Fortnite Festival Review

Fortnite Festival reviewed by Luke Reilly on PlayStation 5. Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox, Switch, and PC.
"Fortnite Festival forgets the bulk of what really made Rock Band the peak rhythm series of its era and injects the husk that’s leftover full of insidious money-extracting service game tricks and baffling design decisions. With no local shared-screen co-op, it falls at the first hurdle as a worthy peer of Harmonix’s party-game powerhouse. You can’t even see the note highways for the other players you’re online with, leaving the Main Stage mode barely feeling like multiplayer at all – and the Fuser-ish Jam Stage mode feels like a waste of effort entirely, demanding a king’s ransom to collect enough of the disgracefully expensive songs to be able to meaningfully engage with it. Binning karaoke support and charting the singing as button taps on the note highway is bewildering. Does Fortnite Festival have small glimmers of that musical magic that the incredible team at Harmonix has been humming for over two decades? Yes. Is it a temporarily compulsive throwback to cult-favourite, controller-only Harmonix curios like Frequency, Amplitude, and Rock Band Blitz? Sure. Can I see myself continuing to play it in its initial state? Not a chance. I love music and rhythm games - SingStar, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, I still have every one of them - but if Fortnite really is the future of rhythm games, they can beat it."

[japhetaguirre]

This can be summarized as: this is not a full $60 Rock Band game.

[rome]

Playing butter barn hoedown with a group of four friends is a 10/10 experience.

[zekekillah]

They should name it "Fortnite: Rockband". It's a fun mode. Surprised that it has more players than The racing mode.

[leoaxiom]

Its a lot of fun but definitely not a finished experience. Hopefully more players playing can get more focus on development for this mode. As well progession is way too slow

[geekstrom]

My girlfriend fell in love with Fortnite because of the Fortnite Festival mode. She's been playing it all day long. Her face while play is 10/10

[DanFarrell]

Imagine if other games had individual modes that come with free updates reviewed like they're full price seperate releases. It's crazy how much content is available in Fortnite now all for free

[christianvillegas]

This was the oddest review in a while. It went up and down and sounded like an aussie old man being cranky about kids' games and microtransactions. 10/10

[HaloMillennium]

There are fair takes, like with the cost of the songs and whatnot, but this mode is *NOT* a 4 nor even *BAD*

[ShadowFrosty]

A wise man once said: Another day, another victory for the OG taking down the sweats imposters among us

[adomingo]

It's fun but nowhere near perfect yet. Too few songs, plus the fun part of playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band was practicing songs over and over again to perfect them. Doesn't work when songs are rotated out.

[bettydougherty]

This guy is great, appreciating the brutal honesty of this review rather than catering to Fortnite's massive fanbase

[Bonus_Mosher]

When you hire a reviewer who admits that’s he’s never played a free to play game before and doesn’t understand the monetisation of modern F2P games, and they then lowball the review of that game based largely on said monetisation — you can see how a score of 4 might seem disingenuous. He ended up talking more about Rocket Racing (not at all related) and the monetisation of Guitar Hero (a full price game that also required the purchase of a physical instrument control kit) DLC 15 years ago than he did the fundamentals of this Fortnite mode.

It’s like, at some point you just stopped trying to fairly review games. I’m not even a Fortnite fan and this review irked me. The mode looks fine and the prices are more than in-line with MANY other F2P games, but then your reviewer would know that if you’d hired one who had ever played one before.

Be better.

[dionisissemitekolos]

how does ign rate it that low when the majority of guitar hero players like it

[hexagonal]

1:08 using your overdrive in the break is cursed, because you’re just wasting it then. You’re meant to use the time to get double points for the notes you hit…

[Murilo]

u guys gave this a 4
and big mouth a 9

[GregFranco]

Songs are expensive and also to get a new guitar or drums. It would be better if you can just unlock them like the old days in video games?

[motivusthesage]

Gives it a 4, also continuously misses easy notes in this mode 😂😂😂😂

[isaacb]

The game mode is fun but it get a little boring with the few song it has

[Mark_of_Tread]

Did they buy $60 worth of vbucks then review?? This seems hostile for a free update

[tunafish]

Theyve literally cut the gameplay so much to make it look like he hit all the notes, bro rated it so low cuz he cant play it well 😭😭