Remembering Fortnite C5S3: Wrecked
“Wrecked”, the most recent season of Fortnite, stands out to many people. It had cars, power gauntlets, a Max Max/Fallout theme and lots of people complaining about all three. Many people were claiming it was “the worst season of Fortnite ever.” I don’t find this fair and I never found it fair.
What made “Wrecked” a great season of Fortnite is that it was so radically different in key ways. The vehicle centered loop changed the way matches felt. Which was great….until it wasn’t because so many people hated it and complained about it. It comes with no great surprise. Unfortunately Fortnite has just reached that level. Change something and a bunch of people says it’s different. Keep things the same and people complain that nothing’s changed. Can’t win them all.
I think we will look back and find that “Wrecked” was actually a pretty cool season. Maybe you didn’t have fun, but it was undoubtedly cool. The vast desert landscapes…that crazy feeling of running across the desert with nothing but a gun as a car zooms towards you across the map…this is real Mad Max stuff. And it’s awesome.
And the thing is, most people hated that stuff. “Cars make the game no fun/you die instantly against cars/etc.” I didn’t find that to be the case. I enjoyed the challenges of this season. I liked some of the crazy mismatch possibilities that were in this season, especially because I think they added to a new leveling of the playing field. The way Fortnite has always worked is by balancing new mechanics that keep sweats engaged and involved while also allowing for newer players to compete because every couple months, there’s new tactics and skills added and taken away that you may not have been so good at or could learn to be really good at.
This season, from an atmosphere perspective, was awesome. I loved the new map additions. The new locations all really sucked you into this season’s storyline about “The Wasteland” and “Megalo Don’s quest for Nitro.” However, the story does kind of suck. Isn’t that well explained. It’s okay though. 95% in Fortnite it’s about the vibes anyway. And boosting through the hot, sun baked desert, with a machine gun and spiked bumper, is peak vibes. And the thing with the cars is that Fortnite actually does have good driving mechanics. All the stuff with the cars, from a gameplay perspective, feels great. The balancing was (apparently) off, but the gameplay felt awesome. And they kept playing into the theme for the season, which really gave it some longevity for me.
They added Metallica, which made it better. Then they added Magneto, which moved the needle a little bit. Then they added Pirates of the Carribean, which was a bit of wash. Either way, it was a pretty content dense season. Some people hate some of the new XP chanfes, the new skins…whatever. It’s fine. I mean, not every season is for everyone. But this season, I did think, was kind of geared towards people like me. I’ll never be the best base Fortnite player. But give me some new mechanics to learn alongside the sweats and I can carve out a path to victory in every match.
Which is how I view it, by the way. I’m trying to win every match. I’m not trying to win while getting 28 kills, every medallion. The only kill I need is the last one. So the people whining about “cars make it too easy/hard, this weapons is too good, the boss cars are too powerful…” have no impact on me. I wish the same could be said for the game.
One thing I didn’t like this season was the constant overcorrections and sometimes just useless corrections. Boss cars regaining health was an interesting idea and I would’ve preferred they kept it in instead of cutting it in like a week. The power gloves were weirdly balanced, But not broken. But they kept fixing things constantly and it made the game so invariable that I didn’t know what I was playing from day to day. You show up and go “Oh look, they changed the cars again.” And that could be frustrating when you’ve just acclimated to a feature.
Then they added Reloaded, a mode that I don’t hate, but I don’t love it either. It feels like a compromise between Battle Royale and Team Deathmatch and I’m not sure it has legs long term. Maybe to “save” a season they saw to be bleeding players, which Fortnite was. But not as a season to season, month to month draw. I predict that mode will be gone in the next 13 months. Nothing bad about it, it’s just too slight and the game already has so many modes. I think if they’re going for a nostalgia factor, they should approach it a little different. Maybe a random old map mode for Battle Royale or something.
I think to sum up Wrecked- if you hated this season, you probably are not the kind of player who loves much in modern Fortnite. If you loved it like me, you probably are not quite the demographic they were looking to please. I’m a casual. A good casual, but still a casual. I did finish this Battle Pass, which makes me confident I will not want to finish the next one. Which is a shame because that season will likely be fun.
Still, I think this is the second straight season that engaged me personally and made me rediscover why I enjoyed the game. It’s exciting when they do that and while I realize I’m not every Fortnite player, all I can really judge it on is how I feel about it. So I’m gonna say, of Wrecked, that it was a great season. One of the better ones I’ve played. And I think, looking back, we will say that Wrecked was one of the more unique experiences Fortnite offered.
