图片：史诗

如果你从未亲自尝试过叙事诗的《皇室之战》，你可能会有一些关于Fortnite。比如“这是所有孩子在手机上玩的游戏启动了应用商店”，“这是一款比Funko Pops有更多交叉点的游戏。”或者甚至“电脑游戏的所有问题都是免费玩垃圾游戏。”

你在两个t上就对了这些要点。Fortnite确实无处不在，从《复仇者联盟》的电影中都有它的身影出席国会听证会。但如果你因为这个或任何其他原因一直在回避，我会在这里一个老顽固的PC游戏玩家说：给它一个机会。你可能会惊讶于它有多好，以及多么值得你关注。

Fortnite是一只技术野兽

首先，Fortnite是一个技术重量级，可以将您定制的游戏PC推向极限。或者至少可以这可能会让你大吃一惊——毕竟，《堡垒之夜》是一款非常灵活的游戏，它可以在手机上运行当你想到硬件密集型乳头时，脑海中并不是真正的卡通图形风格les。

但请记住，Fortnite是由Epic开发和出版的。史诗，创造者和主台虚幻引擎的ner，这是几乎任何想要高端图形的人的首选工具而无需手动对所有内容进行编码。Fortnite作为该公司最受欢迎的面向用户的产品，通常是最新和最大图形保真度的测试台。

光线追踪？Fortnite不帽子时间超分辨率？Fortnite也这么做。Nanite虚拟几何？老实说我没有不知道这是游戏技术还是你可以在企业号航空母舰的工程甲板上做的事情，b但是Fortnite做到了。Fortnite也不断更新Nvidia DLSS兼容性，所以你c即使你不喜欢最新的硬件，也要试试这些养眼的东西。

Fortnite最近去了t相当大规模的虚幻5动力视觉大修这甚至让一些长期玩家望而却步ir帧率在他们不得不做出调整之前就有所下降。哦，是的，如果你只想测试经过调整，Fortnite将在不需要外部工具的情况下为您提供帧速率。在我的1440p ultrawide，即使有RTX 3070，我也必须在中等偏下的位置用力，才能达到120 frames每秒。

我的电脑无法在全分辨率下处理最高设置，但当我将其缩放时幸运的是，它拥有1080p，但仍在青少年时期。放心，不管你有多少钱 把你的游戏硬件，这个免费游戏可以给它一个锻炼。

Fortnite总是在变化

作为 现场服务游戏，Fortnite的生存和死亡新奇。Epic在某种程度上做到了这一点(p很可能是字面意义上的）。每隔几周，皇家战役地图就会出现一些重大事件调整，游戏的“季节”引入了全新的领域和游戏元素。

以最新一季为例，它刚刚开始——现在是检查它的好时机，而每个人都在适应l新元素。第四章，第二季在 地图，配有改装车和Akira自行车，巨大的研磨轨道，la Sonic Adventure，以及问题异国情调的亚洲，就像一个真正的赛博朋克游戏！

无论大小，每次刷新都会带来不同的我们apon和遍历工具转换为旋转。你可能有一天登录就会发现每个人都在解雇kamehameha从DragonBall Z爆炸，或者用抓钩在地图上快速移动。上一季哈d一把射击全息剑的枪，在撞击时爆炸，以及泰坦冲突风格 机器人鸟，你可以手动飞行和侦察敌人。

这不仅仅是战斗的工具 其他玩家。地图上到处都是五颜六色的NPC，有些会卖给你稀有物品，有些 其中一个将作为AI雇佣兵加入你。每个赛季通常至少有一个大老板surprise，有时是一个有执照的角色，比如达斯·维德（如果你可以打败他），有时是一个独创的探索。

前几季都有詹姆斯·邦德风格的超级反派的藏身之处和令人惊讶的深刻故事，以ar的成就狩猎的形式讲述在100人初级战皇家模式中。其中一些只是推进了 Fortnite本身（它既复杂得令人震惊，又完全被遗忘），而其他人会让你失望nique奖励，就像《巫师》中杰拉尔特的皮肤一样。

关键是总有新的东西 尝试。即使你不喜欢本月游戏推出的任何流行文化搭配，也很奇怪s很不错，你会发现一件武器或一件特别的物品真的很符合你的游戏风格。和 然后当它在一两个月后消失时哀叹它的损失……但到那时你会有一个新的游戏 使用，等等。

Fortnite是一款直播服务游戏

“实时服务”正在迅速成为一种obs游戏世界中的cene术语。例如，当新的《自杀小队》游戏预告片相似像史克威尔艾尼克斯的《复仇者联盟》这样的直播服务游戏的战利品和统计数据在《命运》中，媒体和游戏玩家都发出了集体的呻吟声。市场充斥着想要你玩t的游戏hem religiously to unlock every new bit of content, and we’re sick of it.

