Asphalt 9 Legends is one of the best-looking mobile games

In many ways, Gameloft's Asphalt 9 Legends is a remarkable game, bringing console-quality arcade racing action to mobile phones, using many of the rendering techniques present in some of today's most advanced game engines. It's free - download it, try it out and see what you think. We did and we were really taken aback by just impressive this is. Eager to learn more about the current state of cutting-edge mobile game development, we contacted Gameloft to learn more - and an interesting story emerged.

Of course, looking back, there was a time when mobile graphics technology was seeing some incredible gen-on-gen leaps in performance, with John Carmack excited enough about phone graphics tech to write his own iOS games, Epic released the stunning Infinity Blade and at one point, DICE was even porting the Frostbite engine to work on mobile hardware. Reaching and surpassing Xbox 360 quality seemed like a given, but there reached a point where pushing the boundaries of mobile technology stopped becoming a priority and addressing the majority of devices out there with simpler titles became the focus. Meanwhile, lack of innovation in mobile rendering APIs and oppressive OS overheads put the dampeners on really pushing the hardware.

Asphalt 9 bucks the trend by featuring fluid performance, beautiful visuals and a rendering feature set rivalling a modern console game. For starters, it's heavy on post-processing effects, including really impressive motion blur. Tracks stretch off into the distance with minimal pop-in while the lighting and its interaction with materials is first-class for a mobile title. The cars themselves are rich in detail, with some models featuring in excess of 90,000 polygons. There's a full HDR rendering pipeline, high performance soft particles, a pseudo-physically based materials system and further post-process effects including crepuscular rays, screen-space reflections and colour grading.

Powered by Gameloft Barcelona's in-house Jet Engine, the focus for Asphalt 9 is to balance all of these high-end features with the limitations of mobile hardware while delivering smooth performance - something that was a particular issue on its predecessor, even on the most powerful mobile kit. Compared to its predecessor, Asphalt 9 is a big, big improvement in every way.

According to Gameloft, two of the main concerns when designing a high-performance mobile game are pixel cost and number of draw calls. These mobile GPUs are very capable when it comes to rendering lots of geometry but once you increase shader complexity and introduce more advanced post-processing effects such as per-pixel motion blur, you can run into performance issues and thermal limitations. This can either mean rapid battery drain, which is important in the world of phone games, or thermal throttling where hitting a certain temperature threshold decreases clock speeds.

This also helps explain the importance of frame-rate caps. Using an iPhone X, for instance, Asphalt 9 can easily hit 60 frames per second but doing so massively decreases battery life and can result in thermal throttling. Unlike a console game, you can't afford to run full out - it's a balancing act. You want to deliver the best performance possible without pushing the hardware too far. On top of that, when crafting a lot of the cool special effects, older hardware must also be considered - if this were exclusive to high-end iPhones it might be possible to utilise more advanced compute shaders but, as it stands, it's important to maintain a reasonable number of render paths while targeting the widest audience.
We played the game on all formats, using an iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and a Windows PC (yes, there's a Windows Store version, ported by another team within the studio). Apple's Metal 2 API is the default choice for iOS, and it's fast and efficient, allowing the team to reduce the number of draw calls and to lower temperatures. Open GL ES 3.0 is the API of choice for Android, and stacking up the two versions on their respective top-tier devices, it's clear that iPhone X has the advantage with smoother play via higher frame-rates and fewer frame-pacing issues.
Gameloft takes advantage of the relatively fixed iOS platforms by locking quality settings per device, while Android gets three selectable quality settings instead: default, performance and high quality. The latter increases resolution while performance strips back the pixel-count and post-process features like motion blur. Playing on default on the S9+, it's a visual match for the top-end iOS version - just somewhat choppier in motion. Primarily designed for lower-end Windows devices, the PC version still holds up - and with resolution scaling support, ultra-wide functionality and 60fps action, it's a fascinating comparison point - the chance to see the game running with all technical constraints removed.
More to the point, playing with a pad demonstrates that Asphalt 9 would hold up as a standard console game. The handling is fun and arcadey - especially with a pad - and there's a lot of content to enjoy without needing to spend anything on microtransactions. This is, of course, my biggest nitpick with any mobile game including Asphalt 9 - the microtransactions - but it's a frustrating reality of the modern mobile business and it does detract from the flow of the game. A bought-and-paid-for Switch version though? Looking at how this game runs on mobile, a version for Nintendo's hybrid would be a great fit.
But in here and now, Asphalt 9 is one of the first mobile games in a long time that caused me to sit up and really take notice. It offers a level of visual quality you just don't expect from a mobile platform and it plays great to boot. It's great to peek at what's happening in the mobile space from time to time: we were impressed with Fortnite earlier this year and are even more impressed by what Gameloft has achieved here. Asphalt 9 is just a beautiful game, and as frustrating as the microtransactions are, the free-to-play nature means you can download for free and try the game out. I reckon you'll be pleasantly surprised by the quality if you do.

