Fortnite is adding yet another way to get around the battle royale island. As part of the first patch for Chapter 3: Season 3, the game adds a grappling hook called a grappling glove. And, as we all know, a grappling hook makes everything better.
To begin swinging, shoot its grappling hook at a hard surface like a cliff, prop, or building. Each successive swing gets faster until the third and beyond when you’ll be at max speed.
If you miss a shot and land on the ground, you’ll have a brief window of time to shoot the grappling hook and come back swinging. You’ll have an even longer window if you slide out of a swing, so don’t be afraid to combo some slides into your swinging action. But don’t worry if the window of time runs out: after a brief cooldown, the grapple glove will ready itself back up.
It appears similar to the Spider-Man swinging introduced when chapter 3 kicked off but has since been vaulted. The grappling hook joins an increasingly large array of mobility options in the game, including the Baller vehicle that was just brought back, vehicles like cars and trucks, and faster movement through sprinting, climbing, and sliding.
These options have become increasingly crucial as Fortnite added a Zero Build mode, bringing it more in line with other comparable shooters.
The game’s most recent season kicked off earlier in June following a large-scale mech battle live event.
Fortnite is an online video game created by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three different game mode versions that otherwise share the exact general gameplay and play engine: Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale contest in which up to 100 players fight to be the final person standing; Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative hybrid building defense-shooter and survival competition in which up to four parties fight off zombie-like animals and uphold objects with pitfalls and fortifications they can build; and Fortnite Creative, in which players are given absolute freedom to create worlds and battle arenas.
Save the World; Battle Royale was dismissed in 2017 as early access titles, while Creative was unleashed on 6 December 2018. When the Save the World and Creative versions were thriving for Epic Games, Fortnite Battle Royale became an overwhelming triumph and a cultural phenomenon, drawing over 125 million players in less than a year and earning millions of dollars per month.
Fortnite generated $9 billion in gross earnings up until December 2019. Save the World is available only for macOS, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, while Creative and Battle Royale were released for all those outlets and Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android devices.
The game was also pitched with the release of the next-generation PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. Fortnite is distributed as three additional game modes using an identical engine; each has similar art assets, graphics, and game mechanics.
Fortnite: Save the World is a cooperative game with a player-versus-environment theme, with four players teaming towards a common goal on various missions. The game is developed after a fluke storm appears across Earth, yielding 98% of the population to fade and the survivors to be attacked by zombie-like “husks.” The players take the function of commanders of home base shelters, saving survivors, collecting resources, and defending equipment that allows either collect data on the storm or rear drive the storm.
Players are granted several in-game items from missions, including weapon and trap schematics, hero characters, and survivors, all of which can be balanced via accumulated knowledge to improve their features.
Fortnite Battle Royale is a player-versus-player game. It is for up to 100 players, letting one play alone, in a duo, or a squad. Weaponless participants airdrop from a “Battle Bus” that strikes the game’s map. When they land, they must scavenge for resources, items, weapons, and even vehicles while endeavoring to stay alive and attack and destroy other players.
Throughout a round, the safe area of the map shrinks down in size due to an incoming toxic storm; players exceeding that threshold take damage and can be stopped if they fail to evacuate quickly. This forces remaining players into closer-knit spaces and encourages player encounters. The last player, duo, or squad staying, is the prizewinner.
Fortnite Creative is a sandbox game mode in which participants are given complete freedom to spawn any article from the Battle Royale game mode on a private island and can create games like race courses, platforming challenges, battle arenas, and more.
Players can utilize their pickaxe to knock down existing structures on the map to accumulate essential resources: wood, brick, and metal. Subsequently, the player can use these materials in all modes to build fortifications, like floors, walls, and stairs. Such fortification elements can be edited to add items like windows or doors. The materials used include different durability properties and can be updated to more robust variants using more materials.
Within Save the World, this allows players to build defensive fortifications around objective or trap-filled tunnels to entice husks through. In Battle Royale, this delivers the means to protect oneself from enemy fire, quickly traverse the map, or delay an advancing foe. Players are prompted to be very inventive in creating their fortifications in Creative.
Fortnite Battle Royale became a significant economic success for Epic Games, leading them to divide the teams among Save the World and Battle Royale to deliver better support for both modes. Over 10 million players had played the way within two weeks of release, and by June 2018, just after the Nintendo Switch release, it had reached 125 million players. Income from Fortnite Battle Royale during the first half of 2018 had been counted in the hundreds of millions of dollars per month, with total 2018 revenue estimated at $2.4 billion by analysis firm SuperData Research. Total revenue for Fortnite reached higher than $9 billion by the end of 2019.
Fortnite Battle Royale has also evolved into a cultural phenomenon, with several celebrities reporting playing the game and athletes using Fortnite emotes as victory festivities. A notable streaming event in March 2018, streamer Ninja recreating Fortnite Battle Royale alongside Drake, Kim DotCom, Travis Scott, and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster.
It broke viewership records for Twitch to date and led to Epic arranging a Fortnite Battle Royale pro-am with 50 pairs of streamers and professional players matched with celebrities at E3 2018 in June 2018. Additionally, Epic Games has developed organized esports competitions around Fortnite Battle Royale, such as the inaugural US$30 million Fortnite World Cup tournament in July 2019.
There has also been growing concern over Fortnite Battle Royale’s draw toward young children, emphasized with the release of the mobile client. Parents and teachers had expressed respect that students are being distracted and drawn away from school work due to playing Fortnite. Concerns have also been raised about the impact playing a game involving repeated depictions of gun violence may have on young children.