Fortnite goes full Cyberpunk: Neon samurai and hoverboards take over the island

Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, has managed to keep the game fresh for this long without any kind of thematic identity beyond the polished cartoon look and zany vibes

Fortnite’s new cyberpunk season, Chapter Four, Season Two, has recently been released and is creating excitement amongst gamers. This new season embraces the futuristic world and creates an imaginative cyberpunk paradise. The central island has been completely revamped with 20-story glowing skateboard rails, neon katakana, and towering holographic samurai.

Fortnite Neon Samurai

This new season introduces a new area with hot springs and cherry blossoms, as well as a handful of new weapons with inscrutable names. It also includes new “reality augments” that make gameplay more interesting.

Expanding mobility across the island has been a recent theme, with street bikes replacing dirt bikes and a new version of aerial parkour allowing for dynamic battles high up in the new Tokyo-ish futuristic hot drop combat hub, Mega City. Fortnite continues to make the game feel more dynamic with ongoing upgrades to its battle royale mode. These upgrades showcase the Unreal Engine and its capabilities, from more fluid in-game movement to increasingly destructible environments.

Fortnite has managed to keep the game feeling fresh for six years without any kind of thematic identity beyond its polished cartoon look and zany vibes. Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, changes the game from chapter to chapter and often even within the shorter three-month seasons in between each of the game’s major shakeups. The game’s unifying feature can be summed up as “more is more”.

One season might center on medieval knights or shirtless bodybuilding catmen, while the next is about shimmery goo you can scoot around in. This model also lends itself well to Epic’s relentless and surely lucrative smorgasbord of tie-ins with major pop culture touchstones.

Other games have taken a bite out of the live service shooter pie in recent years, but Fortnite’s formula still works. Fortnite’s recent focus on quests and in-game errands is another bit of the puzzle. There’s a lot of stuff to do each season beyond just shooting other players. By doing that stuff and unlocking the skins and other virtual miscellany on the seasonal battle pass in the process, you wind up having a good time, even if your crew can’t aim to save your life.

Fortnite is an enjoyable game to dip in and out of as a casual player every few months so things don’t get too stale, or too tense. Hardcore players can bicker over gun balancing and SBMM formulas, but the game’s real appeal is just bouncing around the map and seeing what happens. It’s usually something funny or dumb, most often both.