Fortnite

The Harris/Walz Campaign Fortnite Map

In case you didn’t catch the news, and it feels like it wasn’t exactly, “big news”, the Harris/Walz campaign has launched a Fortnite map as part of their effort to promote the Presidential campaign. This was met with many people asking why they would try to market to a bunch of kids, which was met with the appropriate response that, there are plenty of voting age adults who play Fortnite, and the game is old enough that a lot of people who started as kids, are also old enough to vote.

It’s still kind of debatable if this map will really have any effect on anything, probably not. It’s also not 07the first time Presidential Candidates have tried to “attract the young people vote” using “young people things”. Biden/Harris apparently had an Animal Crossing map, Sarah Palin had a weird Steampunk comic book.

Seriously though, just look at this…

Anyway, the Harris/Walz map is called “Freedom Town USA”, which is a bit unfortunate because if you search for “Harris” in the map search, you get all of these click bate games. There’s like, 5 people on these clickbait maps though, so I guess it’s not really a big deal.

To make things even easier, the map code for Freedom Town USA is 733155366547. Just search on that. That’s why we have map codes.

Anyway, the map itself. Just before anyone gets some weird idea about how custom maps work in Fortnite, this is not a battle map. There are no guns, the game itself isn’t even all about guns at it’s core anymore, it has LEGO and a Music mode and a racing mode, and many custom player created maps, often with no weapons like tycoon idle maps and obstacle course maps.

The Harris/Walz map is… sort of an obby map. I guess. One of the main modes I used to play was obstacle courses (Deathruns) and this one is extremely weak if it were part o that category. It takes place in a large generic city space, covered in inspirational billboards with Harris and Walz names on them. You have several objectives to run through to complete the map, and there is no reward for finishing the map. The objectives are essentially split across three parts.

During part 1, you head to 4 different places in the city, at, roughly the 4 cardinal edges of the map, to collect construction gear by doing various tasks. Two of these tasks are short, weak obby courses. One is a series of mini games, and the last is a short dirt bike race. Oh wait, I guess I lied, there is a weapon, one of the mini games has you shooting targets with a bow. There were other players around, I didn’t think to see what happens if you shoot the bow at them.

After collecting all 4 tools, you head to the center of the city to a little construction yard where you run around collecting construction material hidden around the containers to “build” a house. This is the only part of the map with a real campaign message as there are pop up messages about Harris’ plans for helping out people dealing with the housing price crisis.

After finishing construction of the house you head to an elevator to the roof of a building. Your first task is to collect 5 campaign posters which have blown away in the wind, they are all extremely easy to locate. Then you go through another short and lame obby section before riding a loooong grind rail over the city to arrive at a campaign rally thing populated by Fortnite characters.

I was a little lost on my first try, and tried to take my motorbike into the elevator, which bugged the map and sent me trapped under the map. On the second try, when I knew what to do, it took about 15 minutes to complete the whole run. This includes a few minutes afterwards screwing around trying to jump off the building after the campaign rally. Which you can’t do. It just zaps you back. You can’t escape the rally. A few other slightly amusing notes…

I kind of feel like having obstacle courses in construction areas is not really up to “OSHA standards”.
The house you build is surrounded by barbed wire, which points inward, which implies keeping people trapped inside. Hmmmm.
None of the characters at the final rally are licensed. I remember seeing some repeats of Jonsey and Midas and some other very boring Fortnite characters
You can sort of steal the hoverboard from the hoverboard race bit it doesn’t really drive on land and disappears as soon as you get off.
You can steal a bike from the race.
There are cars near the initial spawn I missed my first run. It’s much easier to navigate the city with a car.
The radio does not work in the car. Probably to avoid the “illusion of an endorsement”
You can’t emote on the map, which is lame and boring.
The gold coins you collect seem to serve no purpose.
The entire map is pretty well designed, except the house you “build”, which feels really weirdly build and has a lot of alignment and clipping issues.
There are various USA Landmarks around the map to see, like the Statue of Liberty, the Gateway Arch, and the Liberty Bell.
There is some vague LGBTQ+ representation on the signs, they are few but some are rainbow designed
The map seems to only support maybe 4 people max.

