Fortnite - Save the World Review

So, although I normally just review board games, I have decided to take a leap into reviewing video games for your information and entertainment along with my other normal reviews. What better way to start it off than by talking about fortnite: the biggest, most talked about, social phenomenon of 2018 and I might wager 2019 as well... Well not quite, you see, fortnite is actually two games, with one being the free battle royale game which you have no doubt heard about, but the other a zombie survival game called 'save the world' that you have to pay for which shall be the subject of this review.

After spending a decent amount of money on it (I managed to get it for £20 as there was a sale on but the normal retail price is £40), I excitedly booted up the game and was met with a barrage of glitches and bugs, just about making it through the tutorial with a sigh of relief. Little was I to know that the worse was yet to come, as after you had gone through the tutorial you had to download the rest of the game and so began one of the most frustrating 30 minutes of my life. There were no clear instructions for how to do this and for a beginner like myself at computer games, this could have been the end of the road. But in the end I learnt, by asking my friends and scouring the forums, that you need to go into the launcher for fortnite and click the little cog symbol on the side of the launch button.

After the Herculean trials I had to face in the tutorial, it looks like the programmers had managed to swat the pesky bugs away from the main game, so I started to play. The main body of this game involves searching around game maps and gathering materials to make weapons, building defences around an objective and then defending that objective from zombies. Using the game controls from the more popular battle royale game in terms of building, it is quite intuitive and the learning curve for missions is low making it easy to enjoy the missions right from the get go. The only element that takes a while to grasp is the crafting system but, with a bit of help from friends, I was soon doing that like a pro.

Now, I can get onto the really juicy part of this review, talking about the game play.  Well I must say that it is pretty fun to shoot down herds of zombies, giving you a sense of power that is not often there in real life. As well as that you could say there is almost something cathartic about building a protective base around a site that you must protect from the undead hordes. You undertake the levels with other random people on the internet and there is a quite fun sense of camaraderie as you mow down swathes of zombies.

Just playing the game normally is fun but the games downfall comes from its story mode, which forces you to go off and find random items (like some books for the librarian or some presents for the cleaner) and takes you away from the fun of zombie killing. It turns a fun game into a fetch and repeat cycle with you just mindlessly going from point A to B. Unfortunately, to access the games content you have to go through with these tasks, and I can never be bothered to do that, leading me to still be stuck on the first stage (from which I don't think I will ever progress). This really makes it a lot less fun to play the game as either you can go through the story and get new levels to play, or actually have fun.

A big reason you might be drawn to this game is the allure of  v-bucks (the in-game currency for fortnite) which can be earned through doing side quests and be spent on costumes and dances in the main battle royale game. These challenges aren't too tricky to do, and can be completed through just normal playing though if you want to complete all three daily quests a day you might have to spend some more time on the game than you would want to.

Overall this is a really fun game to play, but the story mode sours the taste it leaves in your mouth. I would recommend buying this if you can get it as an offer (like the £20 I managed to buy it at) but it would be hard to justify buying it for the full £40 with the issues of the bugs and story mode.