I'm pretty sure in my review of the original Retro Bowl I talked about how outside of Madden one of my most formative football game memories was buying Techmo Bowl on virtual console for $5 and playing 100's of hours of it alone. And despite the graphics I would craft these narratives in my head about my team and the players and it made me so creative by letting my imagination run wild. Well this has that same magic. Upon starting my original thought was. Why do I need a college version of this game, I trust the dev's but why this. And I got it. The journey of getting a college team from the slums to D1 champions is exhilarating. I could go on about how when I became coach of Rutgers we had nothing but a solid 3 star WR and using all my scholarship recruitment fund I got a 5 star RB to anchor my team and lead us to an undefeated National Championship and how my team evolved year over year. And once we lost star players how the younger guys stepped up and made plays when they needed to and evolved. How I could HEAR the fans chanting for players meanwhile it was silent. My imagination ran wild just like it did when I was 10 playing Techmo Bowl. Something magical about this game.

So now that I talked my shit, I 100% the blackcell version of the battlepass after swearing off buying this game. I played so much fucking MWII and when I played the beta for this I told myself "WOW this sucks no way I buy it." Until, some friends hopped back on Warzone and I unwillingly joined them and caught the grinding bug and promptly shelled out $100 for the Vault edition of the game so I could get the top battlepass and the XP boosts and all the other usless shit that I can justify as. "Well it saves me time grinding guns for Warzone." Which doens't even make sense in my case because I enjoy the MP so leveling guns isn't a grind I'm just more ashamed that I actually enjoy crafting cool Camo/Sticker/Decal gun combos, ala CS2, except here I'm not dropping $5k to have my dream combo. So yeah my brains broken but this is a way stronger warzone than WZ2. And all of the original maps added to this season are really cool, I love Meat PAUSE and can see it becoming an all time great COD map.

No series in worse purgatory than Call Of Duty. Outside of sports games there is no other series dropping annual games at full price, because the alternative of F2P is too lucrative in drawing in new players and then making all its money from micro-transactions. BUT COD not only gets its yearly $70+ initial purchase but it than has multiple battle passes priced at $15-$30 and also has skins as expensive as $30. I don't know how sustainable this is. Because as good as the sales for this game is, when the stuff you buy doesn't transfer over, as it does in Fortnite or basically all other GAAS. Players will realize it isn't worth it. Doesn't help that this game is the most phoned in lazy entry in the series.

I'm gonna make a lot of Fortnite-heads mad with this but this was not good. Here's the thing, people never understand what they have nostalgia for. You don't miss Fortnite in 2017, you miss 2017. You miss playing with your friends and how hot the game was. It was such a global event. The game has evolved so much past that point. And the only thing they captured is how shallow the OG Fortnite BR was. Because it wasn't built for Battle Royale, but the team is so phenomenal that they built THE definitive battle royale. I guess it captured they scale of the phenomenon again because this season brought record player numbers and led into their whole rollout for the Fortnite off shoot games but outside of that, I was so bummed when they said it was coming back after this because I really didn't enjoy playing OG Fortnite.

Coming to terms that Fortnite may be your favorite game is tough. I'm at the point in the double digits in the past 6 years that this game has existed that I have not only maxed out the battle pass but that I played daily and still got excited about a win or completing a hard challenge or even getting a sick kill. I wrote a whole thing when the last "build season'" dropped about how building was core to this game and why it's a mechanic that made every other game feel lesser because of it. Then no-build came around about a year ago and it made me love the game even more, and now after a year of sitting on it this is the best game ever made. Multiplayer wise but also, and this may sound like a side tangent, but my reservation of playing a long 100+ hour RPG is that I grind for 100's of hours but once the game ends, that's it. All that is confined to that game and yeah the story may be great but I know at the next game that's it, I'm starting from square one so what's the point of the grind. Here, I come back because not only only do I love the game, but I want to have those rewards, I want to own every character I can and I love doing it. I play this game as a single player game I have for over 3 years. I play each challenge like I am in a world full of random NPC's and I'm just trying to get XP. I drop in with that goal but quickly I start getting some kills. 1 turns to 3, 3 turns to 5, 5 quickly becomes 10 and then the challenges don't matter I'm going for a win, I zero in and maybe I lose maybe I win but I'm invested every game. The Challenges are the backbone to my enjoyment but that game drives that love. On the last day of the season I was just as invested as every other week and it's been years of this. I love fortnite it's a perfect game to me. Fuck you if you don't agree