The new “Endgame” mode in Fortnite has captivated our author Schuhmann. Yesterday, he was Thanos and managed to escape disgracefully while winning.
This is how I played Fortnite this season: After discovering my love for Fortnite Battle Royale so late last season at Christmas, I wanted to dive in properly this time in Season 8.
I bought the Battle Pass in the first week with the remaining V-Bucks from my “Save the World” days, started enthusiastically with the Week 1 challenges – and then completely lost interest and didn’t log in for two months while Anthem and The Division 2 were released.
Well.
But yesterday, it happened. With the new “Endgame” mode, they got me again. I like the Marvel movies and wanted to see how it works in Fortnite. It looked too ridiculous not to try.
I played as these characters: Some complain that they never get to play as the cool superheroes in Fortnite and always end up as alien minions. But I was relatively balanced:
- In 3 matches, I was one of Thanos’ soldiers, a Chitauri – as such, I mostly ambushed from a distance and shot around with the charged blaster – the goal is “Aim somewhere near the enemies, something will fall over.”
- In 2 matches, I was Hawkeye – with his bow, you can swing around and shoot wildly with explosive arrows.
- In one match, I wandered around as Thor – but our side was so superior that no one noticed I was just uselessly jumping around and throwing the boomerang axe.
- In one of the “minion” matches, I was actually Thanos for most of the time – and was eager not to die embarrassingly because I felt like everyone was looking my way.
What’s interesting about the mode: The exciting thing about the mode is that the playstyle changes with each role. Even the basic tactics of the sides are different:
- As Chitauri, you have offensive goals because you have to capture the Infinity Stones – but it’s smarter to play defensively, as you shouldn’t die too often and the Avengers are usually more dangerous in close combat.
- As “Avengers,” you actually play defensively, as you need to defend the Infinity Stones, which is where the enemies want to go – however, it almost doesn’t matter if you die, so you can be risky and shoot wildly.
This is how I felt as Thanos: I was quite surprised when I suddenly became Thanos. Because when Thanos dies, a Chitauri is randomly selected to be the new Thanos.
I had just shot some Captain America guy from ambush, and of course, I saw the random selection as a reward for my exceptional kill.
I immediately started playing with the abilities, slammed to the ground a few times, and jumped around. However, Thanos doesn’t jump very far if you don’t charge the jump for a long time.
The Titan is powerful, but as Thanos, you have a huge target on your back. Everyone in the game can see you on the radar.
Thanos is powerful, and Fortnite makes a big fuss about him: He can jump into the air and shoot around with a death ray, but my health points quickly dropped to 0 and I had to escape.
I then hid with one or two Avengers behind me in the mines of Shifty Shafts, while my brave soldiers charged towards the next Infinity Stone. There I was with 50 HP, hoping that no one would find me.
In that moment, I didn’t feel particularly “Thanos-like”.
Once the stone is captured, Thanos receives a buff and regains full health and shields. Aha!
As Thanos, I then played like the commander of my troops for the rest of the match, becoming more powerful with each additional Infinity Stone, and blew away a few Avengers along with my Chitauri minions from their ridiculous uniforms.
And I killed a few guys by slamming the ground while my minions took down anyone under concentrated fire who was between us and the next Infinity Stone.
When one of my subjects picked up the last stone, the remaining enemies on the map were marked in red, and it turned into a sort of clay pigeon shooting.
Somehow, it was a truly satisfying gaming night.
Despite all the criticism that often comes towards Epic and even though it’s obviously a super-commercial event to sell expensive Black Widow skins: I had a lot of fun with the mode and can recommend it. To release a mode for such a hugely popular pop culture franchise “for free” is quite impressive.
How do you like the new mode?
