty and is not only fantastic at long range, but also medium to close range too... it out-damages ARs and shotguns by a fuckton even disregarding headshots, which means even if you are blessed with life following a missed headshot you're starting a firefight off having taken somewhere around 110 damage. So many times on the mic has a firefight been brought to attention by someone yelling "FUCK I'M SNIPED" (which must sound great without context) or any kind of equivalent, at other times someone will randomly be knocked and that's how we'll know we're being targeted by a sniper. In solos you straight-up just drop dead and whilst multiplayer at least has potential comeback from one of your friends essentially being a living sniper meatshield, it's still annoying that it happens quite frequently and drains you of your recovery resources from only one interaction. With a sniper that has glare you can at least potentially see that and adjust your route accordingly to avoid being hit, but for snipers without glare it becomes nigh impossible to see it coming unless you've got sixth sense. Then there's the other issue of countering a reaper rifle: Your best option is basically using one of your own. Grapple blade to close the distance? Predictable travel path, you'll be shot by anyone who is half-decent at the game. Enforcer AR for long range counter? That's a poor man's sniper and requires mods of its own to be reliable. Flow-inducing items? Might help with mixing up an approach but it is by no means a consistent counter provided the sniper can adjust their aim, which is a reasonable assumption. Weapon mods make it hard to tell what loadout the rifle will be too and thus makes it even more questionable as to what counters sniping except for sniping someone first. It's another weapon I won't use on principle despite it basically being mandatory in mid-game and is damn essential to have in the end-game, but I don't find it fun to be memed on for 275+ damage out of nowhere and thus won't subject others to that same experience. I have used it in the past and a lot of winning games would come down to 'playing chicken' with sniper rifles, pretty slow and not the most exciting thing in the world... "camp or die" sums the sniper situation up pretty well. I won't shame people for using the weapons they have fun with but I strongly suspect people primarily use these things for how powerful they are, especially when some people end up carrying two reaper rifles at once; to say nothing of squads that have multiple players applying repeated pressure with each one carrying the rifle. This weapon is NOT unbeatable, but it does get seriously draining to have it pulled out of nowhere and lose to it multiple games in a row. When you end up overcoming it there is a huge satisfaction factor to be had, but the counters are so situational and inconsistent even if you choose to go the "snipe the sniper" path. This weapon being near-untouched (they gave it nerfed bullet drop that anyone with half a brain has already adjusted to by now) is mostly what reinforces this as a negative impact on the game, and this paragraph being SO DAMN LONG to talk about a single gun probably shows it strongly too. This game will generally let you have a great time and won't take the piss that often, you can have a lot of fun with the chaos in this game and nothing is really irksome. But the sniper is so fast and powerful, packs up to five bullets before needing to reload, can be used effectively at almost any range, can hide the glare, effectively utilize a number of mods to make it wholly unpredictable that it seriously feels like it defines the metagame. Trying to go against it is an uphill battle: You're pretty much required to snipe like a good little boy/girl/enby if you want to have a chance at getting far. I don't play to win and nor do I really care too much about winning consistently, I just want to have fun but then losing many games in a row to an instant-KO sniper drains me.
Despite that huge wall of text about how one weapon is, in my opinion, bad for the meta? I really think this game is currently balanced out pretty well. Yes, I find shields annoying and will usually just run from players using them; yes, reapers one-tapping from their lowest rarity is incredibly crappy balancing; yes, the hammer pump is so laughably useless compared to the stupidly good frenzy auto (didn't even get into that one did I?). But by and large, the game is well balanced in how chaotic it is. Builds and zero-build end up having differing metas which will inevitably create a disconnect in the playerbase on what is and isn't overpowered, which is where I think the reaper is especially egregious as although there are more counters to it in builds it's still ridiculously strong in the mode whilst being pretty much mandatory the further into zero-build matches you go. I've already said there will always be a meta to something no matter how hard an equal balance is attempted, but even so there's a difference in something being stronger than the rest and something pretty much defining a meta. Sniper meta has been pretty real and I've tried to ride it out, but with the one real nerf taking very little time for competent players to adjust to it's hard to justify it anymore. This game is so much fun! ...the game being defined by who snipes who first is not fun, and an unfortunate reality. On one game I was so low about the opposing team having double-snipers that I just ran to the person shooting me from behind and let myself lose to their common frenzy auto. Not my proudest moment, but it was better than getting one-tapped by snipers for the hundredth time y'know? Wasn't going to be able to run and reboot my friend from that pincer motion, so just take the L in the way I want. I digress...
