Getting Killed By Superman In Fortnite Feels Wrong

Superman arrived in Fortnite this week, becoming the latest in a steady stream of high-profile licensed characters from across the corporate multiverse. And in my first match following Superman’s debut as a playable character, he killed me with a sniper rifle. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t mean the part where I lose. I lose in Fortnite all the time. 99v1 battle royales are largely experiences in losing for most of us. It’s just strange to me that it was Superman who pulled the trigger.

When I started playing Fortnite back in what’s retroactively referred to as Chapter One, the first licensed character I saw added to the game was John Wick. I loved this crossover because I thought it made perfect sense. Wick uses guns. He’s not some invulnerable superhero. And he lives in a zany alternate reality involving a network of assassins so vast that the woman playing violin in the subway station or the guy eating his dinner on a park bench could be killers in waiting. It seemed a natural fit for the gleeful absurdity of Fortnite.

But in Fortnite’s current phase, Chapter Two, the Ready Player One-ification of the game has ramped up immensely. It now feels like an indiscriminate gaping maw, absorbing every pop culture icon it can, with no regard for how they mesh with Fortnite’s tone or its battle royale format. By so strongly defining itself with external media crossovers, the game has lost much of its own distinctive identity, and started to feel more like a platform than a game.

Sometimes, the results of this shift are wonderful. The Ariana Grande concert last weekend reminded me why I fell in love with Fortnite in the first place. It emphasized how good it feels just to move and to dance in the game, how Fortnite is much more about fun and play than it is about winning. At its core, Fortnite is just a big party. We jump, we land, maybe we hijack a flying saucer or complete a time trial in a Ferrari, we engage in some silliness, have some fun, and sooner or later, most of us lose. But hey, it’s no big deal. It’s all part of the game. Don’t sweat it. Everyone loses sometimes. Just get back on the bus and jump again.

Source: Kotaku