Warhawk Recap

Fortnite

Watching Ninja is a blur. Sure, he uses the same controls as you, the same movements, and the same building pieces. But he plays the game at a different speed. He’ll encounter another player, and you can’t blink, for fear of missing it. The things he does to give himself advantages are so minute; an untrained eye might miss it. But to those of us who know what Ninja is doing, its all kind of a masterpiece. Fortnite is the online multiplayer game that is sweeping the nation, and it’s the canvas that a 26-year-old from Lake Villa, Illinois uses to paint his masterpieces.

Fortnite is a simple game that you can learn in minutes. It only takes about 10 different controls, but don’t let that fool you. Take your mind off the game for just a few seconds, and Ninja or someone else will come up from behind you and end your game as fast as it started. The gameplay sequence is easy. You start the game on a small island, which serves as a lobby for your system to connect to 99 other players, who will soon be out to kill you. As soon as you finish connecting, you are transported into a school bus, which is flying over another, larger island. Once on the Battle Bus, you’ll have to jump out, but not before you have a look at your map and pick a landing destination. Once you’ve dived out, you’ll begin your descent. A quick look around, and some of the other players are visible as they fall out of the sky. Soon after, your parachute will deploy, and you’ll be given a bit more control over your exact landing destination. From the moment your boots hit the ground, you’ll have to be off and running. With nothing to defend yourself except an oversized pickaxe, it’s a race to see who can get guns first. Those that do, will survive. For a seasoned pro like Ninja, there may be a few different objectives, but most of us plebs will have to search for something, anything to defend ourselves with.

From there, your options begin to open up. There is a checklist of things you’ll want to start the game with: guns & ammo of course, health and shield potions, rockets, grenades and all sorts of extra toys to aid your survival and hamper other players with. By now, you’ll have gotten a message on your screen that says something like this: 3:00 UNTIL STORM MOVES. Another glance at your map will confirm the message. The Storm, which can be seen as clouds slowly building over the water over the island, Is the movable boundary in Fortnite. At first, it starts as a circle that covers half the map. However, as the game progresses, the storm will close in around you, bringing all the players together. Eventually, players will be forced to run into smaller and smaller areas, which leads to more encounters with other players. This all serves to make Fortnite into a video game version of King of the Hill. The last one standing will be given a “Victory Royale” and will have every right to take a picture and post to their Snapchat story.

Now, getting Victory Royale isn’t something that happens too often, especially for players with my amount of skill, or similar. I’ve spent XXX hours, and only have 1 Victory Royale (I shot the 2^nd last guy out of his tower, and then the last enemy walked right in front of me, while I was standing in a bush. Two quick pumps of my Shotgun, and I had my first win!)

For Players like Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, Victory Royale is much easier to come by.  In fact, a quick check of an online database (https://stormshield.one/pvp/stats/Ninja) reveals that Ninja has 2182 wins (as of 8:32 PM on April 9^th) You might ask why anyone would care about statistics in an online game, but Ninja’s current worth would answer that pretty quickly. A quick Google search spits out the number $3.4 million, but using online streaming sites like Twitch, Ninja can make about $560,000 per month by doing nothing but playing video games. That’s a powerful amount of money for someone who doesn’t have to get out of bed to go to work.

There are a lot of games that have a similar idea to Fortnite, which is classified as a Battle Royale game. Titles like H1Z1 and The Culling haven’t hit mainstream, but Fortnite does have one Rival. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds is Fortnite’s main competition. Where Fortnite is cartoony and lighthearted, its counterpart, commonly known as PUB G, is much more serious, with more lifelike characters, and a more real feeling environment. But don’t let Fortnites cute characters and animated graphics fool you, its just as serious as PUBG, Call of Duty, or 2k.  The biggest difference between Fortnite and any other title in this genre is the ability to build. Along with collecting guns and bombs, players are also able to modify most of the environment. Remember that pickaxe you started with? That comes in useful for knocking down things like trees and rocks but can also be used to punch through walls and cars, even entire buildings. Once you’ve collected enough wood, stone, or metal, the player can choose from a vertical wall, a horizontal floor tile, a ramp, or a pyramid. However, limiting that may feel, the possibilities are endless. You can make a simple box, with a ramp in the middle, which creates a height advantage over enemies on the ground. You can also make ramps to run over water, or to scale cliffs. In fact, one strategy involves building a ramp all the way into the sky, to avoid detection. However, builder beware! If your structure gets shot down, you can fall right out. Your build must be attached to the ground in at least once place. This isn’t Minecraft, no floating castles here!  The best Fortnite players can build huge staircases and fortresses in mere seconds, and when you watch Ninja play, the speed at which he builds is amazing.  Its one thing that sets him apart from even the best Fortnite players.

With its cartoon graphics and simple premise, the game is very easy to pick up and allows mostly anyone to sink hundreds of hours into each mode, of which there are usually 3. The first, Solo, is the most common, where you play by yourself. Get lonely? Invite your friends online, and you can play with a Squad of up to 4 people, all speaking to each other through Fortnite’s online chat system. Does that Special Someone want to play with you, but not have the havoc of four players descending on your fort? Duo mode might be the way for you to go.  One of the best parts of the game is the Social aspect, which is made easy by freeing up communication and rewarding teamwork. Why have one builder making a fort when you can have an entire team creating a giant bunker!

A lot of people play Fortnite. In fact, according to (http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/05/many-people-play-fortnite-battle-royale-7363495/) the number rose as high as 3.4 million players at one time, breaking PUB G’s record of 3.2 million. There are also many famous people playing the game, including NBA players, actors, and Drake. In fact, when Drizzy hooked up with Ninja, they almost broke Twitch, the website people were using to watch him play. After a few rounds, rapper Travis Scott and Steelers wide receiver Juju Smith Schuster joined up to make a full squad, over 600,000 paid money to watch them play together! Numerous articles from ESPN and Bleacher Report have told of athletes playing in their free time, and NBA rookie Josh Hart even had his own Fortnite custom shoes made, which he wore during a game against the Celtics!

All in all, Fortnite is sweeping the nation. Most video game crazes don’t last that long, so you’d better hop on the Battle Bus before everyone else jumps off. After all, you don’t want them landing before you, do you?

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