If you updated Fortnite yesterday, you will likely have noticed that the island is now half-covered in snow, furious gingerbread men are scattered about, and there’s an enormous monolith of ice sticking out of a hillside. Leakers are claiming that [checks reality] Mariah Carey is going to emerge from within?
Fortnite has boasted some very peculiar tie-ins in the past, more recently reaching a lunatic fever-pitch where so many IPs and franchises are involved at once that October saw people dressed as Edward Scissorhands and Jason Voorhees taking up arms against Doctor Doom with help from Iron Man. In November you could battle Snoop Dogg and Eminem while sporting a brand new pair of Nikes on your amorphous blob-creature. It’s a corporate soup of cameos and crossovers which, viewed from the outside, can appear rather gross. And now, Mariah Carey of all people might be getting in the mix?
I’m a recent convert to Fortnite, drawn in by my 10-year-old, having made the lazy (but understandable) mistake of thinking it just a cacophony of cartoonish noise. It turns out, beneath the corporate tie-ins and embarrassing celebrity endorsements, it’s one hell of a solid online shooter. I thoroughly enjoy playing, ideally in Duos with the boy, but spend a lot of time playing solo too. Thanks to some superb, parkourish movement (made even better in this latest season with wall-scrambling, roly-poly landings and samurai-sword-induced double-jumps), excellent gun fighting, and a vast variety in approaches, I’ve found my groove.
That doesn’t mean the corporate nonsense grates less, but once through the looking glass you can at least appreciate why people put up with it. And…sometimes it’s fun?
Given that November’s shorter so-called “Remix” season (which brought back season 2’s map and dreary weapons) featured Snoop, Ice Spice, Eminem and Juice Wrld, the idea that Mariah Carey might be hiding in a vast block of ice (as she apparently so often does) doesn’t seem very far-fetched. Heck, at the end of Remix, there was a (stunning) slightly interactive event in which an Ice Spice the size of a skyscraper performed a gig in New York City, while titanic Eminems fought one another and a Juice Wrld as big as the solar system sang as players jumped around the rings of Saturn. It’s tough to rule anything out after that.
Anyhoo, that’s what the leakers are saying is due to happen in just a couple of days:
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