Anyway, I always find these weird random cross-promotion maps interesting, and it’s kind of a shame they probably just sort of vanish into the ether after a while as the game updates. As far as I can see there isn’t a “Trump Map”. If there was it actually would be kind of amusing if it also didn’t have any weapons allowed.

Fortnite Festival

Aug 29th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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I kind of really rejected Fortnite Festival, the music mode, when it was launched last year. Which feels kind of surprising because I really like Rhythm games and am a huge DDR fan. I never was super into Rock Band though, and Fortnite Festival.is basically the latest iteration of Rock and, it’s just, built into Fortnite. Harmonix, makers of Rock Band, was bought by Epic and folded in to create this game mode.

Anyway, I have decided to give it another try lately and it’s not that bad. It’s not DDR, but it sort of scratches that itch. It doesn’t replace it and I still want to get my dance pad set up again, but maybe Fortnite Festival can spur that along. I know Rock Band is arguably more popular than DDR, but DDR will always be my baseline for rhythm games.

I think a lot of my hang-ups with Festival stem from that baseline too. I really dislike the downward fall of the notes vs the upward push. I hate that there are not arrows, though not too terribly. I have been using the same arrows based key binds I used to use when I did Stepmania on the keyboard, as in using the left, down, up, right, arrow keys, in that order. Even though every lane has a little bar in it, I still have muscle memory of which key is which lane.

Though this throws me way off on expert level songs, which are 5 lanes. Frankly, even if I were a Rock Band pro this would be frustrating, it’s literally like playing an entirely different game. Which is made worse because in theory, working up through difficulty trains you on how to hit note of increasingly more complicated patterns. Adding another lane is like moving from DDR to Pump It Up (which uses diagonal arrows and the center), and expecting to be an instant expert.

Another “it’s not DDR” annoyance, the songs are soooooo long. Most DDR tracks are like, 2 minutes, tops. Probably partly because DDR is a very physical game. Yeah, you can play it with a controller or keyboard, but if you are playing it the proper way, you’re standing and moving. Even if you use instrument controls in Fortnite Festival, you aren’t moving that much. It uses a lot of popular music and it’s always the full track, so some songs can be 5-6 minutes long. Which really starts to drag on a bit when pushing these sometimes repetitive note sequences in.

I also really dislike that there doesn’t seem to be anyway to adjust the fall speed of the notes. Some of them move way too fast and I would much rather slow them down into a bunch so I can pre-read them, or speed them up entirely so it becomes entirely single note reactions. This isn’t help that all the notes are the exact same color. In DDR, half steps, quarter steps, etc, all had slight different colorings, which made them easier to read.

This feels like it’s just turned into a bit of a random about why I never liked Rock Band. DDR is so full of perfect visual queues, and everything here is just so, flat and identical.

Like, as an example, there is this Billie Eilish track, and the notes are very clearly this sort of back and forth between two notes, and a third that is a regular rhythm. Like left, up, left right, left, up, left, right. It would be a fun pattern in DDR. But in this game, because everything is so samey visually, my brain can’t quite process the changes fast enough. Eventually I could probably memorize it, but I really hate playing rhythm games based on memorization. I want to play based on learning skills and techniques so when I recognize a pattern even in a new song I can get it.

Another one in that same song I think, I am pretty sure it’s a standard “front/back/front back” step pattern from DDR, but once again, it’s all visually identical so it just clutters up.

Or maybe I am just out of practice.

Whatever the case, I am really enjoying the mode.

Rocket Racing is still lame though, and I will stand by that forever. The tracks are boring, the cats are boring, everything in it is just, “like other racing games but way worse.”. They should have just stuffed Rocket Racing into Rocket League and it may have helped make RL actually worth playing.

Fortnite Mobile

Aug 19th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’ve shifted back to Fortnite from Overwatch, Maybe. Probably. Anyway, the newest Fortnite Season is a pretty sweet Marvel themed season with a Marvel BP, which is way more exciting than the upcoming Overwatch BP, which is, kind of hodge-podgey, sort of Ancient Egypt?

Also, no Venture Skin for like 3 more seasons. What the fuck Blizzard?