Credit By:
 https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-asphalt-9-legends-is-one-of-the-most-beautiful-mobile-games-weve-seen

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Minecraft reviews

“I hate Minecraft. I want to kill it with fire.”

A friend was ranting to me in an email about her kids fighting over the game and running into problems on a multiplayer server. She’d well and truly reached her limit, and was thinking about banning Minecraft from her house altogether.

She’s not alone - there are loads of parents who are baffled, frustrated or tearing their hair out over their kids’ passion for playing in this blocky little world. Which is a shame because the game is full of a lot of really positive things and can be a wonderful experience for kids.

But it’s important to remember that Minecraft was never specifically designed with kids in mind, and so naturally there are aspects to the game that can be a problem for families - including a couple of things that have the potential to cause some major drama.

The good news is that all of these things are fixable and shouldn’t prevent you from letting your kids harness the very real benefits to the game. So let’s take a look at some of these not-so-good things about Minecraft, and how to make it a better experience for the whole family.

1.  It’s hard to know what’s going on

One of the confusing aspects of Minecraft for many parents is trying to understand exactly what their kids are doing when they play. And that’s because it’s more like a toy than a game - the player’s experience is mostly driven by their imaginations. So when they tell you about their adventures and creations, it’s like when they describe role-playing with friends or a second-hand conversation or even a dream... you won’t always follow along with the story. And that can make it hard to figure out exactly what this game is all about.

Another thing that makes it hard to grasp what’s going on is that every player is having a different experience. That’s the way that Minecraft is designed. When a new game is started it creates a new world, and you can have as many of these worlds as you want. Each time you play you can choose a different one to roam around in, and the things that you see and do (or that happen to you there) won’t be the same each time.

You can also customize the world using a bunch of different options, as well as unofficial modifications to the way the game looks and acts. So there is no real universal experience called ‘playing Minecraft’... every player is having a different experience of the game. And that makes it really hard to get a straight answer when you Google something like “what the hell is Minecraft”.

Learning about these different options, or even just knowing that they exist, can help you feel a bit less confused about what Minecraft is all about.

2.  Mods can make the game unstable or unsuitable

Once kids become familiar with the game and get connected to the wider community they’re going to want to download mods (check the What Are Mods article if you don’t know what that means). Most of these won’t be a problem, but since they're files which have been created by the public there’s the chance that some may contain viruses or objectionable content, or make Minecraft run slowly and even crash.

