Fortnite Battle Royale is better than Playerunknown’s
Battlegrounds. Period. Straight up. The end. If you ever wondered what PUBG
would be like if it had a bit more polish and a ton more personality, Fortnite
Battle Royale is your answer and it’s a ton of fun. It’s also free and is
available on Xbox One AND PS4. Continue reading our full preview for all of the
details on Fortnite Battle Royale. What is Fortnite?
Fortnite is somewhat confusing because, ultimately, it is
going to be free to play at some point, but currently it costs $40 (or more
depending on the bundle you buy) to access the game’s standard co-op player vs.
enemies campaign mode. You can also pay real money for extra characters, XP
boosters, cosmetic items, and a bunch of other things. These microtransactions
will ultimately be how the game is free for everyone, but as I said, currently
it costs money to play PvE.
Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode, on the other hand, actually
is free to play currently. You download the same Fortnite client, but don’t
have access to PvE unless you pay for it. You do have access, of course, to the
100-player free for all Battle Royale multiplayer mode, which is what this
article is about. And, if you want to pay for cosmetic items and other stuff,
you can.
It is also important to note that Fortnite, and the Battle
Royale mode, is currently still in early access, so it will continue to get
updates and upgrades and changes for the foreseeable future. This also means
that there can and will be glitches and issues and problems, but that’s just
how early access / Game Preview works.
Fortnite Battle Royale vs. PUBG
When Battle Royale was initially announced, PUBG publisher
Bluehole was pretty vocal with its criticisms that Epic Games stole their idea.
Bluehole didn’t invent the battle royale genre, so they don’t really have a
legal leg to stand on, but spending any amount of time with Battle Royale does
make their concerns pretty clear – Battle Royale is definitely pretty much the
same thing, and it’s better than PUBG.
The basics of Fortnite Battle Royale are exactly the same as
PUBG. You air drop down into a huge map with 99 other human players, scrounge
around for randomly placed weapons and items, and fight it out while the play
area shrinks until only one person or team remains. There are some significant
differences in Battle Royale, however. The first of which is the destruction /
construction system that is the foundation of Fortnite. You can break down any
structure or object in the game into component parts and then build new stuff
with the materials. You can instantly build a wall to hide behind in a
firefight. You can tear down a building to get at players trying to hide. You
can build a huge fortress base full of traps. You can build a tower into the
sky so no one can reach you. You can kind of do anything you want, and that’s
awesome.
The ability to build and destroy makes Battle Royale matches
instantly more dynamic and interesting than PUBG could ever dream of being.
There is simply more stuff to do, so the matches are inherently more fun. In my
opinion, at least. The core gameplay actually has the same sort of clunky
awkwardness of PUBG, if we’re being honest, but everything also works just a
little smoother and better thanks to Epic’s decades of experience as well as
the fact Battle Royale was built on an already functional foundation in
Fortnite.
Battle Royale also has the benefit of not being a super
serious realistic battle sim like PUBG wants to be. Battle Royale has attitude
coming out of every pore and doesn’t care if it is realistic or not. You drop
out of a flying bus, for starters, and instead of a parachute one unlockable
item is a freaking umbrella (like Mary Poppins, ya’ll). The weapons and items
and costumes and special effects and other nonsense you can unlock all revel in
their weirdness and how over the top they can be, which makes Battle Royale a
ton of fun to play just to see what crazy thing you’ll unlock next. It is a
more rewarding experience than PUBG simply because the unlocks are cooler.
Battle Royale’s other main advantage over PUBG is that it
isn’t tied down to just one game type. Sure, there’s a 1v99 free for all mode
that you can also play with small teams, but there has also been a 50v50 big
team battle mode that was absolutely awesome. Having a bunch of teammates does
diminish some of the tension in the game, but for more casual players that
don’t usually survive 1-on-1 encounters with other players, it makes for a much
more fun experience. I personally just love big team battles. Battle Royale has
also experimented with other optional modes like a rocket mode where everyone
had rocket launchers that was just hilarious to play. Moving forward, Battle
Royale is only going to get more crazy and dynamic and interesting and more fun
to play as new items and weapons and maps and game modes are added. PUBG has
been pretty stale and stagnant.
Something else that is interesting is that Fortnite Battle
Royale is available on Xbox One as well as PS4 while PUBG is only available
currently on Xbox One. This is already creating a massive divide in the player
base where PS4 fans are flocking en masse to Battle Royale to the point that it
is the most popular game on PSN by a pretty huge margin. Even if / when PUBG
launches on PS4 I imagine Battle Royale will continue to be more popular (PS4
fans are vindictive asses when it comes to exclusives on other platforms, see
the controversy around Rise of the Tomb Raider but Street Fighter V being a PS4
exclusive is OK for some reason …), so PUBG launching on PS4, whenever that may
be, will likely be too little, too late.
Bottom Line
In the end, Fortnite Battle Royale is a ton of fun and I
highly recommend you give it a try if you’ve been wanting to see what all the
fuss is about with PUBG and the massive multiplayer deathmatch genre in general.
Battle Royale is free, packs a ton of attitude and personality, and is a crazy
dynamic experience that is a ton of fun. Moving forward, I only expect it to
get better, too. Whether on Xbox One or PS4, Fortnite Battle Royale is worth
checking out.
