EPIC'S DIGITAL FLEA MARKET: STILL ALIVE, STILL CHAOS.

Dusting Off the Rig: What’s Happening in Fortnite, and Why You Should (Maybe) Care

Look, I’ve been online since dial-up was a good time. I’ve seen games rise and fall, entire communities built and demolished on text-based boards. I remember when “hacking” meant optimizing your .ini files, not… whatever’s happening with crypto now. So when a kid asks me about “Fortnite,” I usually just grunt and go back to perfecting my Doom speedrun.

But even I gotta admit, Epic’s kept the thing going. And lately? It’s… a lot. A lot is happening.

Apparently, the big blue boys are showing up. Reed Richards, Susan, Johnny Storm – the whole Fantastic Four crew is dropping into the battle bus to coincide with that new movie. Good for them, I guess. More power to the stretchy people. I’m still waiting for a proper Hexxat skin, personally. Now that’s a collab I could get behind.

Speaking of skins, Deadmau5 is reportedly joining the fray. A giant, glowing mouse head running around shooting people? Sounds about right for this era. They even brought back the Arcane skins. That’s a head-scratcher. Nearly 1,400 days, they say? Someone finally remembered those existed.

They’re throwing everything at the wall, see? Simpsons stuff wrapping up, rumors of some big anime tie-in… it's the digital equivalent of a flea market. They’re even teasing a movie crossover. Honestly, it feels like they’re trying to distract you from the fact they quietly nuked four whole game modes in Chapter 7. Four! That’s like deleting an entire level in Duke Nukem 3D just to make room for a slightly shinier door.

And then there's Lego Fortnite. Now that is a thing. They're letting enemies from those expeditions roam around in Odyssey, which… look, I'm old enough to remember just building forts with actual Lego bricks. This is just layers upon layers.

Look, I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s just… a lot. It feels like they're throwing everything and hoping something sticks.

As for “tricks?” Ugh. I saw some articles about aiming and building faster, using V-Buck cards. Look, kid, the best trick is practice. Muscle memory. Knowing your keyboard. Stop looking for shortcuts and learn the game. It's the same advice I gave people learning to use a modem in '96, and it still holds up.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out how to get my copy of Descent running on Windows 11. Some things never change.