Mods can also conflict with each other and cause problems, and they need to be reapplied every time Minecraft is updated. There’s also no guarantee of support from the people who made the mod, and if something goes wrong you can’t get support from the makers of Minecraft either (since these are unofficial changes to the way the game is supposed to work).
Tips for fixing:

    Learn how to download and install mods so you can help
    Have good virus protection running on your computer at all times
    Only download mods from reputable sources
    Limit the number of mods that are applied at one time
    Help older kids to learn how to make their own mods
    Always back up your game files before applying mods

3.  Multiplayer servers can be overwhelming or inappropriate

Playing Minecraft with other people can be a lot of fun, but it’s important to understand that connecting to a public server means playing with strangers. This is no different than taking your kids to the playground - you wouldn't leave them there alone to play and talk with other kids and adults without your supervision. While most of the players on multiplayer servers are just there to have a good time, some will knock down your kids constructions, try to kill their player in the game or use bad language in the chat feature. Some players might also wear skins that can be disturbing or inappropriate.

Multiplayer games can also be very fast paced with a lot of chatter going on, and some people may cheat or not follow the rules. The server may use a different set-up than your kids are used to when they play in single player mode, and not having control over that can be frustrating for some. So venturing into the world of multiplayer servers needs to be tackled very, very carefully.
Tips for fixing:

    Play in single player mode
    Play in multiplayer mode with people in your house via a LAN server
    Start your own multiplayer server
    Join servers run by people you know or can trust
    Practice playing on single player first... then a multiplayer LAN... then a server with friends... before venturing into playing with people you don't know
    Join a family-oriented server that uses whitelisting
    Help them learn how to deal with griefing

4.  It can require some complex skills

Minecraft is a pretty easy game to move around in, but as play progresses kids are going to want to do more and more with the knowledge that they’re acquiring. Some of this will require complex executive functions like memory and planning, and some pretty agile fine motor skills. Some kids might really struggle with this, which can make their time in the game frustrating.
Tips for fixing:

    Help kids to strategize and plan out the things they want to do
    Make a Superflat world just for building to make it easier
    Start the world with a bonus chest to give kids a head start
    Help them learn how to navigate and not get lost
    Show them how to pay attention to their status bars
    Practice attacking monsters in Creative (where you can’t die) before trying Survival

If your kids are young or they're finding the game difficult, try progressing through the game levels and options more slowly so they can build their skills:

    Start in single player Creative mode and practice building, digging and crafting
    Stay in single player Creative mode and practice attacking monsters
    Progress to single player Survival mode on the Peaceful setting
    Then try Survival mode on Easy difficulty or a multiplayer LAN game

5.  The game can be frustrating

Another potential source of frustration in the game is losing all the stuff that you’ve made or collected when you die. Depending on which mode you’re in, that might happen fairly frequently. There can also be unexpected changes to the game, like glitches or server outages or updates.

If kids are used to playing in single player with mods or cheats, they might find it difficult to play on another server or world where these aren’t allowed. So kids who have a low frustration threshold or tolerance (they get frustrated easily or don’t cope well with the feeling of being frustrated) might find Minecraft overwhelming to play at times.
Tips for fixing:

    Use a cheat that lets them keep their stuff when they die (see Using Cheats)
    Play in Creative mode (where you don’t die)
    Play in Survival mode with difficulty set to Peaceful (where it’s harder to die)
    Play single player (where you're less likely to experience lag or glitches)
    Change the video settings to make the game run faster
    Help them set goals to add structure to the game
    Learn the game so you can help them solve problems

6.  The experience can be intense

There are aspects to Minecraft which can be overwhelming for some kids, particularly younger ones. There are a lot of dark and spooky places to explore, not to mention monsters that are trying to get you. Stuff often pops up from nowhere, and some of the ambient sounds you hear in caves and the groans of monsters can be pretty creepy. You may need to kill animals to survive, and although there’s no blood they do make a grunting noise when attacked (before turning into a lump of raw meat).

While none of these aspects of the game are particularly graphic or violent, playing in first-person perspective is an immersive experience which can make the game feel very real to the person playing (especially if they’re young or sensitive).
Tips for fixing:

    Play in Creative mode (no monsters and you don’t need to kill anything)
    Play in Survival mode with difficulty set to Peaceful (no monsters)
    Show your kids how to make and use torches (so it's nice and bright everywhere)
    Switch to third-person perspective for exploring caves or if it gets intense (F5 key)
    Turn down the sound and/or music volume
    Find mods and texture packs that make the experience less intense
    Practice attacking monsters in Creative (where you can’t die) before trying Survival

7.  It’s so much more than a game

There’s an enormous world that has sprung up outside of the game itself - there are YouTube videos of people playing and giving tips on how to play, parody songs and videos, a wiki, forums - kids will feel compelled to seek these things out and find the people who have answers to their questions. But remember that Minecraft is not specifically a kids game - much of this content is not suitable for them. This is particularly true of the forums and YouTube videos.
Tips for fixing:

    Be aware that not everything that says 'Minecraft' on it is okay for kids
    Look for family-friendly YouTube Channels
    Check videos before your kids watch them - if you’re not willing to do this, don’t let them on YouTube
    Don’t let kids into the forums without supervision
    The Minecraft wiki is safe to read and will have most of the answers they need

8.  It’s easy to lose time when playing

Minecraft is a game with no real end. The challenges keep presenting, and the further you go the more you want to do and the more challenges result. Kids can become totally absorbed in the work that they’re doing in the game, and lose all track of time in the real world. Finding a moment to eat, do chores and homework and even use the toilet can be difficult for kids to do when they're caught up in the game, especially younger ones who haven’t yet learned how to manage their own time.
Tips for fixing:

    Have a visual timer sitting next to the computer
    Periodically alert them to how much time has passed
    Help them to transition from their time in the game

9.  Kids can often become obsessed

There’s something about Minecraft that makes it completely engrossing for many players, to the point of obsession and beyond. This can cause huge problems for families - so much so that I’ve dedicated an entire article to just this aspect of the game for kids (it's called Help, My Kids Are Obsessed With Minecraft).

10.  It requires a lot of supervision

Okay, let’s get really honest here - preventing these kinds of problems with kids playing Minecraft requires parents to be very invested and involved in the game, more so than with others that your kids might want to play.

For some people this isn’t a problem, because they’re interested in video games or they love to play Minecraft just as much as their kids do. But what if you’re not one of those people? What if you could care less about gaming or don’t know your way around your computer or have a million other things to do right now?

Minecraft comes with a steep learning curve for parents, and that's not going to suit everybody... but the truth is, the less involved you are the more problems your kids are likely to have with the game.
Tips for fixing:

    Learn the game (and play alongside your kids) so you understand what they’re talking about, how to get the most benefit from their time spent playing and how to help them when they run into trouble
    Outsource the learning - if you don't want to get involved yourself, enlist the help of a friend or family member who already knows about it
    Help the kids to help themselves - show them the wiki, find good sources of information for them to use to solve their own problems
    Keep the chance of problems low - play single player or multiplayer LAN games only

The bottom line

There are a lot of things about Minecraft that make it a really worthwhile game for kids to play, and the areas where most families run into problems are easily fixable.

But there's really no getting around the fact that it's a game that requires parents to be involved if they want the experience to go smoothly for their kids. So if you don't want to do that - if you can't bring yourself to learn about the game or put in the time to supervise, sort out problems, keep them safe on multiplayer servers and prevent their obsession from becoming unhealthy - then Minecraft isn't the right game for your family.

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Fortnite Battle Royale

Stiff arming its way through the crowded battle royale genre, Fortnite Battle Royale sets itself apart by trading the traditional, bland military simulation vibe with vivid colors and an outstanding, freeform building system that’s unlike anything else in competitive multiplayer games.As its name suggests, Fortnite Battle Royale fits so neatly into the battle royale genre that blew up last year that the basic description sounds as standard as you can get: Up to 100 players are dropped onto a large but constantly shrinking map with the goal of gathering weapons and gear to become the last person or team left standing. But if you look just a little closer, it can’t be mistaken for any other game because the vehicle you’re skydiving out of is, inexplicably, a flying party bus – a nice change of pace from a drab military plane – and the place you land is a giant, beautifully colorful island, instead of a realistic landscape, surrounded by a violent storm.