AnywayI’m not really here to discuss Overwatch or the Marvel season of Fortnite. What also dropped this season is the return of Fortnite Mobile. Currently available in the EU on iPhones and on Android Phones anywhere, through the Epic Launcher. This is key, because you have to go get the Epic Launcher from Epic’s website separate from the Play Store.

The question is, is it worth while to do so?

Frankly, probably not. I will say, I did not play a regular BR match at all. I played a few creative maps to test things out and to get the 100,000 experience needed to complete a few quests for items. I started on one I’ve been using as filler on PC for the daily creative XP, Rainbow Run, which is simply, running in a straight line, collecting coins.

I moved on from here to a regular Deathrun map. I have played a ton of Deathruns on PC, and they are definitely my favorite type of custom games. I will say, I managed to finish the 200 level Deathrun I picked. It was definitely one of the easier DR maps I have played, and didn’t have a lot of the more tricky jumps and traps I’ve encountered across a myriad of maps. But they do require some precision in jumping and moving. I also died way more than I normally do on these, something like 60 times in the 200 level map. For comparison, I usually die like 5 times max, even on maps I have never played, and I am pretty sure I have finished this exact same map on PC in like 20 minutes or less with 0 deaths.

I needed a bit more experience for my 100k after finishing this one and moved on to another Dr map. Pretty much the same experience.

Overall though, it kind of felt pretty weird and janky. Framerates and graphics were fine. The controls left something to be desired, and I wasn’t even trying to shoot anything while moving. I had a lot of deaths because there is a sort of, autorun that seems to randomly trigger, and I would run off the edge into a spiked pit a lot.

I also had an issue where I would randomly open the “ping” menu near the controls, which would interrupt other inputs.

It’s less critical, but the quests menu is opened by clicking the mini map, which wasn’t present on one of the map I played, making the menu inaccessible.

It’s also just weird. I’m not a huge fan of 3rd person or FPS games on mobile at all. I can’t see ever using this again unless they offer more drops, or there is a skin I want to log in and get when I otherwise can’t do.

LEGO Fortnite First Impressions

Dec 9th, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

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Fortnite is launching several new game modes with the advent of Chapter 5. The impression I’ve gotten is that these are supposed to be more or less permanent fixtures like Battle Royale and Save the World. The first of which to drop was LEGO Fortnite. This one kind of feels like the largest one because it includes LEGO Mini figure versions of many many skins and completely new gameplay in large worlds. Not all of the skins have LEGO versions, but they seem to plan to add them all over time. If you already own a particular skin, then you get the LEGO version of that skin, usable in the LEGO mode.

LEGO Fortnite isn’t just “Battle Royale with LEGO skins”. I’ve seen it described as being “Minecraft but it’s LEGO”. From what I’ve played, it seems more like a LEGO version of the popular Viking survival game Valheim. Honestly, aside from the occasional sound effects, nothing much about it even feels like Fortnite at all, which is kind of weird. Even the landscaping and trees, which use a non-LEGO style don’t really feel like Fortnite exactly. I would really love to know some of the juicy business details behind whatever made this happen because it really feels like LEGO could have just made a stand-alone game. I get why EPIC wanted this added, they are trying to make Fortnite into their Metaverse play, and much more than just “Battle Royale”.

So, I know there are quite a few of these “survival sandbox” sort of games, but most of my experience is with Minecraft and Valheim, so those are what I have to compare things to here. Like Minecraft, you can create a world that is either creative or survival. Like Minecraft, in Creative you get access to all the parts and just get to build as free as you want, in Survival, you have to forage for everything. The survival part feels a lot more like Valheim. The resources are much more limited than Minecraft, and it’s more about actual foraging than digging up every block on the map. Which is why it feels like Valheim, with its central village base that you explore out of, and it’s more realistic gathering methods.

Everything centers around upgrading your village, which lets you gather more and more villagers, which are just NPC LEGO versions of popular Fortnite characters. The whole gimmick is a little hazy. To get a villager to stay, they seem to require you give them a bed, which is simple enough, but also that your village be a certain level. They will show up and gather around your central square statue until you officially recruit them. Even when not recruited, they pretty much just act like every other NPC though, defending the village and hanging around the area not doing much.