Fortnite is, perhaps, the one exception. There’s a reason it remains as popular today as when the battle royale mode that would define it was introduced six years ago. And that’s because it’s a live service done right. Not only is the content fresh and ever-evolving, but the free-to-play aspect is also handled with shocking tact and fairness.

In Fortnite, it’s impossible to pay for a strategic advantage in the main game. Every player starts out every round with nothing, dropped onto a spot of the map of their choosing, and must find weapons, healing, and tools to get to the end of the round. You can’t pay for any kind of edge, even if you drop a thousand bucks into the latest battle pass to zoom to the ending on the first day. In the parlance of online multiplayer, there is absolutely no pay to win.

Which is not to say that Fortnite’s free-to-play model doesn’t have its fair share of BS. The skins are, frankly, ridiculously expensive. A basic outfit on top of one of the default models costs eight bucks, and you’re looking at $15-25 if you want one of those really elaborate skins or a licensed character like Goku and all the trimmings. That’s mentioning nothing about the frequent appearances of blatant marketing ploys — I don’t know who “Kid Laroi” is, but I know Epic’s getting a lot of money to put him in the Fortnite store so that kids can give Epic even more money to look like him.

But all that is, frankly, old man gamer talk. What’s so well-implemented about Fortnite’s free-to-play model is its Battle Pass. “Battle Pass” is another phrase that’s been demonized as it’s been overused in live service games, but Fortnite’s is amazingly generous in context.For under $10(translated into the game’s proprietary V-Bucks currency) you get approximately 100 levels to unlock, each one coming with a cosmetic goodie. Each Battle Pass includes a handful of skins, some of which are pretty darn good in terms of design or fun factor, even if they do skew towards the game’s teenage primary player base.

And here’s the kicker: Going through the levels of the Battle Pass periodically gives you more V-Bucks. If you get to the end of the level progression, which is fairly easy over the course of a 10-12-week Season, you’ve earned enough digital currency to buy the next Season’s Battle Pass.

So if you go through each Battle Pass as it’s released, and resist the urge to blow your V-Bucks in the skin store, then you’ll never have to pay any more money to get a shocking amount of cosmetic content for your Fortnite account. Alternately, if this Season’s rewards don’t look particularly enticing to you, you can skip it and wait for the next one — you’ve lost nothing in terms of competitive advantage and you can still get even more freebies via the side-quests.

This is how live service games should be monetized: No gameplay pressure to spend money, tons of rewards when you do, and the ability to roll over your winnings into the next promotional period. Developers hoping to ape Fortnite‘s success — you poor, poor fools — take note.

Fortnite is a pretty damn good game

Okay, this is probably the most subjective point I’m going to make today. But Fortnite‘s core gameplay loop is, yes, a pretty good one. With the qualifier that the basic concept is blatantly stolen from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (which itself is essentially a spruced-up version of the developer’s custom game mod for DayZ, which is itself a game mod for Arma 2…to say nothing of the conceptual inspiration from Koushun Takami’s original Battle Royale novel…wow this goes back a long way!), it’s still a shockingly effective way to expand a multiplayer shooter to a huge scale.

The last player standing nature of battle royale, the huge map that gradually shrinks as players eliminate each other, the varied methods for crossing terrain and hiding, engaging, or retreating, it all works so stupendously well. It’s a great way to make a multiplayer game feel big, without resorting to the constant die, respawn, die again chaos of, say, Battlefield’s 40 vs. 40 mode.

The combination of a huge map with varied terrain and a huge amount of weapons and tools means that there are almost always multiple ways to engage your enemies. Sneak around in hiding spots waiting for ambushes or long-range sniping. Load up on shotguns and SMGs and hire an AI companion to maximize your close-up offense. Go for exotic weapons and power-ups to get dramatic kills (and often blow yourself up by accident). Or simply stick to the classics, focusing on mobility and medium-range firepower to be an effective all-rounder.

The structure of the battle royale setup has some distinct advantages. Since there’s only one “winner” each round out of 90-100 players, a loss — which will happen more often than not — doesn’t sting as much. Surviving past the initial 50 players is fairly easy, unless you intentionally seek out hot zones immediately, and getting in the top 25 isn’t that hard once you get a handle on the game’s core mechanics like traversal and healing. And all the while you’re building up experience for new unlocks, especially if you’re focusing on quests and achievements, which are many and varied.

And Fortnite has become much more accessible in the last year,thanks to “Zero Build Mode.”This much-requested version of the game is identical to the battle royale that’s been running for years, but removes the instant building mechanics, which are a stumbling block for some new players. (That’s especially true of old, creaky gamers like me, who can’t wrap their head around both Minecraft-style building and PUBG-style shooting at the same time.) I’ve come to think of it as “old people mode,” and I play it almost exclusively.

In short it’s a damn good game, and only getting better as Epic continues to rely on it as the tentpole of the Epic Games Store. If you’ve been ignoring it, you have plenty of reasons to give the free shooter a try. After all, 350 million players can’t be wrong, even if most of them can’t buy their own beer.

Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer