4.0
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 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. If Fortnite really is the future of rhythm games, they can beat it.