But hey, shooting and looting isn't all there is to Fortnite nowadays apparently. How about those extra game modes? Rocket Racing, Lego Fortnite, and Fortnite Festival. Of these three I have by far spent the most time on Rocket Racing, which may as well just be called Mario Kart DS for one reason that really discredits a lot of the positive aspects of this mode: Snaking. You can have all the track knowledge in the world and be apt at knowing when is the right time to use drifts and boosts, but nothing can compare to the very simple power of snaking across tracks like a maniac. Speed retention is important in this mode but you have no real means of doing so without constantly drifting, and thus snaking becomes the best option. Aside from this core issue, I've been very on-and-off with the track rotation at higher ranked levels. For the longest time you'd be stuck playing a lot of the more "difficult" tracks in the mode, although the general idea of difficult is to take an old track and then place a bunch of slow-down hazards across it haphazardly. This makes "harder" tracks fairly predictable and boring whilst further incentivizing snaking during the brief breaks given by the track design, although is is hardly something to be considered forgiving. It does seem to be that even Epic knew this and increased the pool of available tracks at higher ranked levels at a certain point, making me go back to the mode a few more times before I ultimately just stopped playing it. It was fun at first but the later track designs just being chock-full of hazards all of the damn place combined with the necessity of snaking to reasonably compete for higher finishing positions killed my drive to play it more. This mode has a lot of potential but I've had my fun with it for now, maybe someday I'll go back to it. The other modes I'll touch on more briefly since they're just sort of 'there' for me; Lego Fortnite is something I loved a lot the first time I tried it and then subsequently fell out of. At first feeling like Minecraft-at-home I wound up seeing it as more or less a diet version of Ark (and we now have Palworld also filling that niche) and Ark is a game that exists... I'm not fussed on it, and sadly Lego Fortnite ran out of things for me to care about quickly. This is another mode with potential and although they've added more to it now I honestly haven't felt the desire to try it again. Lastly is Fortnite Festival, a simple but fun rhythm game that started out as my least favourite of these distractions but I would now say is the one I like most even if I still don't touch it all too much. Rhythm games themselves are very hit-and-miss with me but hopping into a few rounds of this every so often to grind out a song and learn the patterns for it can be pretty fun, even if this is a mode I'm still not that crazy over. But Fortnite Festival is a good spot of fun, especially on expert difficulty which is pretty much the best way to play the mode. Each insutrment type also has its own difficulty level, too, so you can experiment and find what you like to use the best... drums aren't for me, I can tell you that.
Before I wrap this one up, there is another aspect I want to touch upon and that's monetization. I feel like the monetization practices in Fortnite are largely acceptable, especially when I compare them to the typical AAA gaming landscape nowadays. Fortnite is a free-to-play game with a battle pass model that is self sustaining, where you pay for it once and can earn back your 950 V-Bucks through opening the tiers little by little (in fact you get some pocket change leftover as you earn a total of 1500 V-Bucks for the whole thing) to invest back into the next battle pass. You can also take these Monopoly dollars to the item shop and spend them there for select skins, bundles, music tracks, all that good stuff that might tickle your fancy. The battle pass by default costs just under ten dollars or whatever your regional equivalent might be and it ended up giving a lot more stuff than I was expecting to get, I can't lie. A good variety of characters each with a handful of differing styles for added spice, loading screen splashes, weapon skins, music tracks, gliders, pickaxes, emotes, emojis, vehicle skins- calm down Ebin Games! Whilst this is indeed a lot of stuff, the actual value you get from it depends upon how you feel towards the specific contents in the pass and thankfully I've found use for just about everything here save for a couple of characters I'm not quite interested in to use more than a couple of times, if I've used them at all honestly. I don't feel anything is wrong with any of these designs but I just haven't been compelled by some of them, and to be fair part of that blame goes to the small handful of shop skins I've bought... yeah okay I'll cut to the chase right now, this is monetization that I can get behind. The base experience is free and you don't have to spend a single penny if you don't want to, so if it ends up being a game you do see yourself repeatedly coming back to then I feel it totally worthwhile to throw down a couple of bucks for cosmetic items you're going to get enjoyment out of. Whether you buy a shop skin, a bundle, or go-in on the battle pass I don't think you can really go wrong so long as you don't impulse-buy things. There is inherent FOMO that goes into monetization regarding battle pass models and rotating storefronts which is something I won't deny; I've had a friend who plays the game completely F2P (although he was tempted by the battle pass a few times but joined too late to get what he wanted from it) call the shop prices 'scummy' which was an interesting take. As interesting as one word can be, I suppose, but interesting to see a different perspective on it from my own. In a way I can understand the absurdity of individual skins from the outside looking in, but at the same time I look at it that if you're happy to keep playing the game then you're going to get a lot of value out of what you're buying. People are happy to spend a hefty chunk of change