Hands-on review: Fortnite Battle Royale mode

Epic Games has released a great new mode for Fortnite called 'Battle Royale'. This mode is currently free to play on PC, PS4 and Xbox One and it's a lot of fun.

If you have played PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on PC, you might already be familiar with the concept of Fortnite's Battle Royale mode. It's basically a fight to the death as up to 100 players are parachuted onto an island. The last person to survive wins the game!

As a console exclusive gamer, I have yet to play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, although I've seen a lot of gameplay videos and it looks fun. Thankfully, Fortnite's mode is free to play on consoles and the Battle Royale mode is excellent.

At the start of the game, 100 players are on a sky bus flying over an island. You are free to choose when you want to skydive and parachute onto the ground. Many players opt to drop out first in order to find the best loot.

Finding the best loot is the only way you can fight back against all of the other players. If you don't find yourself a decent gun, all that you are armed with is an axe. The axe is pretty useless against enemies, although it's helpful in order to break down the environment to collect resources.

Loot can be pretty much be found inside houses or other types of buildings.You can also open up treasure chests that may offer even more powerful weapons for you to use. There's a host of cool weaponry in this game including machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and more.

Some other things that you can find are medikits to replenish your health or even shield potions to make it harder for your enemies to kill you. If you manage to kill another player, you can steal their stuff too.  Aside from weapons, Fortnite adds the addition for you to build your own forts and bridges. By cutting down trees or demolishing houses, you can collect resources in order to build your own cover system or use a bridge to get to higher areas. It's a cool concept to use, but only if other players don't sabotage your creations.

What I admire most about the Battle Royale concept in Fortnite is that it rewards players that are both strategic and patient. This is not a fast paced twitch shooter like Overwatch or Call of Duty. You are free to use stealth and other tactics in order to be the last person standing.

I'm not a gamer that is normally good at online shooting games, but I managed to place in the top 10 consistently in Fortnite. You really need to play the game several times in order to familiarise yourself with the map.

The map is important because the playing area shrinks the longer the match goes. If you fail to travel to the new area, your health will deplete and you will die. I managed to always find the best place to hide before I pounced on incoming enemies.

The only thing this mode is missing that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has is the ability to drive any vehicles. I'm hoping Fortnite adds vehicles in a future update as that could make the gameplay more chaotic than it already is.    Overall, Fortnite's Battle Royale mode is a lot if fun and it's worth downloading if you haven't played it yet. You will need to play a few matches in order to get good though. Lot of beginners usually die instantly!