Fortnite Battle Royale Review

Price: Free
Dev: Epic Games
Players: 100

Fortnite came as a pleasant surprise to the Switch at E3, bringing with it free-to-play Battle Royale fun. Since you can safely ignore all the cosmetic extras, this is a brilliant game that the rest of the world is playing, making Switch owners feel part of the crowd.

Sure, some FPS snobs hate the game's very existence, but that's their loss. If you've missed all the hype. Fortnite throws 100 competitors out of a balloon-bus onto an island, about three-quarters of a mile square. There's a farm, lake, homes, offices, woods and plenty of other little nooks and crannies to explore.

All players start out with a pickaxe and must find weapons fast or be cannon fodder for those quicker off the mark. Random drops and treasure chests make it very much pot luck, you could get a shotgun, pistol, M16, grenade launcher or a sniper rifle among many others, each with their own range and hit zones.

There's also health and bandages, plus resources to do a spot of building to speed up your progress and shields that provide a little protection. A key change Fortnite has to other games is you'll survive longer if you build first, shoot second, and it only adds a second or so to your day to start with some basic defences.

The game looks better and feels more natural on the big screen, but is plenty playable undocked, even if the Switch doesn't feel like a natural FPS machine in that state.

Welcome to the island, Fortnite style

With a cartoony look to it, the game is a 12-rating but pretty much anyone could play without feeling the lust of war. Get a few kills and your rating soon increases, but really, everything outside the island is a cosmetic touch, including all the DLC. There are different modes including duo and team, but you're still doing the same things.

Visually the game is down a notch compared to its bigger brothers, sacrificing some detail, and the frame rate has dropped to 30FPS. That's still fine for a fun-and-friendly title like Fortnite. Ignore the speed-obsessed freaks, not every game in the world needs 60FPS or higher.

Most battles take range at long or mid distance, as you see someone coming or going about their own business. But when you hear footsteps or rustling nearby, go to your shortest range weapon and get ready for a quick showdown. Some you win, some you lose, all part of the fun. You can head back to the lobby and into another match within a minute.

To keep the players in range of each other as the numbers dwindle, a killer storm is closing in on the center of the island. That herds people together, and late in the game some may start building forts or defences to stay safe.

The building aspect is interesting, you can knock down existing buildings with your pickaxe, and use the wood, stone or metal to build new battlements. Most new players ignore the tactic, but a well-placed wall can provide great cover, or you can build a ramp to a high spot for top sniping opportunities.

The team modes make building more strategic, with players working together to build cool bases and adding a new level of detail. Its also cool to sneak up on builders and blow them to pieces, but experienced players will likely hear you coming.

When you die, you can use spectator mode to watch other players carrying on, and learn from their skills or mistakes to help you survive longer in future games. Winning a battle is the true measure of success, and you have to be very good or lucky to do so, but the experience reward and kudos makes all those losses well worth it.

Even if you think you've mastered the game, and have strung together some wins, regular changes and new modes, highlighted on the front page, make things different enough to keep us coming back and adding to the challenge. Presumably, one day, Epic will change the map too, which will reset everyone's experience.

UPDATE: Having now played the PS4 version for a while, I can comment on some of the sacrifices getting Fortnite to run on the Switch. The most obvious is the ability to track other players out the bus, you can better see where more people are headed. Graphical refinery on the PS4 offers better looking water, shadows and moving trees (actually a distraction for those who fire at any movement).

But the biggest omission is the lack of tracking scores, results and kills. Epic doesn't have to record whole games, but adding basic score tracking would make the game so much more valuable. Otherwise, beyond finer textures in places and less lag and audio cut-out (especially with the new Season 7 planes), Switch owners have pretty much the same game, and I get just as good, if not better results playing on Nintendo's box than I do the PS4 version.

Score 4/5