For those who don’t know, “Fortnite Battle Royale” is a game styled like The Hunger Games—a free-for-all survival game where only one team or individual can live till the end. Players can eliminate other players by acquiring weapons and materials from either materials spawned in at the beginning at the game or items dropped from dead enemies. Like The Hunger Games, “Fortnite” is a battlefield. Everything found in this battlefield except the ground—such as buildings, cars or trees—is breakable. When broken, these things will disappear, and the player will acquire either wood, stone or metal, depending on what was broken. The player can then use these materials to build structures that are usually built to provide cover or reach higher ground.

“Fortnite,” arguably, has become the fastest growing game on the market. With celebrities such as Travis Scott and Drake live streaming the game, “Fortnite” has exponentially risen in popularity. In fact, according to PC Games, “Fortnite” has 45 million total users and recently reached a record of 1.3 million concurrent players. There is no doubt that the release of the iOS version of “Fortnite” added to its popularity. The beta version of the game alone reached the best selling app in 13 different countries in the first 12 hours of its release.

However, even after saying all of this, I would not recommend playing “Fortnite” mobile. The mobile version of “Fortnite” is significantly less enjoyable to play. The learning curve of the mobile version of the game is too high, and there are often better games more suited for mobile.

“Fortnite” mobile has the same problems as most other mobile first-person-shooters (FPS). Mobile FPS games are just hard to play, making “Fortnite” mobile significantly less enjoyable to play after experiencing the PlayStation, Xbox or PC version because of the added complexity. Added complexity, however, is not something you want in an already difficult mobile game.

Building is a key part of Fortnite, and it’s what distinguishes it from the plethora of other FPS games. The increased number of controls in the game just makes the game a complicated mess of control and lackluster gameplay. Also, due to the increased number of controls, basic controls are given less space;  therefore, there was less accessibility when playing. Personally, using the joystick to move and trying to switch weapons was extremely difficult as they had almost no space at all. On multiple occasions, I could not click either of them because they were in such a small part of the screen.

Don’t get me wrong; “Fortnite” is a great game. The numbers prove that, but it’s not a game suited for mobile gameplay. The game is way too complex and intricate that when pairing it with a phone, the controls become too difficult, and the game becomes a tedious mess of controls. 

For example, I think “Rules of Survival” (RoS), another mobile FPS game, handles this situation a lot better than “Fortnite.” In RoS, the game is simplified by removing buildings. This simple removal makes the game significantly easier to play, but not so that it’s boring. It keeps the basic controls used in all FPS games but does not add too many unnecessary flashy additions.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Raphael Li at [email protected].