Epic Video games has had fairly the eventful month already. Proceedings on the Epic and Google case started this week, and the corporate launched Chapter 4, Season 5 of Fortnite, in any other case identified as Fortnite OG, to document numbers. The season leans closely on nostalgia and brings again early-game content material from the favored shooter, recreating the sport as it was in July 2018 throughout Chapter 1, Season 5. The season features like a excellent time machine: Gamers can go and revisit the precise map and objects they used 5 years in the past. However nonetheless, the present time interval peeks via in different methods. That’s as a result of the best way that some folks play Fortnite has modified, and the OG map is lower than optimum for Zero Build gamers.
I, like many gamers, now play Fortnite in Zero Build mode. This fashion of taking part in works precisely the way it sounds: It removes the flexibility for gamers to reap supplies and construct buildings. Epic Video games first launched it in spring 2022, and the addition was fairly groundbreaking. Previous to its launch, Fortnite’s complete gameplay gimmick was that gamers may construct buildings and use them to realize benefits in fights. Nevertheless, it turned out the sport had lots to supply its Zero Build gamers. Zero Build wasn’t simply satisfying; it took off and renewed interest in the game.
Fortnite’s authentic map predates Zero Build mode by a number of years. So its return makes for an attention-grabbing situation the place Zero Build gamers are utilizing a map that was designed when that mode didn’t exist. In my time with Zero Build on the OG Fortnite map, it felt a bit clunky. The map has fewer areas, and every location has fewer buildings — that means every locale supplies fewer methods to get inventive and both evade or method a combat.
Total, mobility presents a bigger concern. Some spots on the OG map have excessive factors gamers can perch on, however reaching them requires a grappling merchandise, or a zip line that may solely be accessed by working helplessly throughout an open space. By way of objects with grappling talents, there’s the Grappler, which is a plunger-like gun that lets you transfer upward, nevertheless it’s not fairly as easy and fast-moving as the later Grapple Glove. Some areas don’t have golf carts, so I discovered myself spending a lot of time working throughout huge open areas of the map. This is smart, given the builders initially designed the map with loads of open areas for constructing. As a Zero Build player, I had by no means ran into the vitality restrict extra whereas sprinting than when taking part in this map. My teammates and I hoarded Rift-To-Gos like our lives relied on it, simply because we would have liked them to place ourselves in a pinch fairly usually.
Regardless of all this, I’m nonetheless discovering issues to take pleasure in about OG Fortnite, even as a Zero Build player. It’s a super totally different map when in comparison with the Chapter 4, Season 4 map — and that in and of itself has offered simply sufficient variation in play to make it attention-grabbing. Though it felt awkward at first, my pals and I did get a feeling for sure patterns, and the place to go and when in a match. On prime of that, we solely get to play on this map for a month, which is a fairly brief interval. And personally, I take pleasure in any replace that brings folks again to the sport. I care much less if the map is excellent, so lengthy as it’s a catchy sufficient thought to persuade my common squad of gamers into taking part in the sport once more.