on takeout, sometimes multiple times a week, which is a very temporary product compared to a cosmetic in a video game that'll last... maybe not literally forever, but a damn good while with how popular Fortnite continues to be. I'm happy to throw down some change for some cosmetic items I know I'll enjoy considering how this has become a go-to game for me alongside F-Zero 99, with the base experience having been free for me to enjoy prior to deciding "Yeah, I love this enough to want to give them some of my money". You'll still be getting items as a F2P user, too, and can save enough free V-Bucks over time to eventually get the battle pass without paying a single penny anyways at which point it'll become self-sustaining provided you don't spend too much in the shop. That being said, the FOMO is still an unavoidable and unfortunately undeniable aspect of any monetization system done this way, but I think they've done their best with what's here. How much you trust yourself with playing around practices like these will definitely affect your opinion on it and for myself I'm not too suggestible when it comes to microtransactions, so unless I see something I know I want and will use I'm not going to be spending my money wildly. All-in-all I do think this approach to monetization works very well and is certainly far better than any of the imitators who nickel and dime customers without relent, but if you know you have impulsive spending habits then approach with major caution just as you would any other rotating storefront/battle pass format.
Having made this review gradually across the game season, I've seen my opinions on the main game rarely change. Once I got into the gameplay loop and understood how things worked and the best way to get to grips with them, the feel of everything has been consistently enjoyable and fun. I have my gripes with certain aspects of balance but can enjoy the game in spite of these problems as they feel relatively small compared to the rest of the game, honestly the big exception being how the reaper sniper rifle absolutely dominated zero-build from start to end. Even holding off on this review a couple hours longer to play some final rounds of the season, my opinions remain much the same as they have been to this point; I love the core of this game and enjoy getting to go-in for some rounds when I get the chance. If I'm not playing F-Zero 99, I'm probably playing this. I'd never have thought I'd come to love Fortnite as much as I do now, but I'm glad I gave it a second chance and think I'll be sticking with it for a long time! For each season I play, I'll keep my thoughts on them logged and release them on-site at the end of it just like I did here. It'll be fun to catalogue my thoughts of each season, I think? We'll see how it goes. Overall, I've been really enjoying my time with this game despite its handful of flaws. I'm curious to see how long-time players feel as apparently it's more divisive of a season around here, but my friends who have played longer still seemed to enjoy this one quite a bit too? I dunno. The playerbase is so huge I guess you'll see a pretty fair split of every opinion no matter where you go. Regardless, I've had my fun here and I look forward to the next season coming real soon. Can the legends of Greek mythology stand-up to this season of underground rebellion? ...I mean, probably.
I'd like to highlight upfront that I am primarily if not entirely a zero-build player. Whilst I did spend my initial matches playing the default builds mode to try and refamiliarize myself to the game that way, I was reccomended zero-build due to my openness in not having interest in the game when last I played it. My opinion on builds has improved a fair bit and I think it's a solid mode to hop into a couple times, but I simply prefer playing zero-build and it's thus where I've spent much of my time with the main game. Fortnite is a third-person shooter with building mechanics whilst zero-build simply disables the building options to make it a more traditional battle royale experience, but this one change did end up giving much more of a new perspective on the game than I had originally expected. Whilst in the default builds-on mode much of your strategy and planning will come from how you utilize the build functions to create preemptive cover and defensive movement options, zero-build instead runs you through the risk of being in an open world with limited cover options yet instead finding out how to gear mobility tools to your advantage. Things such as the grapple blade (my personal favourite weapon thus far) and shockwave grenades that have multiple purposes, with one purpose being to aid in your movement options when vehicles are not easily accessible. It keeps the traditional shooter elements that I like whilst adding more of an involved feeling to the gameplay with it especially helping in making the massive maps traversable whether or not you actually have a vehicle. It's genuinely quite impressive how many times I've just walked and sprinted across the world without ever really thinking about how far of a distance it truly is, because it all blends together so well and works as a connected open space. Inversely to your movement options, you can also destroy most existing structures with your guns or explosives to instead limit where other players can hide behind and bait them into having to face you head-on; whether or not this works in your favour is a gamble, really, unless you know the other player is in a pinch already. It adds more on the fly thinking to the gameplay in what is otherwise a simple but very solid third-person shooter battle royale game, and given this is a genre I'm not the most familiar with (this, TF2, Garden Warfare 1/2, and the classic Battlefront games are really the only shooters I can say I'm a fan of from the top of my head) it's something I can very easily get behind. I find the reliance on cleverly utilizing movement options and your momentum both in and out of firefight situations to be a lot of fun, plain and simple.
