Epic Video games has had fairly the eventful month already. Proceedings on the Epic and Google case began this week, and the corporate launched Chapter 4, Season 5 of Fortnite, in any other case often called 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 because it was in July 2018 throughout Chapter 1, Season 5. The season capabilities like an ideal time machine: Gamers can go and revisit the precise map and gadgets they used 5 years in the past. However nonetheless, the present time interval peeks by in different methods. That’s as a result of the best way that some individuals play Fortnite has modified, and the OG map is lower than optimum for Zero Construct gamers.
I, like many gamers, now play Fortnite in Zero Construct mode. This manner 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 total gameplay gimmick was that gamers might construct buildings and use them to achieve benefits in fights. Nonetheless, it turned out the sport had loads to supply its Zero Construct gamers. Zero Construct wasn’t simply pleasurable; it took off and renewed interest in the game.
Fortnite’s unique map predates Zero Construct mode by a number of years. So its return makes for an attention-grabbing state of affairs the place Zero Construct gamers are utilizing a map that was designed when that mode didn’t exist. In my time with Zero Construct on the OG Fortnite map, it felt a bit clunky. The map has fewer places, and every location has fewer buildings — which means every locale supplies fewer methods to get inventive and both evade or method a struggle.
Total, mobility presents a bigger subject. Some spots on the OG map have excessive factors gamers can perch on, however reaching them requires a grappling merchandise, or a zipper line that may solely be accessed by working helplessly throughout an open space. By way of gadgets with grappling skills, there’s the Grappler, which is a plunger-like gun that permits you to transfer upward, nevertheless it’s not fairly as clean and fast-moving because the later Grapple Glove. Some places don’t have golf carts, so I discovered myself spending lots 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 Construct participant, I had by no means ran into the power 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 frequently.
Regardless of all this, I’m nonetheless discovering issues to take pleasure in about OG Fortnite, whilst a Zero Construct participant. It’s an excellent completely 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 buddies and I did get a sense 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 reasonably brief interval. And personally, I take pleasure in any replace that brings individuals again to the sport. I care much less if the map is ideal, as long as it’s a catchy sufficient concept to persuade my common squad of gamers into taking part in the sport once more.