This makes Fortnite Festival feel more like Harmonix’s own controller-only rhythm games, including Frequency, Amplitude, and Rock Band Blitz, although it’s not quite as elegant as those. With no official support for pre-existing instrument controllers right now ( although that is coming, we’re told), and vocals mapped to buttons instead of actually letting you sing into a mic, it’s presently only built for controllers and keyboards. There’s been no radical reinvention of the standard rhythm game template here notes scroll down the screen in typical Guitar Hero and Rock Band fashion, and we tap them as they pass.

That is, turning the volume up to 11 and playing co-op with friends and family in the same room. As stressed, there’s no splitscreen or local multiplayer, completely shelving the best thing about music games like Rock Band. With no ability to see your bandmates’ note highways, there’s little distinction between playing solo and playing with other humans. Main Stage can be played alone or with up to three friends or random players online, although it largely feels and looks the same either way. In practice, Fortnite Festival is currently undone by its ditching of the best parts of the music games that inspired it – like local multiplayer and singing – and its fixation with grossly-inflated digital purchases and other typical service game shenanigans.įortnite Festival features two modes: Main Stage, which is where the core, scored button-bashing rhythm action occurs, and Jam Stage, which is a low-stakes musical sandbox where you can (in theory) build new mixes of songs with other players by layering separate guitar, drum, and vocal tracks on top of each other. Plus, as a lover of all things rock and/or roll and a firm disliker of PvP shooters, anything that gets people to trade the staccato of an assault rifle for a snare drum is okay with me.Īt least, it’s okay in principle.

With Fortnite’s history of celebrity musician appearances and in-game concerts, it isn’t even a weird fit for a Fortnite mode. Credit where credit is due, Festival is the only one of the three that really retains Fortnite’s aesthetic ( LEGO Fortnite obviously makes use of the iconic minifigs instead, and Rocket Racing feels like an add-on for Rocket League that got accidentally pasted into the wrong product). It’s one of three free new games rammed into Fortnite, along with LEGO Fortnite and Rocket Racing. Simply put, Fortnite Festival is a rhythm game now embedded in the Fortnite ecosystem.

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