So after all this time and energy spent, what do I make of this game?
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to enjoy it for more than a couple weeks or so.
I didn't think I would enjoy it at all.
The gameplay in Fortnite is smooth and responsive, although bullets can sometimes deviate from my expectations on whether they hit the target or missed.
The battle royale mode is a fun experience, offering a variety of secondary objectives to keep matches interesting and hapless fools to snipe (assuming I manage to find a rifle I can hit shots with).
In an age where many newer games are moving away from giving players tools to form their own experiences within the game,
Epic Games' provision of such tools and upfront promotion of user creations, perhaps to the detriment of the core game modes given their implementation, is a welcome addition.
That doesn't mean I came away from this without gripes.
I find the structure of the store and battle passes to be predatory.
The former has steep pricing that adds up over time, the latter requires a significant time commitment to be fulfilled within a limited window,
and the mechanisms for viewing purchase history are only available outside of the game and it only details the amount of real money exchanged for the virtual currency.
The building mechanics enable a style of gameplay that's fast, technical, reckless, and stupid.
Why should a player worry about getting caught out in the open or in a bad spot when they can just instantaneously erect a number of walls to block the incoming shots?
Why continue to engage in combat with a player who's taken the upper hand when they can just build a structure with no windows or doors around their opponent?
It detracts from the fundamental skills of cover and positioning and shifts the balance of fights away from outplaying an opponent toward out-building them.
More aggressive pushes typically involve the use of shotguns, but hitting shots with them doesn't feel terribly consistent to me.
From what I've heard in game chats, I don't think this is isolated to just me.
I would complain about most of the user-created modes I've played having bugs of some sort,
but I don't know how much of that is the fault of Epic Games and how much is something the user did or didn't do.
Plus, most games made now have a greater number of issues and many aren't nearly as complete of an experience.
What I've found particularly interesting is that my enjoyment of the game increased greatly when I played it with other people.
That's far from a new experience for me, but I wasn't expecting the effect here to be as strong as it ended up being.
With that in mind, I realized the enjoyment of this game has very similar dynamics to parties.
Going to parties with already established friends makes for the best experience,
while going alone to a party full of unfamiliar faces can result in the night being more awkward than enjoyable.
As I thought about it more, the analogy just seemed to fit even better.
Fortnite's gameplay isn't the best for taking seriously, but that's okay because it's just supposed to be a good time.
It doesn't make the official game modes as obvious as I would expect them to be,
but foregoing that to prioritize user-made options may be more helpful for players looking for something that sounds fun to them.
I don't think it causes any real destruction in terms of identifying the core game modes over the rest, either.
There's been a rise in the popularity of esports over the years and many multiplayer video games are being tailored to ranked, balanced, competitive gameplay.
I find this usually detracts from how fun a game is to play and creates a Petri dish for toxicity
as players are encouraged to push harder for wins that are objectively no more significant than a casual game would be.
Fortnite, while certainly not an exception to having ranked matches and "sweaty" players,
does seem to prioritize the casual experience over the competitive counterpart,
and I feel this leads to the overall experience of playing the game being more positive.
Of course, I've mostly avoided the modes where some people will get shot at and build an entire hotel in four seconds to avoid getting hit.
Without the build-free options, my opinion of this game would have been very different.
Within the first two weeks, I determined that this game wasn't dysfunctional or bankrupt of meaningful experiences to warrant it being a "bad" game or worse,
but lacked anything noteworthy or exceptional enough to be considered a "great" game or anything beyond.
I had narrowed this game down to either being "good" or "just okay" and I spent much longer than two weeks determining which of the two it was.
Eventually, I was talking about this to a friend of mine who also thinks this game is stupid and I told him that playing this game made me feel stupid.
Later, I had figured out the whole "this game is like a party" thing.
So, I'd say the game is good, but having people to play it with is almost a necessity for actually having a good experience with it.
Considering that my main reason to try playing this game again all these years later was an Avatar event and Toph player model that looked good to me, I was pleasantly surprised by this game.
Will I continue to play it in the future, now that I've successfully written too many words about it?
The most likely answer is that I'll play it every now and again.
I'll probably burn out at some point and drop it for an extended period, as I've done with most every multiplayer game I enjoy.
I still think this game is stupid. That hasn't changed.
However, I now understand that it's an enjoyable kind of stupid.
I'll probably need to do research into the wave-based survival mode (the original mode for Fortnite) to see if it's worth spending money on
so I can try it and gauge exactly how disappointed I am by the fact that it's not Gears of War 2's Horde mode.