Fortnite Ballistic is the new FPS mode in Fortnite Battle Royale, which released on the 11th of December 2024. You play in 5v5 rounds, in which one team has to plant a bomb, in this case a 'Rift Point device', while the other team has to defuse it or eliminate the attacking team. The first team which wins 7 rounds, wins the match. It's the same gamemode, like in every of the Counter Strike games or Valorant for example. Even the buy menu for weapons and items in between rounds is nearly identical to that of Counter Strike. So its very clear where Fortnite Ballistic took its inspiration from. The important questions however are: Is it fun? And can it compete it with the best in the genre?
Fortnite in my opinion has never been a FPS and will never be a FPS. Call of Duty tried something similar, when they introduced a third person mode in the Modern Warfare 2 Remake. It was an entertaining gimmick, but it was never a serious gamemode. Call of Duty in third person just felt clunky and scuffed. The same can also be said about the Apex Legends third person LTM from a couple of years back.
Fortnite is good at being a third-person shooter, but the first person gameplay never felt smooth, when they introduced the first person weapons in the later chapters of Fortnite Battle Royale. They now just took the same scuffed FPS gameplay without any improvements and put it into Ballistic to base a whole gamemode around it. All the weapons in Ballistic are from Chapter 5. Another controversial decision to exclusively use weapons from the least popular chapter in Fortnite history. To be fair, I think they just did it because it was a lot less work and they could just copy and paste it.
This is generally a problem of Ballistic. This mode doesn't just feel a bit scuffed, but also quite lazy. I know a lot of people will excuse this by saying it is just "Early Access", but what does that even really mean nowadays anymore? Ballistic launched with a single map (!) and hasn't made any gameplay tweaks for this mode to accommodate Fortnite to a pure FPS mode. I don't think Fortnite could ever be an amazing FPS, but there is a lot more potential in this sidemode, if they would at least put some effort into it. There was no reason to rush this mode out. They could have taken some time, polish the actual experience and release it, when it's actually ready.
There is two other really big issues with Ballistic. Apart from the generally clunky feeling, the first person weapons have less aim-assist than the third person weapons in Fortnite. This would already be a significant disadvantage for console players, but Fortnite also uses the same sensitivity settings for both first and third person aiming, which is of course idiotic. You will now have to choose between changing your settings every time you switch gamemodes or having to play with subpar aiming sensitivity in Ballistic. A lot of the other gamemodes offer separate settings and Epic desperately needs to bring this to Ballistic as well. I am playing a lot of both Console and PC games and this lack of aim assist and sensitivity options is giving most console players a noticeable disadvantage against PC players.
The other big problem is the broken matchmaking in Ballistic. There is a non-ranked version of Ballistic, but for most players it won't even let you queue and result in multiple matchmaking errors. But even if you get into a match in the ranked version, the majority of my matches didn't even start with 5v5s, but with 5v4s or sometimes even 5v3s. The filling up of lobbies doesn't seem to work right. There is supposedly also a disconnect penalty, but I haven't played a single match in a couple of hours of Ballistic were there wasn't at least one disconnect per match. This completely ruins the balance of the gamemode and takes a lot of fun out of it. Letting newer players join during an ongoing match might not be ideal, but it would probably still be better than having matches with uneven player numbers. Nobody enjoys winning a 5v3 or 5v2.
Result:
Fortnite Ballistic in its current state is a disappointing gamemode. I have heard some people call it a "Call of Duty or Counter Strike Killer". These people are either trolling or are completely delusional. You can definitely have some fun, but Ballistic is lightyears away from being able to compete with the best games in the genre. I don't think it will ever reach that greatness, but it at least could have the potential to become "very good", which would be absolutely fine for a sidemode in Fortnite. They will have to improve the scuffed FPS feeling of the gamemode, at least offer us separate sensitivity settings for third and first person aiming, fix the broken matchmaking and release at minimum 2-3 other maps. I didn't expect them to launch with a dozen maps, but a single one is pretty pathetic contentwise.
In its current state Fortnite Ballistic gets a 5.5/10 from me. I do think there is a potential for Ballistic to one day maybe reach a 7-8, but that's only if Epic puts in the necessary effort and polish.
5.5/10