The weapon variety in the game is very good too and makes it very unlikely that you'll get similar starts across games, with a lot of the fun for me coming in trying to work with whatever it is you can get your hands on and gaining an ever-expanding arsenal as you traverse the map and eliminate other players to potentially collect their inventory items for yourself. Mod benches (apparently a new addition) can give you an edge when coming across them too as you can equip a number of weapons with useful modifiers such as zoomed-in scopes for ADS or reduced weapon recoil. This is all pretty standard stuff in shooters from what I can gather but I like it a lot, even if certain weapon types should near-always run the same few mods unless you're trying to catch opponents off-guard with something different. Weapon variety expands further beyond your basic kinds of assault rifles and shotguns though, with more unique items for your loadout including the likes of anvil rocket launchers and lock-on pistols (my favourite firearm thus far) and these particular weapons add a lot of spice to your average match. Whilst a lot of the 'best' weapons do come back to just being those more simple firearms, I'm not the kind to sweat too hard about what's in my loadout so long as I can have a good balance to it. I'll use what I can get my hands on or ideally what I find most fun to use, which these other kinds of weapons tend to do for me. All in all the sheer variety of weapons to be found makes for a very chaotic game that can hardly be predicted, especially as items come and go from the loot rotation throughout the season. However, I feel this is where I can also talk about what is my main negative of the game thus far; weapon balance, or the occasional lack of it. Any game is going to have some kind of internal 'meta', where something is far better than the rest and something is far worse than the rest. Even in metagames where just about everything can be considered viable that won't stop this fact from occurring, there's no way to evenly balance everything without making everything function 1:1 to the same. That being said, Fortnite's balance of weapons generally works out and I've bear witness to a number of changes across this season but a couple of weapons stand out to me as being particularly unbalanced in one way or another.
First up in this regard is probably now the smaller offender, the ballistic shield. This was once a top-offender for me but they changed this thing in a meaningful way late into the season that makes it feel much more manageable although still a weapon I find to be more annoying that anything else. You have a small pistol and a large home-made shield of sorts, able to pull-up the shield as extra cover whilst utilzing the weapon in ADS where you can block incoming hits and still make use of your pistol for some damage. Fun fact, this was the first weapon I found when playing a match which made it all the more prophetic that it would wind up as one of my least favourites to come across and one I won't willingly pick-up. Initially, the shield's HP was seemingly infinite and wildly inconsistent on when hits would stun the user for a punish window; this would mean that even the proposed counter to the shield in a Hyper SMG was not guaranteed to work, with even full magazines not granting a stun in some scenarios. So you'd instead basically need to sacrifice an inventory slot for one of the more consistent counters, the grapple blade or a pack of cluster clingers... and whilst I do love both of those weapons, part of the fun of Fortnite to me is not having to use any specific kind of weapon and rocking what you like most out of what you can find. But the shield would basically demand you have a specific kind of item for something you may or may not end up running into at some point, since not running either weapon could leave you to be screwed over. Thankfully they since changed the shield to have a damage limit and although it's still a little much in zero-build (your max HP is 250 and the shield's max HP is not far off with 150) you can at least consistently counter the shield with more weapons now. Yes, other fringe scenarios existed such as being able to target the hand or feet of the shield user but these are situational at the best of times. I still find the weapon annoying to come across and think it could require taking-up two inventory slots given you're using both a shield and a gun on top of doubling your health (for zero-build) but it's now possible to beat it out with a number of options, making it less of a 50/50 encounter unless you unfortunately run into it early-game.
