On the surface, Fortnite's Survival mode is an easy concept to take down: Scavenge, Build, Kill, Reward, Repeat. For those of you thinking back on your Gears escapades, five minutes with Fortnite and you’ll slam your head into the one big difference Fortnite offers on the rest of Epic’s unique library: Depth. Fortnite is a title that doesn’t necessarily reward you with a mass amount of items, but instead with other avenues of progression. While leveling your XP bar rewards you with skill points, leveling your base rewards you with loot boxes that will supply resources that can be used in a multitude of different progression pools. With powerful weapon blueprints being directly accessible via those loot boxes, all other in game rewards are split up between Traps, Survivors, Blueprints, XP Cards, and Crafting materials. This ensures that your character always has an item on hand that can turn the tide of a round against regular Zombies, or can save a team from a tank like beast to finish out a mission. Now, between investing in high level blueprints, filling out a collection book of unused Heroes, Weapons, and Survivors, and dumping thousands of XP Cards into your main Hero to access their individual skill abilities, it is really easy to get lost in the 4-5 different areas you could put your attention to. And yet, for most of the +30 hours put into this review, there’s never a moment where the progression feels overwhelming.
Battle Royale is another beast entirely, dumping depth for the structured Mayhem that the 1 vs. 100 genre provides. It's a beautiful change of pace that did not always start out as beautiful and still somewhat lacks what games like PUBG offer: small details and a realistic setting. While originally awkward and clumsy, Fortnite's crafting system now fits the Battle Royale mode beautifully and its weapon play is tighter than its ever been. Building new structures for Cover give you a slight advantage in protection, but a major disadvantage in stealth. Every action has a consequence in Fortnite, whereas PUBG is a lot of action and build up for the occasional victory or common defeat. This is what separates Fortnite from the competition: if you choose to hack away at a wall, be prepared for someone to hear you. Choose to build a tower to gain a better vantage point? Be ready to be seen by everyone around you. The constant tension of sound and sight makes each game enticing and exhilarating to play. Epic has really landed on a gem, that originally started out as a last minute idea. However, if there is a weak point, it remains to be seen if Epic will continue updating on its map design. Admittedly, dropping into a town or field is fine, but it truly does lack in diversity and interest in terms of its map structure. And it could be intentional: given that each player has the ability to muster up his/her own buildings with just a few clicks.
Fortnite and Fortnite: Battle Royale are, admittedly, a solid combination in tandem. Maybe its the long development cycle that allows Fortnite’s Survivial experience to be enjoyable, but after just a few updates Battle Royale has come into its own as the top 1 vs. 100 experience to date. On individual merits alone, each of these games might hold over players temporarily before they move on to their next adventure, but as a combo, there's very few games that offer this much content and diversity.