Fortnite recently got a rhythm game mode, made by Epic-owned Harmonix, who previously made Rock Band. Called Fortnite Festival, it’s basically Rock Band, though without the instrument controllers (yet). It features a rotating selection of songs, from current music to songs from Fortnite to–god help me–classics? Is Weezer classic rock now?
Fortnite Festival is about two things I am not great at: knowing different songs, and rhythm games. I don’t want to be bad at rhythm games, and in fact you’d think I’d be better at them, given that I’ve spent my whole life playing instruments. But I don’t exactly get them. They exist in the same realm as pinball to me, a format so different from what I usually think of when I think of games that I'm never quite sure what makes one "good," but whose pleasures draw me in despite myself: I like pressing the buttons when you're supposed to! But a rhythm game never quite mimics what playing a song really feels like, the button presses never quite coming where I think they should. I get flustered easily, and then I’m sunk.
Fortnite Festival is also full of songs I don’t know. It launched with a selection by The Weeknd, who I only know from that Daniel Craig meme. The songs have been changing up, though, and when I logged in last night I was pleased to find Weezer’s “Buddy Holly,” which you might remember was a popular song in 1994.
I was excited for this! I know “Buddy Holly” really well, because I think if you are A Man Of A Certain Age, the entirety of The Blue Album is pretty much hard-coded into your brain whether you want it to be or not. Fortnite Festival songs have different difficulty ratings per instrument, indicated by a number of bars. “Buddy Holly” has three or four bars out of a possible seven on the mode’s “easy” difficulty, which I felt meant that, combined with my knowledge of the song, I would be very good at it.
I am not very good at it. I’m not terrible at it, the way I am at other Fortnite Festival songs, but once lead guitar or drums start throwing multiple simultaneous button presses in, or set up a pattern and then break it, I get all flummoxed. It doesn’t help that I’m playing on keyboard, where I cannot figure out a good layout; I changed the default letter keys to 1-4 on my number row, but I can never decide if I should do it with my left hand like I’d do WASD, or with my right hand because then it’s easier to map the numbers to my fingers. Whatever I try, I get into a groove, then get tripped up, and then cannot right myself again. The song spins on without me as I fumble to catch up, trying to ignore my paltry score.
This isn’t fair, man! The brightly-colored Fortnite characters taunt me as they bop along to a song that came out when I was the age of most Fortnite players, which was before most of them were even born! I remember having to ask my parents who Buddy Holly was when the single came out, and, looking back, I’m pretty sure that when the song references Mary Tyler Moore I was actually picturing Audrey Hepburn because I didn’t know who Mary Tyler Moore was. I cannot imagine what relationship young people have to this song, and I have no desire to see them smoke me at it in the multiplayer mode. This whole situation is deeply unjust, and I do not approve, and I know that 80% of my indignation is just because it pisses me off to be bad at something I feel like I shouldn’t be bad at.
Anyway, this latest round of songs also features All-American Rejects’ “Dirty Little Secret,” a song I still think of as “new” but which actually came out in 2005, and which I am also bad at despite it being one of my go-to songs at queer karaoke in ::checks calendar:: 2012. How dare you, Fortnite Festival. Off I go to crumble into dust.