The weapon that has been trouble for this season from early on and is still trouble now, though, would be the reaper sniper rifle; I straight-up think this weapon is on the overpowered side, at the very least in zero-build. I'm probably not in the best place to compare this one to prior sniper rifles given this is my first proper season but I will say I did at least wait to hop on the hate bandwagon for this weapon, people complaining about it close to the start of the season felt like "people don't know how to counter this weapon so it's overpowered by default" and I had this same mentality with the ballistic shield. As mentioned I just think the shield is annoying rather than overpowered, but the reaper definitely hits both of those marks. Along with every other mark you could dream of because I find this weapon quite easy to learn with extremely rewarding payoff, even post-nerf (if we can call it a nerf). Three bullets per magazine prior to upgrades(!) with the capability to deal OHKO shots even at the lowest rarity, as well as the option of removing glare. This thing is nasty and is not only fantastic at long range, but also medium to close range too... it out-damages ARs and shotguns by a fuckton even disregarding headshots, which means even if you are blessed with life following a missed headshot you're starting a firefight off having taken somewhere around 110 damage. So many times on the mic has a firefight been brought to attention by someone yelling "FUCK I'M SNIPED" (which must sound great without context) or any kind of equivalent, at other times someone will randomly be knocked and that's how we'll know we're being targeted by a sniper. In solos you straight-up just drop dead and whilst multiplayer at least has potential comeback from one of your friends essentially being a living sniper meatshield, it's still annoying that it happens quite frequently and drains you of your recovery resources from only one interaction. With a sniper that has glare you can at least potentially see that and adjust your route accordingly to avoid being hit, but for snipers without glare it becomes nigh impossible to see it coming unless you've got sixth sense. Then there's the other issue of countering a reaper rifle: Your best option is basically using one of your own. Grapple blade to close the distance? Predictable travel path, you'll be shot by anyone who is half-decent at the game. Enforcer AR for long range counter? That's a poor man's sniper and requires mods of its own to be reliable. Flow-inducing items? Might help with mixing up an approach but it is by no means a consistent counter provided the sniper can adjust their aim, which is a reasonable assumption. Weapon mods make it hard to tell what loadout the rifle will be too and thus makes it even more questionable as to what counters sniping except for sniping someone first. It's another weapon I won't use on principle despite it basically being mandatory in mid-game and is damn essential to have in the end-game, but I don't find it fun to be memed on for 275+ damage out of nowhere and thus won't subject others to that same experience. I have used it in the past and a lot of winning games would come down to 'playing chicken' with sniper rifles, pretty slow and not the most exciting thing in the world... "camp or die" sums the sniper situation up pretty well. I won't shame people for using the weapons they have fun with but I strongly suspect people primarily use these things for how powerful they are, especially when some people end up carrying two reaper rifles at once; to say nothing of squads that have multiple players applying repeated pressure with each one carrying the rifle. This weapon is NOT unbeatable, but it does get seriously draining to have it pulled out of nowhere and lose to it multiple games in a row. When you end up overcoming it there is a huge satisfaction factor to be had, but the counters are so situational and inconsistent even if you choose to go the "snipe the sniper" path. This weapon being near-untouched (they gave it nerfed bullet drop that anyone with half a brain has already adjusted to by now) is mostly what reinforces this as a negative impact on the game, and this paragraph being SO DAMN LONG to talk about a single gun probably shows it strongly too. This game will generally let you have a great time and won't take the piss that often, you can have a lot of fun with the chaos in this game and nothing is really irksome. But the sniper is so fast and powerful, packs up to five bullets before needing to reload, can be used effectively at almost any range, can hide the glare, effectively utilize a number of mods to make it wholly unpredictable that it seriously feels like it defines the metagame. Trying to go against it is an uphill battle: You're pretty much required to snipe like a good little boy/girl/enby if you want to have a chance at getting far. I don't play to win and nor do I really care too much about winning consistently, I just want to have fun but then losing many games in a row to an instant-KO sniper drains me.
