Thanks in large part to God of War and the Final Fantasy Tactics iOS port, I’ve been gaming regularly for the first time in about a decade. As I emerged from my dumb hibernation to become a Gamer once again, I realised I could now fill a huge gap in my cultural literacy.
I wanted to understand the game that enchants all the young athletes I cover, and that has reduced the nation’s youth to glazed-eyed automatons that express “joy” via one of five preprogrammed dances. So I downloaded Fortnite.
I started a new game. I parachuted down from the sky. When I landed, I fiddled around to understand the controls, which were simple and intuitive. I beat up a small prefab home with a mallet.
Then I went in pursuit of things to shoot. A bridge to the heavens caught my eye. I scampered up the pallets, only at some point there were no more pallets, so I jumped off. I drank some juice. I saw a cliff. I leapt off, died from the fall damage, and realised no respawn was coming.
I deleted the app.
Comments
10 responses to “A Brief Date With Fortnite”
I was playing Dead Cells last night after quite a number of attempts to get my final power up rune, the Spider Rune. By now I’m used to the controls so I’m running, dodging, hacking and slashing my way through fetid halls of decay and poison. I get close to the exit of the final stage before the first boss, no potion left, health sitting in the double digits, my knuckles whitened from gripping the controller tightly as though I were actually trying to keep hold of that last sliver of life.
Stomping down through a platform I take out a mushroom and a worm after a frenetic bout of mashing my freeze attack and slashing. I pause and take a breath… Only to remember the worms drop bombs on death.
I died. I didn’t uninstall the game.
I’ll collect my paycheck on the way out.
I see no one in the comments can take a joke. Oh, I do wonder if all of them happen to be fortnite fans.
Fortnite is a very boring game that has snowballed in popularity. When something achieves such critical mass, the expectation for a newcomer is that this game will be amazing in direct proportion to its success. It isn’t, the writer humorously points it out. Cue fans squealing “muh journalism.”
This is right up there with Nanette in redefining comedy.
I didn’t say it was a good joke, but to take this article seriously requires some severe social impairment, or much more likely, fan-blinders.
9:56pm: “oh shit, deadline’s at 10!”