Last week, Fortnite kicked off its 30th season in the game's unique history. It became a pop-culture titan almost immediately after it debuted in 2017 and has not only enjoyed a level of sustained success that few other games have ever achieved, it's also turned many other live-service games into followers that must react to the waves Epic's game creates. Fortnite has blazed trails and reinvented itself more times than I can easily recall, and yet it's the latest season, Chapter 5 Season 3, that might be the game's best effort yet.

Subtitled Wrecked, this season of Fortnite reinvents the game to an extent Epic has arguably never gone before. Despite seasons debuting roughly four times a year and the introduction of new islands now being an annual event, Wrecked feels like the biggest and boldest change in how the game plays since Chapter 2 Season 3, which saw the entire island be submerged under flood waters that took weeks to recede. Once they did, cars were newly introduced, too, which further altered the future of Fortnite in major ways. Funnily enough, it's this season's focus on vehicles that's resulted in such an immediately exciting and fresh experience.

This season is, to put it bluntly, Twisted Metal. With its punk rock- and dieselpunk-inspired setting befitting of Mad Max, the huge sand dunes and high-velocity stunt ramps make each round the most chaotic experience I've seen in my thousands of hours playing Fortnite. Early portions of a round tend to involve players not just loading up on guns and healing items. Now, they also quickly seek out a ride before attaching various mods onto their weapons of gassed destruction.