Thankfully, unlike other battle royale games, like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, where an unlucky circle could leave getting out of the encroaching circle almost impossible, Fortnite’s map is at least small enough (relative to PUBG’s) that even if you have to run across the entire island to get to the safety of the randomly centered eye of the storm you run very little risk of being killed by the collapsing border.

On the island are several large and totally unique cities, each with their own style of structures — a quaint suburb of houses, a giant office district filled with skyscrapers, or a retail area with an outdoor mall. Each city is full of vibrant colors, and the map as a whole has hundreds of buildings with randomly spawning loot in the form of guns, explosives, and healing items.

Fortnite Battle Royale’s inventory management is, thankfully, simple by design. You get just five slots, so you’re forced to balance your arsenal of guns with your need for healing or explosives to deal with enemy structures. It’s a neat limiting factor that forced me to keep a mental shopping list of exactly what I was on the lookout for as I ran across the island, and to resist the urge to pick up anything else. With such specific needs in mind, every chest came with the thrill of hoping it would reveal the weapons I wanted most. Fortnite gives you plenty of ways to mix and match weapons, so even if that chest doesn’t come up with the exact item you want, you’ll never feel powerless in a fight.

Once you do find the weapons you’re looking for, most fights in Fortnite go about the same way: You start with one shot from a slow-firing heavy weapon like a sniper rifle or pump shotgun in hopes of ending the fight before it really started, then (if needed) switch over to a faster assault rifle or tactical shotgun to carry out the rest of the battle. While it’s far from the only way to play, this combination seems to be the preferred method for almost every player and provides the foundation of almost every fight in Fortnite.

It’s a lightning-fast system where fights can end in the blink of an eye with just one slight miss. This makes for a stark contrast from other battle royale games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is filled with long, tense standoffs where sustained accuracy often matters more than a single well placed shot. It’s a chaotic and fun system that makes fights a little more complicated than simply aiming at your opponent and firing, but after a few hours with Fortnite I started to get the shoot-and-switch rhythm down and fights started to become almost automatic.

It’s the stuff around the shooting that helps Fortnite differentiate itself from every other battle royale game and shows off what truly makes it special: The building.

Carrying over the building system from Save the World is a brilliant choice that sets Battle Royale apart not just from other battle royale games, but most competitive multiplayer games in general. Just about everything that isn’t the ground can be mined for wood, stone, or steel, which can be used to create walls, stairs, and floors anywhere on the map (so long as some part of the structure touches the ground). It’s a massive system with so many possibilities that, at first blush, it can be daunting to try to figure out how to build the massive structures that others around you have created. But that’s one of the best things about Fortnite: It always keeps things simple.

With just three primary tiles – floors, walls, and stairs – the building toolset may seem limited, but it’s got everything you really need. Whether it was building a staircase up to that hard-to-reach loot chest or quickly laying down an impromptu piece of cover to protect from an attacking enemy, I found I always had the tools I needed for the job at hand, and I could swap to the piece I needed without missing a beat. In fact, that swapping is so easy that one of my favorite moves is placing one platform and jumping off of it, then switch to another type in mid-air and place it before I land. That trick allows you to scale vertical walls or go straight up a mountain. While this may sound like an impressive feat of dexterity, Fortnite makes it so simple that almost anyone can pull it off – and they do, making it one of the most common tricks to getting around the island.

The first time I really understood how Fortnite’s building and shooting played into one another came in the middle of a fight in Retail Row, one of the map’s many cities. Another player and I were sheepishly taking shots at one another from behind single walls we had built. After I ran out of ammo in my assault rifle, I was forced to turn to my shotgun – a weapon I had largely disregarded up until this point. With the few resources I had left, I built stairs over my opponent’s wall, jumped off, flipped around, and shotgunned him. Looking back, it was as routine a play as it gets, but it was an absolute revelation for me at the time. Suddenly, everything made sense, and I realized that Fortnite Battle Royale is more about building than it is about shooting.