Despite that huge wall of text about how one weapon is, in my opinion, bad for the meta? I really think this game is currently balanced out pretty well. Yes, I find shields annoying and will usually just run from players using them; yes, reapers one-tapping from their lowest rarity is incredibly crappy balancing; yes, the hammer pump is so laughably useless compared to the stupidly good frenzy auto (didn't even get into that one did I?). But by and large, the game is well balanced in how chaotic it is. Builds and zero-build end up having differing metas which will inevitably create a disconnect in the playerbase on what is and isn't overpowered, which is where I think the reaper is especially egregious as although there are more counters to it in builds it's still ridiculously strong in the mode whilst being pretty much mandatory the further into zero-build matches you go. I've already said there will always be a meta to something no matter how hard an equal balance is attempted, but even so there's a difference in something being stronger than the rest and something pretty much defining a meta. Sniper meta has been pretty real and I've tried to ride it out, but with the one real nerf taking very little time for competent players to adjust to it's hard to justify it anymore. This game is so much fun! ...the game being defined by who snipes who first is not fun, and an unfortunate reality. On one game I was so low about the opposing team having double-snipers that I just ran to the person shooting me from behind and let myself lose to their common frenzy auto. Not my proudest moment, but it was better than getting one-tapped by snipers for the hundredth time y'know? Wasn't going to be able to run and reboot my friend from that pincer motion, so just take the L in the way I want. I digress...
But hey, shooting and looting isn't all there is to Fortnite nowadays apparently. How about those extra game modes? Rocket Racing, Lego Fortnite, and Fortnite Festival. Of these three I have by far spent the most time on Rocket Racing, which may as well just be called Mario Kart DS for one reason that really discredits a lot of the positive aspects of this mode: Snaking. You can have all the track knowledge in the world and be apt at knowing when is the right time to use drifts and boosts, but nothing can compare to the very simple power of snaking across tracks like a maniac. Speed retention is important in this mode but you have no real means of doing so without constantly drifting, and thus snaking becomes the best option. Aside from this core issue, I've been very on-and-off with the track rotation at higher ranked levels. For the longest time you'd be stuck playing a lot of the more "difficult" tracks in the mode, although the general idea of difficult is to take an old track and then place a bunch of slow-down hazards across it haphazardly. This makes "harder" tracks fairly predictable and boring whilst further incentivizing snaking during the brief breaks given by the track design, although is is hardly something to be considered forgiving. It does seem to be that even Epic knew this and increased the pool of available tracks at higher ranked levels at a certain point, making me go back to the mode a few more times before I ultimately just stopped playing it. It was fun at first but the later track designs just being chock-full of hazards all of the damn place combined with the necessity of snaking to reasonably compete for higher finishing positions killed my drive to play it more. This mode has a lot of potential but I've had my fun with it for now, maybe someday I'll go back to it. The other modes I'll touch on more briefly since they're just sort of 'there' for me; Lego Fortnite is something I loved a lot the first time I tried it and then subsequently fell out of. At first feeling like Minecraft-at-home I wound up seeing it as more or less a diet version of Ark (and we now have Palworld also filling that niche) and Ark is a game that exists... I'm not fussed on it, and sadly Lego Fortnite ran out of things for me to care about quickly. This is another mode with potential and although they've added more to it now I honestly haven't felt the desire to try it again. Lastly is Fortnite Festival, a simple but fun rhythm game that started out as my least favourite of these distractions but I would now say is the one I like most even if I still don't touch it all too much. Rhythm games themselves are very hit-and-miss with me but hopping into a few rounds of this every so often to grind out a song and learn the patterns for it can be pretty fun, even if this is a mode I'm still not that crazy over. But Fortnite Festival is a good spot of fun, especially on expert difficulty which is pretty much the best way to play the mode. Each insutrment type also has its own difficulty level, too, so you can experiment and find what you like to use the best... drums aren't for me, I can tell you that.
