Cars are finally in Fortnite with the 13.40 update, called “Joy Ride.” They might have arrived a bit later than players expected, but now that they’re here, they’re a lot of fun.
There are a few different drivable cars in the game, including a pickup truck, a taxi, a tractor-trailer, and a hotrod. (Sorry, it’s too early to ask my Jalopnik friends for the official words for cars.) Not every car in the game can be driven; the ones that can’t be used have boots on them. Cars have different amounts of health: the semi I drove in Creative had 1200, while a pickup had 1000 and a more standard car had 800. They take damage, like the rest of the game’s vehicles, but can be healed by camp fires. They handle differently on different terrain, faring better on roads than grass, and slowing down and sinking if you drive them through water. Some have boost and others don’t, and you can see how fast you’re driving via a speedometer on your HUD.
As suggested by a recent leaked challenge, cars need gas. They can be fueled up at gas stations using gas pumps (which you may recall are explosive. Please learn from my mistakes and drive carefully.) Gas pumps are highlighted on your map, and to refuel your car, you grab a nozzle and press the prompt for the pump. Update 7:50am—You can also fill up gas canisters. Some players are finding ways to duplicate canisters, which is a type of glitch we’ve been seeing a lot this season.
I had fun with cars in my squads match, racing with my teammates, shooting from the windows as a passenger, and running down enemy players, who’ll take damage and go flying when you hit them. I haven’t found any specific car-related challenges or limited-time modes in the game yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them soon, if the challenges aren’t there already.
There are also radio stations in the game now, a la other driving games like GTA and Saints Row. Cars have different radio stations that can be changed or turned off. These feature game music as well as real world artists, such as—according to dataminer Hypex—Juice and 21 Savage & J. Cole. I’m an old man who doesn’t recognize any of this music, so let me know how you feel about it. Radio stations aren’t game-changing to me, but they’re a standard feature in other games with cars, so it’s nice to have them here.
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(Update 7:43am—Radios are already having a problem on PC, according to the Fortnite status Twitter account.)
Players are still finding things in Fortnite’s latest update, but so far cars seem more or less like we expected. It’s nice to have something so new in this season, and I’m looking forward to what players do with them.