While the little things you can use it for may seem obvious – like building stairs to get to the roof of a building, or making a wall to block an enemy’s shots – the system also gives you room to think outside the box. You could build around a downed teammate that you can’t help yet, or create a decoy fort to lure enemies into an ambush while you wait behind a tree. The system even provides some elegant solutions to getting caught outside the trademark random circles of the battle royale genre: If you find yourself on the wrong side of a lake or chasm, no problem – just make your own bridge to the other side.

Thanks to the building system’s simple but robust design, you can throw structures together in a way that suits your style. While some people love high towers that stretch into the sky, I like to keep things at a lower altitude, giving me more room to bounce between my platforms and the ground. One player I faced lured me into his elaborate fortress of hallways, with doors that led to nothing, all in hopes of forcing me toward his waiting shotgun at the end of the maze.

Creative uses of building become even more apparent in the heat of battle. With every building decision made in a split second, every player develops their own unique techniques. Where one person might build a wall, another builds stairs they can use to rush forward. When I might create a window in the middle of my wall to take an extra shot, someone else might try to flank around the side of the building by adding a new section entirely. What might start as a simple staircase at the beginning of a small fight between me and another person could morph into a twisted modern art spire as more people join in and add their own pieces. Fortnite’s building mechanic is an incredible system that allows for personal expression in a way that really isn’t present in many other competitive games.

While building is a freeform system, there’s an invisible grid that exists around the entire island that helps every piece that you build snap into place, and it works almost flawlessly. Of the hundreds of structures I’ve placed, it was rare that even one piece landed where I wasn’t expecting, and I’ve never gotten myself stuck or killed as a result. That’s a pleasant surprise, considering how much building happens during chaotic firefights.

All of this adds up to a system that is simply a joy to use. Everytime a fight broke out I’d get a spark of excitement as I started to think about how I would fight and build my way out of the situation at the same time. Quickly doing the math to determine if I had enough resources to build a staircase for a daring rush toward my enemy adds an extra mental thrill to combat. Every new plan felt like I was learning more about Fortnite Battle Royale and the way it would let me play – even if most of them ended with a shotgun in the face, it’s how that shotgun got to that face that mattered.

Even if you find something that works, you can’t get complacent because part of the beauty of Fortnite Battle Royale is its constant state of upheaval. Epic has shown a willingness to make big changes to the weapon hierarchy overnight. Maybe in the next patch, snipers will replace shotguns as the go-to weapon class and the simple staircases and bridges of today will give way to the grandiose sniping fortresses of tomorrow as building tactics change to match the new weapon balance. That’s how Fortnite Battle Royale has overcome one of the biggest challenges for any battle royale game: Keeping up with the demand from its community for new and exciting gameplay and cosmetic additions.

The pace of new content has also been impressive. Since Fortnite Battle Royale’s earliest release in July of 2017 Epic has made countless additions, from new towns and cities on the map to brand-new game modes, like the massive 50-vs-50 team mode from earlier this year or a recent patch’s Blitz mode, which has already become a fan favorite thanks to its speeder resource gathering and higher frequency of loot spawns.

Even Fortnite Battle Royale’s free-to-play structure feels a step ahead of the competition. Every item offered in the in-game store is strictly cosmetic, like character skins and new pickax designs. There’s a daily shop, where the selection of wares refreshes every 24 hours, and a legendary shop that updates every week or so with items that are likely to never return, like the particularly gaudy pink bear costume for Valentine’s Day or the extremely detailed Wukong skin that was released as a part of Fortnite’s Chinese New Year celebration. But the biggest microtransaction available in Fortnite Battle Royale is the Battle Pass, a one-time, $10 purchase that gives you access to 100 tiers of rewards that unlock as you play and complete unique challenges. It’s a neat structure that keeps you constantly working toward the next big milestone.