Before I wrap this one up, there is another aspect I want to touch upon and that's monetization. I feel like the monetization practices in Fortnite are largely acceptable, especially when I compare them to the typical AAA gaming landscape nowadays. Fortnite is a free-to-play game with a battle pass model that is self sustaining, where you pay for it once and can earn back your 950 V-Bucks through opening the tiers little by little (in fact you get some pocket change leftover as you earn a total of 1500 V-Bucks for the whole thing) to invest back into the next battle pass. You can also take these Monopoly dollars to the item shop and spend them there for select skins, bundles, music tracks, all that good stuff that might tickle your fancy. The battle pass by default costs just under ten dollars or whatever your regional equivalent might be and it ended up giving a lot more stuff than I was expecting to get, I can't lie. A good variety of characters each with a handful of differing styles for added spice, loading screen splashes, weapon skins, music tracks, gliders, pickaxes, emotes, emojis, vehicle skins- calm down Ebin Games! Whilst this is indeed a lot of stuff, the actual value you get from it depends upon how you feel towards the specific contents in the pass and thankfully I've found use for just about everything here save for a couple of characters I'm not quite interested in to use more than a couple of times, if I've used them at all honestly. I don't feel anything is wrong with any of these designs but I just haven't been compelled by some of them, and to be fair part of that blame goes to the small handful of shop skins I've bought... yeah okay I'll cut to the chase right now, this is monetization that I can get behind. The base experience is free and you don't have to spend a single penny if you don't want to, so if it ends up being a game you do see yourself repeatedly coming back to then I feel it totally worthwhile to throw down a couple of bucks for cosmetic items you're going to get enjoyment out of. Whether you buy a shop skin, a bundle, or go-in on the battle pass I don't think you can really go wrong so long as you don't impulse-buy things. There is inherent FOMO that goes into monetization regarding battle pass models and rotating storefronts which is something I won't deny; I've had a friend who plays the game completely F2P (although he was tempted by the battle pass a few times but joined too late to get what he wanted from it) call the shop prices 'scummy' which was an interesting take. As interesting as one word can be, I suppose, but interesting to see a different perspective on it from my own. In a way I can understand the absurdity of individual skins from the outside looking in, but at the same time I look at it that if you're happy to keep playing the game then you're going to get a lot of value out of what you're buying. People are happy to spend a hefty chunk of change on takeout, sometimes multiple times a week, which is a very temporary product compared to a cosmetic in a video game that'll last... maybe not literally forever, but a damn good while with how popular Fortnite continues to be. I'm happy to throw down some change for some cosmetic items I know I'll enjoy considering how this has become a go-to game for me alongside F-Zero 99, with the base experience having been free for me to enjoy prior to deciding "Yeah, I love this enough to want to give them some of my money". You'll still be getting items as a F2P user, too, and can save enough free V-Bucks over time to eventually get the battle pass without paying a single penny anyways at which point it'll become self-sustaining provided you don't spend too much in the shop. That being said, the FOMO is still an unavoidable and unfortunately undeniable aspect of any monetization system done this way, but I think they've done their best with what's here. How much you trust yourself with playing around practices like these will definitely affect your opinion on it and for myself I'm not too suggestible when it comes to microtransactions, so unless I see something I know I want and will use I'm not going to be spending my money wildly. All-in-all I do think this approach to monetization works very well and is certainly far better than any of the imitators who nickel and dime customers without relent, but if you know you have impulsive spending habits then approach with major caution just as you would any other rotating storefront/battle pass format.
Having made this review gradually across the game season, I've seen my opinions on the main game rarely change. Once I got into the gameplay loop and understood how things worked and the best way to get to grips with them, the feel of everything has been consistently enjoyable and fun. I have my gripes with certain aspects of balance but can enjoy the game in spite of these problems as they feel relatively small compared to the rest of the game, honestly the big exception being how the reaper sniper rifle absolutely dominated zero-build from start to end. Even holding off on this review a couple hours longer to play some final rounds of the season, my opinions remain much the same as they have been to this point; I love the core of this game and enjoy getting to go-in for some rounds when I get the chance. If I'm not playing F-Zero 99, I'm probably playing this. I'd never have thought I'd come to love Fortnite as much as I do now, but I'm glad I gave it a second chance and think I'll be sticking with it for a long time! For each season I play, I'll keep my thoughts on them logged and release them on-site at the end of it just like I did here. It'll be fun to catalogue my thoughts of each season, I think? We'll see how it goes. Overall, I've been really enjoying my time with this game despite its handful of flaws. I'm curious to see how long-time players feel as apparently it's more divisive of a season around here, but my friends who have played longer still seemed to enjoy this one quite a bit too? I dunno. The playerbase is so huge I guess you'll see a pretty fair split of every opinion no matter where you go. Regardless, I've had my fun here and I look forward to the next season coming real soon. Can the legends of Greek mythology stand-up to this season of underground rebellion? ...I mean, probably.