You can give them jobs to gather resources, but that doesn’t seem to actually DO anything from what I can tell. I have no idea where the resources go, if anywhere, and when you “ask about their job”, they just answer that they just started and have not done anything yet. However, when you assign it, they say they will be done in one day cycle.

It’s also clear and not clear how to upgrade your base. There are clear-cut needs, like a certain number of stones or wood, but also a vague, “Improve your village”. Which I think it related to how much you have built within the little circle area around the central post.

Like many of these games, there is a day/night cycle. Mobs are not limited to only nighttime, but there are MORE mobs at night. And this kind of brings up my first gripe with this game mode. You are REDICULOUSLY WEAK. There does seem to be a way to craft more health, I have yet to unlock a way to craft armor or better weapons, if there even is one. You have three health hearts, which can tick away in quarter increments, but for things like Wolves, they hit very hard for almost half your health, and for the skeletons at night, it’s easy to rapidly become overwhelmed, as they move much faster than you do. The balance here just feels, way off.

The skeletons also have a pretty huge aggro range, which means they will start swarming your village regularly. Thankfully, they don’t seem to really damage anything and the NPCs seem to be indestructible so they can kill the skeletons easily. Also, when you die, you will just respawn in your village, so you can quickly recover your lost loot. I have tried spreading campfires all over to light the area, but it doesn’t seem to really help. Also, campfires seem to be the only real way to make light. You can toss down torches, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to place them like in Minecraft. I crafted some candles around but they don’t really seem to DO anything.

Since we are on Campfires, it’s probably worth mentioning the weird temperature mechanic of the game. I’m sure there is a way to become too hot, but when it rains, you can become cold, which is bad. The game tells you this, it’s basically, “Get to shelter.” Standing next to a campfire does not work. You would think it would, but it does not keep you warm in the rain. It also does not heal you like in Fortnite BR either, it just provides light. You also can’t build or interact with anything in the rain. This all is a bit annoying because the best solution is to build a giant roof over your entire village, which feels a bit, not very village-like.

Between the coldness and the mobs being overpowered, you will often spend many nights just standing around waiting. Which is boring. In theory, you could use that time crafting things, but the game is very resource-stingy. You could build, but that also requires resources. And going out to the dark edges of the village to build, means probably aggroing in 10 skeletons.

The lack of resources also really adds to the tediousness of it all. I mean, sure, the idea is to get you out into the world, but then you run into another issue. Inventory management is absolutely atrocious. Your 24-slot backpack fills very quickly with things of dubious usefulness. Ok, sure, you can just dump stuff. Maybe you want to keep things, well, there are chests for this. Small chests with 8 slots in them. So you’re probably going to need a room full of chests. Chests themselves are kind of costly to build though, since resources are hard to get, making chests can feel costly. Also working against you, tools break very quickly, so you will be burning resources making fresh axes and picks and swords.

But it’s a survival game, those are more just complaints about the game having gameplay, so I can accept them. But managing all of this is even worse. items don’t automatically group and stack, for example. They stack to stacks of 30 or so. Say your chest has 4 of an item, you “deposit all” on a stack of 5. It now takes up two slots. You can manually stack them, but the entire point of quick keyboard shortcuts here is not to have to hassle with manual sorting. That 5 stack should drop into that 4 stack and make a 9 pile on its own. This feels nitpicky, but when you constantly have to do it, it gets old, very fast.

Exploring itself doesn’t feel very rewarding either. The main driver is gathering wood or rock, which is a constant need. But sometimes there are special encounters. you might find a ruined building or a small pack of bandits, or these little glowing butterflies that lead you to a chest. The rewards are almost never good though. Often just berries you can find anywhere.

I should probably mention the game servers/worlds themselves. Like most of these games, the map is procedurally generated. I have not explored out to the edges, but they may be infinite, I am not sure on that one yet. You can invite other players to join you as well, which is a popular aspect of these sorts of games. According to the game, you can hand out keys to a limited number of people to allow them to play without your presence, otherwise, the world ends when you leave. There also isn’t any additional cost to running a world/server, which is a bit surprising considering Minecraft has things like Realms that you can pay for, and even running a game outside of that means a host of some kind and a cost. Then again, they also host all of those creative mode maps as well. “Free Hosting” is kind of Fortnite’s gimmick I guess.

