Unless you've been living on Mars, in a cave, with no Wi-Fi, you already know the score with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds – it's a phenomenon. At the zenith of its popularity in December 2017, 30 million people were out to kill one another for a chicken dinner. That's no poultry (sorry, paltry) number to have as your player-base, even when compared to the mightiest shooters in the henhouse.
Before all that happened though, the ripples of PUBG’s early-access prosperity caused Fortnite Battle Royale to spawn, technically a few months before PUBG entered its version 1.0. Understandably, PUBG purists were not impressed with this bandwagon hitchhiker, but, as time's gone on Fortnite has managed to evolve into a unique entity.
Before we get down to the comparin', let's all acknowledge what's coming down the pipeline. This is just the beginning. Every major publisher out there has smelled cash in the battleground format and their greed-boners are at full attention. We're all about to be force-fed fowl in the evening for a very long time, because this fad isn't going off the menu. If the Chinese variant of Call of Duty is any indication, I'd say Black Ops 4will be the next big player in this Battle of the Battlegrounds Bastards...
SKIN DEEP DIFFERENCES?
Let's do this by the numbers. What we have here are two games with some differences, but also a lot of sames in their fundamentals. In both titles you start with a 60 second screw-around session on your own personal island. Next, the devs jam 100 of you into a POS cargo plane at which point you'll Geronimo out and make landfall on a large island (hopefully after deploying a parachute).
Sadly, you can't wear the boxes you find things in...
From then on it's a you-only-live-once deathmatch played with old school Solid Snakerules -- your mission is OSP (on-site procurement) with regards to weapons and supplies. Sadly, you can't wear the boxes you find things in.
Admittedly, the early scavenging sections of either games is kind of boring once you've done it a bunch of times. Things pick up however when an unexplained and utterly lethal weather phenomenon starts to circularly shrink the playing field in around you. What starts as a whole island quickly becomes an exclusive Thunderdome in no time.
The last individual or squad standing is given an honorary title. The more serious game of these two (PUBG) shrieks “winner winner chicken dinner”, while the goofier game (Fortnite) pats you on the back with a low-key “Victory Royale” message. It's... odd.
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BOOK BY ITS COVER
While the heart of the Unreal Engine 4 beats inside both games, visually they're like chalk and cheese. Fortnite is cartoony, brash and in the wacky vein of Team Fortress 2-- a natural flow-on from a title trying to lure in the Minecraft crowd by lashing LEGO building onto a shooter.
Meanwhile, PUBG's roots stem from dour military shooters like ARMA 2. It's retained that self-serious, white-knuckle atmosphere of its forebear, though you can expect the immersion to be regularly broken by online peeps trying to engage you wearing nothing but their tightey whiteys. With a frying pan.
The visual design of both games are set up completely differently in that one is designed to make your life easier, while the other wants to reward those with a keen eye. Take the in-game pickups for example: PUBG insists you scour through ramshackle residences and warehouses for inconspicuous loot, whereas Fortnite hides its goodies in obvious chests ripped right out of the latest Legend of Zelda.
When you do pop them open (or pop an enemy in the head) you're rewarded with a veritable Skittles rainbow of coloured guns whose value can be instantly discerned. This keeps you out of any inventory menu and makes the pace of the game faster -- a plus in my book.
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DIFFERENT BULLET BALLET SCHOOLS
When it comes to turning heads into canoes, these two “twins” are like Schwarzenegger and DeVito. PUBG adheres to gritty realism. You'll need to take the tunnel to Toonville to see what Fortnite does – it exists in a space where the bullets think, feel and have their own ideas on where they want to go today.
Epic Games' offering is arcadey as heck. Only certain long-range weapons have bullet drop and the majority of boomsticks use hitscan (ie instantaneous round delivery without projectile travel time). You'll also need to deal with bloom, a percentage chance accuracy mechanic (governed by an aiming cone that shrinks or expands based on how erratic you're being).
Over the fence, RNGesus has no say in whether your bullets hit in PUBG. Kills belong to the player who has a steady hand and a knowledge of weapons/attachments/ammo behaviour. Skills like knowing how to trace and lead targets, flick shoot and manage bullet drop are paramount at the higher play levels, too. Also, this being a battlefield filled with speeding vehicles that can get up in your grille quickly (or you in theirs) knowing when to transition from aim down sights (ADS) to hip fire, and being proficient in both, quickly separates the heroes from the hood ornaments.
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If you build it, they will come
ACHIEVING PEAK SNEAK
The literal downside to this building mechanic: deaths by fall damage are common...
Speaking of an overall difference in tactics, it should be noted that Fortnite swaps out vehicles for verticality. Guns, grenades and traps typically aren't what win matches –- being able to intelligently insta-build your own cover, or a higher ground that Obi Wanwould be proud of, can change the game. The literal downside to this building mechanic: deaths by fall damage are common, and funding these structures requires a lot of bashing the environment for resources with a pickaxe.
Though PUBG is great at what it does, points are lost due to it offering no unique mechanics that separate it from the overflowing shooter crowd. You've done this dance a hundred times. It's all about sensible use of cover, moving as a unit (if you have one), checking zones as you clear houses, leaning corners and exercising movement discipline.
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THE PRICE (AND PATCHING) IS RIGHT?
Obviously, given that PUBG is made by an indie and Fortnite a AAA dev, quality and frequency of updates are completely out of whack here. PUBG is a notoriously unoptimised piece of software, and the less said about the mobile and Xbox Oneports the better. It's incrementally improved since the clunky early-access days, but rough corners still exist. Glitches, hackers and crashes to desktop do persist and harm the experience.
Fortnite is no stranger to stutters, FPS drops and other graphical eyesores, but in my experience it's quite a bit more polished. That said, you'd be surprised to hear that the well-established Epic Games doesn't hold a candle to PUBG Corporation when it comes to timely patching. The meteoric rise of PUBG created the manpower and funds to deliver weekly bug fixing/optimisation with monthly content patches. Fortnite debuted as a multi-platform product right out of the gate and this makes it bound by lengthy cert processes (to ensure any update code isn't dodgy).
All that being said, the cost of entry shouldn't be ignored here. Fortnite Battle Royale will cost you all of zero dollars to enjoy. PUBG is a full-priced title that's much more competitive, not as well optimised, and therefore requires an expensive rig if you want to achieve a decent FPS (and avoid getting mashed by the 14 year old with mummy's credit card and a HAL-9000 PC).
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CONCLUSION
Though these two contenders exist in the same sub-genre, you'll find they diverge from one another significantly once you parachute into them proper. Personally, I'm a purist who values hand-eye-skill over random-number-generation when it comes to shooting, and I'm happy to wait until all the kinks are worked out of PUBG.