It might have been developed by Harmonix – now a subsidiary of Epic Video games – however Fortnite Festival just isn’t Rock Band 5. Let’s get that out of the way in which instantly, as a result of I’ve definitely already seen claims on the contrary. Actually, Fortnite Festival has extra in frequent with the boy band 5 than Rock Band 5; that’s, it’s a transparently industrial train that merely switches the query “What if the Spice Women have been blokes?” with “What else can we promote for V-Bucks?”
It’s also not Rock Band 4.1. Hell, it isn’t even actually Rock Band Lite. To be honest, Fortnite Festival doesn’t truly make use of the Rock Band moniker, so it definitely does have the scope to be its personal factor. It simply doesn’t make use of it. Sticking so carefully to the prevailing Rock Band system does invite sure comparisons, particularly with the DNA of its religious ancestor on full show (even right down to equivalent instrument icons for the guitars, drums, and vocals). Sadly, these comparisons aren’t all that sort to Fortnite Festival, which isn’t a really enjoyable and even notably social music recreation in its present state.
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Merely put, Fortnite Festival is a rhythm recreation now embedded within the Fortnite ecosystem. It’s one in every of three free new video games rammed into Fortnite, together with LEGO Fortnite and Rocket Racing. Credit score the place credit score is due, Festival is the one one of many three that actually retains Fortnite’s aesthetic (LEGO Fortnite clearly makes use of the long-lasting minifigs as an alternative, and Rocket Racing seems like an add-on for Rocket League that obtained by accident pasted into the flawed product). With Fortnite’s historical past of superstar musician appearances and in-recreation concert events, it isn’t even a bizarre match for a Fortnite mode. Plus, as a lover of all issues rock and/or roll and a agency disliker of PvP shooters, something that will get individuals to commerce the staccato of an assault rifle for a snare drum is okay with me.
At the least, it’s okay in precept. In apply, Fortnite Festival is at the moment undone by its ditching of one of the best components of the music video games that impressed it – like native multiplayer and singing – and its fixation with grossly-inflated digital purchases and different typical service recreation shenanigans.
Fortnite Festival options two modes: Fundamental Stage, which is the place the core, scored button-bashing rhythm motion happens, and Jam Stage, which is a low-stakes musical sandbox the place you’ll be able to (in principle) construct new mixes of songs with different gamers by layering separate guitar, drum, and vocal tracks on high of one another. Fundamental Stage could be performed alone or with as much as three buddies or random gamers on-line, though it largely feels and appears the identical both means. With no means to see your bandmates’ word highways, there’s little distinction between enjoying solo and enjoying with different people. As confused, there’s no splitscreen or native multiplayer, utterly shelving one of the best factor about music video games like Rock Band. That’s, turning the amount as much as 11 and enjoying co-op with family and friends in the identical room.
There’s been no radical reinvention of the usual rhythm recreation template right here; notes scroll down the display in typical Guitar Hero and Rock Band trend, and we faucet them as they go. With no official help for pre-current instrument controllers proper now (though that’s coming, we’re instructed), and vocals mapped to buttons as an alternative of really letting you sing right into a mic, it’s presently solely constructed for controllers and keyboards. This makes Fortnite Festival really feel extra like Harmonix’s personal controller-solely rhythm video games, together with Frequency, Amplitude, and Rock Band Blitz, though it’s not fairly as elegant as these. Whereas these video games have been objective-constructed for controllers and included further components like the flexibility to change between instrument tracks on the fly, Fortnite Festival is simply… Rock Band on a gamepad, and it’s just a little like enjoying a light-weight gun recreation on an analogue stick. Yeah, it really works, nevertheless it doesn’t really feel like fairly the fitting strategy to play it.
Requiring 4 buttons on the decrease difficulties and 5 on skilled, Harmonix sensibly splits its word charts down the center, so the songs cease in need of ever requiring double-presses on the identical facet of a gamepad (not that it’s even potential to carry down left and proper on the D-pad on the similar time, anyway). This does imply, if you happen to’re limber and correct sufficient, you might be able to get away with simply utilizing your thumbs. That stated, I had higher outcomes on skilled holding the controller unconventionally and hovering over each button from above with a unique finger (just a little like how my spouse makes use of a controller when she’s enjoying Tekken, resting the controller on her knee like she’s making an attempt to beat individuals up by way of a tiny typewriter).
Basically, that’s about all there’s to it. There’s no actual sense of any development, like transferring from easy songs to tough ones like Guitar Hero, or the tour method of Rock Band. You simply sit in your house, alone, enjoying the identical slim collection of songs again and again to… tick bins and unlock… new jpegs of The Weeknd in your loading display? I’m gathering that accumulating stuff is the Fortnite system, however I’m not seeing the enchantment.
New songs have been arriving in Fortnite Festival because the weekend, however they don’t look like hovering lengthy within the accessible playlist. Songs owned by different gamers in your band do seem within the record of tracks everybody in your celebration can browse whereas creating your session’s 4-tune setlist, however if you would like the liberty to play a tune indefinitely you’ll want to purchase it your self. As somebody who’s been commonly shopping for Rock Band DLC because the 2007 unique, that’s one thing I’d don’t have any downside with if the songs have been priced respectfully. Sadly, they aren’t.
At 500 “V-Bucks” per tune that equates to USD$4.50, AUD$6, and £3.50 within the UK – so roughly double the value of Rock Band DLC and round thrice what the precise bands themselves cost for the songs on iTunes. Rock Band 4 has 65 songs on it, which suggests replicating that choice in Fortnite Festival in Australia would price me slightly below $400. No thanks.
After all, Fortnite doesn’t simply allow you to purchase 500 V-Bucks. You may solely purchase them in minimal increments of 1,000. I’ll admit I’m a stranger in a wierd land on the subject of Fortnite, but when that is the free-to-play world, you’ll be able to preserve it. I really feel like I’m surrounded by a bunch of boiling frogs, when all I wish to do is bounce out of the water instantly.
I suppose it could possibly be worse – in any case, there seems to be a single automotive for Rocket Racing on right here for 4,000 V-Bucks. One automotive, for the value of a whole online game. Regardless, there’s simply no likelihood I’d ever make investments this type of cash. That it comes within the wake of what could be the most client-pleasant DLC within the enterprise (Rock Band DLC homeowners have had their tune libraries observe them throughout three console generations for no further cost, that means Rock Band 4 nonetheless helps Rock Band 1 DLC individuals purchased over 15 years in the past) is doubly galling.
The second strategy to play Fortnite Festival is the Jam Stage, which is an open space full of quite a lot of phases you should use to group up with buddies or strangers and blend tune samples with one another. It’s just a little like if you happen to defined Fuser (RIP) and DropMix to somebody in a crowded bar, they usually went residence and constructed a Fortnite mod out of it from notes they made on a serviette with a blunt pencil. Like in Fuser, you’ll be able to change the important thing and tempo – and as a mediocre musician I do have an admiration for something that helps non-musicians have interaction with music in a means that will information them to establish its layers and maybe respect it otherwise – nevertheless it feels like several momentarily first rate mash-ups which can be created on this surroundings are strictly accidentally. Additionally, with the tune costs being what they’re, it will take a unprecedented sum of money to have a pattern crate at your disposal that’s anyplace close to as strong because the one in Fuser.