The influx of huge and constant gameplay changes may seem haphazard or dangerous when so many people already love it, running the risk of fixing what ain’t broke. But so far, Epic’s been smart enough about it to make people work to adjust their tactics while also avoiding the loss of the things that make Fortnite Battle Royale fun.

The only downside to all of these interlocking mechanics is the initial learning curve. Though each mechanic is simple on its own, making sense of them all together is a bit of a challenge – especially when there isn’t much of a tutorial to speak of. In fact, outside of a few pieces of text, Fortnite Battle Royale mostly leaves you with simple trial-and-error and watching YouTube videos until you’re able to figure out what makes it tick. For most of us, that means the first dozen or so trips out of the Battle Bus are likely to be pretty painful (and often very short) experiences. But, if you stick with it, all the systems start to click.

That’s Fortnite Battle Royale’s ultimate reward for the process of learning: An immense freedom that allows for a hundred solutions to tackle any problem, and none of them are just right or just wrong. This is the rare game where each loss fills me with more determination to improve than  disappointment, and each death comes with a quick realization of what went wrong and where. I’m constantly left eager to queue up for another match and try to correct previous mistakes — it doesn’t hurt that the time between dying and dropping out of the Battle Bus again never takes more than 60 seconds, thanks to Fortnite’s speedy matchmaking and enormous pool of players.

“

Fortnite Battle Royale runs fantastically on every platform I played it on.

The first couple of matches are all about the pursuit of tasting the first victory, or Victory Royale, as Fortnite calls it. Achieving it and seeing the tepid fanfare that accompanies it, however, ends up feeling like a bit of a letdown. But the feat of beating 99 other players is the true victory, and personal satisfaction is more than enough to make up for the bland winner screen. Suddenly, every game I dropped into felt winnable, and my drive to keep improving grew even more intense. Whether it was my first win, my fifth, or my twenty-fifth, the sense of excitement from a well-played game never leaves. This was twice as true in duo or squad games, when the lackluster victory screen becomes merely a backdrop to the shouts of my friends as they boast about their incredible shots and recount their closest calls.

It’s also important to mention that Fortnite Battle Royale runs fantastically on every platform I played it on (iOS, PS4, Xbox One, and PC), never stuttering or dropping frames even in middle of tense fights. That’s crucial for the speed of building that it demands, and a distinctive advantage over its chief rival in the battle royale genre, PUBG, which has more than its fair share of performance problems.

That list of platforms includes mobile, which is highly impressive in that it’s exactly the same game as its console counterparts – to the point where cross-play between PC, Xbox One, and mobile is possible. Even on a device that fits in your pocket, Fortnite Battle Royale still looks fantastic, even if it’s running at a slightly lower resolution than it would on most other platforms. The only real difference is the controls, which, for a mobile game, aren’t terrible. In fact, I could pull off almost all of the same movements I could on PC as on my phone – at about a quarter of the speed. Playing with other mobile users, and thereby operating with exactly the same speed disadvantage, really does feel like playing a slightly slower version of Fortnite Battle Royale. So, while aiming and building skills don’t exactly translate on mobile devices, the iOS version is a great alternative for anyone who doesn’t have access to the console or PC versions – or if you just want to play on the go.

Mastering Fortnite Battle Royale’s many systems is worth every second of investment. Whether you go it alone or queue up with a squad, even if you’re the first to die or you actually manage to earn the Victory Royale, Fortnite’s zany style and unique blend of shooting and building almost never offers anything less than an outstanding time. It may not be the first battle royale game, and it certainly won’t be the last, but Fortnite sets itself apart from the crowd by giving you the freedom and tools to express your own personal playstyle. 

Credit By: https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/27/fortnite-battle-royale-review

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