I feel like a lot of my complaints are about how this survival game expects me to survive. And to some extent they are, but the real underlying complaint is balance. The game world is all cutesy and LEGO, but also it’s hard and restrictive on what it gives you. The harsh survival part of these games is supposed to be at the higher-end areas, or when you explore out deep into the world, not, literally while you are in your own home base.

The game just sort of, feels at odds with itself. It’s stingy on resources to encourage exploring, but the enemies are very tough so you never feel confident enough to go on a long trip anywhere. There are bonuses and special chests around, but they never give worthwhile loot. I mentioned Valheim, this is all part of why I could never really get into Valheim, it all just felt so egregiously annoying for the sake of annoyingness.

Fortnite Big Bang Event

Dec 3rd, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

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What a ridiculous letdown. Especially after all the build-up. Last season’s end with Fracture was lame but at least there was things to DO and some story stuff happened.

Let’s start with the build-up. As is standard, there was a special event at a specific time, in this case 1p, my time, CST (all times CST). I logged in a half hour early, which was the suggested lead time from Epic, and was greeted with a queue wait, of 90 minutes.

I let it go, thinking maybe it would jump ahead faster, but nope. 1 pm came and went. Eventually, I did get in. The news splash banner said there were additional runs, due to demand, at 4 pm and 10 pm. So I decided I could kill some time and wait for 4 pm. I did a Team Rumble match, then loaded up a Deathrun to try to get a couple more last-minute levels, to unlock the Golden Peely/Whip skin. I only needed like 2 levels.

Around 3 pm, and 2/3rds of the way through a 400-level Deathrun, I was randomly booted out of the game. When I reloaded, I was greeted by another queue. Another, 90 minute queue. You see the math problem here? I sat in that queue and walked away to do some other things, and well, I missed the 4pm event. I think a lot of people did, because around this time, the game went completely offline. It was offline, for hours. I pretty much decided not to bother with the 10 pm event, and it’s likely just being another 90-minute queue.

I was upstairs messing on my laptop, and decided to remote to my other PC, and, I was able to log in. This was, maybe 8 or 8:30pm. I loaded another deathrun that dropped a slow drip of XP, just to make my account look less idle, and decided to give the 10pm event a go. Around 9:30 I went back down to my PC. Unfortunately, as, I think, a side effect of the Remote Desktop, the interface and fame were sluggish. I killed the process and reloaded, again, hoping for no queues. Fortunately, there was none.

I decided on a skin, and decided to go with Arianna Grande since the event had this Eminem theme promoting it. Plus I think Arianna was the star of a previous end-of-season event (before I started playing). It seemed like a good fit. Finally, I was in a lobby, which meant hanging around the empty map with some other players for a bit, centered around the rocket at the center of the map. Everyone was mostly just running around building random things and emoting. There wasn’t a ton to do since you couldn’t break anything or gather mats. I even tried running to the edges of the map. Even trying to destroy gas pumps, they would just, flame up and not explode. Jumping off the map just saw you instantly teleported back to the center to glide down again.

Eventually, the countdown completed and the rocket was launched. You couldn’t actually interact with the rocket at all, in fact, once it launched, you couldn’t interact with much of anything. Your character is launched way into the sky and just hovers for a bit, while, something(??? I don’t know what) attacks the meteor and then the rocket comes back and basically, the island explodes… again…

This leads to an on rails tour of a Fortnite LEGO world, which was kind of leaked and known about. Which leads to a short race in Rocket Racing, which was leaked and known about and I’m not sure how much actual control there was from the player actually happening. Next up was the most interactive bit, when the players drop onto a stage and Eminem appears, as Lose Yourself starts up. Finally, some good stuff!

But there wasn’t really much, good stuff. You play a bit of Lose Yourself in a little mini rhythm game, and then the stage is destroyed by a giant Kaiju sized Eminem. He goes walks circles around you on a small floating stage raping some song I didn’t recognize, while occasionally destroying buildings.

And… that was it.

I went in expecting an Eminem Soundwave Series level. Instead it was a ten minute advertisement for the new modes coming soon. It literally could have been a YouTube video. All that waiting and hype for something incredibly lame.