Lego Fortnite is the best parts of Minecraft plus the joy of Lego and the personality of Fortnite
SHOULD I PLAY LEGO FORTNITE?
Heck yeah, as long as you enjoy Minecraft-style family-friendly survival games and don’t mind the further takeover of pop culture by Fortnite. See, despite the Fortnite name, Lego Fortnite has nothing to do with the battle royale gameplay that makes up Fortnite’s most popular mode. Instead this is a crafting- and building-focused experience that feels much more fitting to the Lego brand but also provides much more depth than you might expect from what is technically a spin-off mode.
TIME PLAYED
I spent around a dozen hours in Lego Fortnite over the past five days or so since it launched. That has included time spent playing solo and in groups, as well testing both the conflict-free sandbox mode and the much more challenging survival mode. I’ve already built some incredible structures in sandbox mode—where resources are endless and enemies don’t attack—but I’ve only upgraded my village to level 4 in survival.
WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT LEGO FORTNITE?
• A game you can adapt to however you feel. Creative modes are becoming increasingly common in survival games, but Lego Fortnite goes above and beyond with its options. When creating a new world, whether in survival or sandbox, I had a bunch of options I could switch on or off to tailor my experience. You can create a world where you have to deal with the tension of the hunger meter but where enemies don’t attack. Or you can turn off the temperature mechanic to make exploring harsher areas easier, or switch off stamina so that you can run endlessly without having to catch your breath. It’s great having all these possibilities, and they help make Lego Fortnite incredibly approachable.
• Build your own structures or craft the pieces for premade masterpieces. Here’s a secret: I suck at building, both in Fortnite and in most survival games. Lego Fortnite has a slightly simplified approach to building compared to the base game, what with how pieces snap together, but it also has options for less creatively inclined players. When I didn’t want to put my own architecture skills to the test, I could swap to a blueprint and put together cabins, stables, and even giant mansions with pieces determined by the game. This eliminated one of the sources of stress I often encounter in survival games.
• A world full of secrets makes exploration fun. There’s a surprising amount of depth to the progression path in Lego Fortnite. But even beyond just upgrading your village and getting increasingly more powerful gear, the world map is overflowing with rare events and strange secrets to uncover. I was able to follow a rainbow to some hidden treasure on top of a cloud, but a storm started up before I was able to actually figure out a way up to this intriguing reward. I’ve also heard of players finding lots of other cool stuff, including (of course) loot llamas. This is the stuff that makes me want to keep logging hours in the game.
• Smooth and easy co-op. Whenever a friend wanted to join my Lego Fortnite world or invite me to their world, it was as simple as clicking a couple buttons in the menu. I was also able to select friends who could have access to my created worlds at any time, even when I wasn’t online. Even better, since all of this is built into Fortnite itself, my son and I could use Lego Fortnite as a break from more intense rounds of battle royale, or vice versa. Say what you will about Epic taking over an even bigger chunk of gaming, but it does make some things awfully convenient.
• A bucketload of personality. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of being built on top of the existing Fortnite structure is that Lego Fortnite gets a ton of existing content by default. For example, over twelve hundred existing Fortnite skins have a Lego Fortnite variant at launch, and more are promised for the future. Likewise, basically every emote ever released in Fortnite works with Lego characters. Anyone who’s spent time building up a collection of Fortnite cosmetics should be pleased with how many of those carry over to this new game.
WHAT SUCKS ABOUT LEGO FORTNITE?
• Waiting out dark and stormy weather. While a lot of Lego Fortnite takes heavy inspiration from Minecraft, it breaks with that classic in at least one major way: There’s no way to skip a chunk of time. In other words, when night fell, I had to either equip a torch to explore or just wait out the darkness. When it started raining, I was unable to use any equipment I had placed out in the open until the storm cleared up. I could place beds, but they just served as respawn points rather than allowing me to sleep through the less exciting times.
• Hope you’re happy with your building placement the first time. For a game that’s all about building, it’s surprising that Lego Fortnite makes moving things around such a pain. Whether it’s equipment like a crafting bench or grill, or huge buildings like a watchtower or a castle, there’s no way to move something once you’ve placed it. When I accidentally built a huge mansion meant to house my villagers just outside of the village boundary, my only choice was to demolish the building and start over rebuilding it. I was able to get all the materials I used back, but that didn’t make the amount of time I wasted hurt any less.
• Precision isn’t easy. In its launch form, placing a Lego brick exactly where you want it in Lego Fortnite can be a real struggle. This is frustrating when building a premade structure, and in one case I simply couldn’t get a piece in the right spot and had to restart the building from the beginning. It’s even worse when you’re making your own structure from scratch, though; would-be Lego masters are likely to lose their minds with how touchy block placement is.
• The wait for updates. Listen, Lego Fortnite just came out, and I’m not trying to be greedy or anything! But so far all Epic has said about updates is that more “world building, gameplay features, and...Lego Style Outfits” will be coming sometime in early 2024. Each of the negatives I pointed out in the previous bullet points are almost certain to be worked on as the game grows and is updated, but right now it’s not clear how often we should expect updates, or how big those updates will be. I’m hoping for a schedule as ambitious as core Fortnite’s battle royale seasons, but at this point I’d just settle for a road map!
PLATFORM TESTED
PC via Epic Games Store.
Mentioned games
