Fortnites solution is to change those audio cues into visual cues in the form of small footprints or circles that pop up on the screen from the direction where sounds of footsteps or gunshots are coming.

Only a comparatively small group of players currently have access, but what Ive seen so far suggests that Epic wouldnt have to do much to fling open the gates to the wider public.

You can sign up for the beta here.

Its hard to overemphasize how bold this release is.

Its exciting enough that we can play a game on our phones at the height of its popularity on Mac, PC, Xbox One, and PS4, but also because Fortnite allows us to play against players on those systems from our handheld devices.

And yes, that means all at the same time.

Thanks to a spat between Sony and Microsoft, you currently have to deal with separate queues for PS4 or Xbox.) Playing it feels a little like looking into the future: a future where resource-hogging, action-heavy games on desktops and consoles share living space on smartphones with barely a change in experience.

Weve seen this kind of things with Minecraft and Hearthstone, of course, but Fortnite is a different beast entirely.

This is a game where the slightest hesitation or dawdling equates to death.

Fortnite: Battle Royale, if you havent heard, is a free-to-play survival game that builds off ideas in both the 2000 film Battle Royale and The Hunger Games book and films.

In essence, you drop out of a bus floating in the sky and fight 99 other players to the death until only one is left standing.

The main Fortnite game for Mac and PC is a paid game thats based on building forts and fighting off zombies, but if were being honest, almost no one plays it in comparison.

Thisthe battle royaleis the main attraction for gaming in 2018 so far.

The right touch Sound appealing Keep in mind that Epic allows us who play Fortnite on mobile devices to choose to play in the same matches with folks armed to the teeth with keyboards and mice and gaming controllersoh, my (Controller support is apparently coming to Fortnite for iOS eventually, but its not here yet.) This sounds like a recipe for disaster.

In such a setup, PC players might as well be a belligerent space-age civilization encountering a long-hidden Amazonian tribe armed only with handcrafted bows and arrows.

But surprisingly, it works Or, at least, it works well enough.

All the controls are on the screen, so you use your thumbs to navigate in the 3D spaces and press various buttons to activate the weapons youve picked up or to sneak or crouch.

To fire off whatever weapon youre carrying, you simply tap the right side of the screen.

I find I far prefer the experience on my 12.9-inch first generation iPad Pro than on the iPhone, even though it doesnt handle the framerates as well.

The iPad Pro gives me plenty of room to maneuver and look for enemy players without smothering screen with my fingers.

In either case, though, lining up the camera for the perfect shot at another player requires a ridiculous degree of dexterity for aiming a shot, when such an action is barely more involved than blinking an eyelid with a mouse or a gamepad.

Thats not so much a problem when youre playing solely against iPhone players.

But when youre in crossplay, youre basically a walking target unless youre running with a highly protective squad of three friends on a Mac, PC, or a console.

In fact, its kind of par for the course for a lot of shooters that have tried to make the leap to iOS.

Fortnites brilliance, though, lies in what it does with sound.

Theyre the kind of games best played with over-ear headphones with the volume pumped to the max.

Fortnite For Mac Any Good?