In Chapter 2 Season 4 Fortnite did the unthinkable and dedicated an entire season to a Marvel crossover. I will in this article try to review this season and offer some personal impressions.
The introduction of CH2S04 started through a comic, which was available to read in the last weeks of CH2S03 in the Fortnite main menu. It was actually a quite elegant way of introducing a crossover between Marvel Comics and Fortnite. Thor, the god of thunder, travelled with Galactus through the galaxy in order to prevent the Black Winter event from happening. Galactus however got distracted by the power of the Zero-Point on the Fortnite world and planned to consume it. While Galactus started his 3 month long journey to the Fortnite map, Thor hurried ahead via the Bifrost in order to warn the Fortnite characters of the incoming threat. He also summoned various other Marvel superheroes and some POIs to the Fortnite world to help everybody to prepare for a giant battle against Galactus.
Chapter 1 Season 4 interestingly also featured a superhero theme, which might be a hint to Chapter 2 being some like an alternative timeline or parallel-universe to Chapter 1. The previous Ghost vs Shadow (Alter vs Ego) storyline from Chapter 2 Season 1-3 was unfortunately not continued and most parts of their existence just vanished. All the Ghost and Shadow henchmen and bosses have disappeared (One Ghost and Shadow henchmen were the exception, who happened to travel around the map during the season, doing goofy stuff and turning into an easter egg), the Authority got abandoned, its outer-walls sank to the bottom of the ocean and during Fortnitemares the Authority turned into the decrepit 'Ruins'. The Fortilla also shrank to about a third of its size, Catty Corner got abandoned as well and Rickety Rig was removed all together. Personally I am pretty disappointed that the developers didn't find any ways to bring the Ghost vs Shadow storyline to a satisfying end. The last three seasons they were prominent parts of the game and in CH2S04 most of their POIs seemingly disappeared without any replacement or explanations. There was no story event in the previous season and the whole handling just felt a bit out of place.
I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of new POIs at the beginning of the season. There were more removals of locations without replacements, than new areas. The biggest new area in the beginning of the season was the 'Sentinel Graveyard' south of the Authority, which featured the remains of a bunch of fallen giants called Sentinels, which got slaughtered by Wolverine at the start of the season. This new area might look nice, but was actually more of an eye candy than a new city. The biggest other location change at the start was the remodeling of Pleasant Park as 'Doom's Domain'. You have to however point out, that about 90% of Pleasant Park remained identical. A big lair named 'Doom House' replaced a standard house, a Dr. Doom statue was added into the middle of the park, Dr. Doom stared in as new boss and his henchmen took over the city and the vault in the underground base below Pleasant Park. Doom's Domain may not have changed much, but it was still a pretty cool POI. Overall however those were very little map changes for the start of the season, which again left me a bit underwhelmed.
In the following weeks some smaller POIs also arrived at the map. All of them were placed on external plateaus, which made it clear they were only ported in from some other world. Since they were all really small and looked disjointed from the rest of the map, I didn't enjoy these areas too much. The best ones were 'Ant-Manor' and 'Panther's Prowl'. Ant-Manor featured an oversized dog house and some underground tunnels, while Ant-Manor consisted of a big rock with a large panther statue on top of it. There was also an area called 'The Collection', which consisted of showcases of Marvel items (similar to the room of the Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy) and one POI with an empty prison transport truck (boring!).
The best addition to the map however was a gigantic plateau, which replaced Frenzy Farm and the entire area north of it. This plateau consisted of 'Stark Industries' (which turned out to be the new hotspot of the season) and the large 'Heart Lake'. The entirety of the plateau was called 'Upstate New York'. Stark Industries consisted of a large tech factory, which was focused on building robots, various vehicles and iron man suits. The main building had multiple floor levels and was guarded by Iron Man himself (he obviously got assisted by a lot of his robot companions). Aside the main building was a smaller parkway, which led to a large empty parking lot and a car gyro in front of the main building. There were two other buildings at the Stark Industries site. One was a large production hall for Battle Buses (which would later on play a key role in the Galactus Event) and the other was a building for a communication system with a vault bunker inside and a helispot aside it. Heart Lake was taken directly from the Avengers Endgame movie and represented the lake and some surrounding mansions, where Tony Stark had been living with his family (There is even a secret underground lab with stark vehicles below one of the mansions). Aside from Stark Industries and Heart Lake there were a lot of autumnally woods and rivers on the Upstate New York Plateau. The Plateau could be accessed through ziplines, which allowed players to quickly traverse through the area.
Stark Industries was a really cool complex and many players dropped there throughout the season. I certainly liked it the most of the few new areas this season. Heart Lake was also a beautiful location, but I rarely ever met players there or on other points of Upstate New York (Team Rumble was the exception and there were certainly some memorable battles being fought in this area).
A new addition were the Stark Quinjets. A couple of them would be landing at randomly selected landing places each match. The Quinjets were guarded by Stark Robot henchmen and supply drones were flying around them. The Robot henchmen had the interesting twist, that players could program them after knocking them down first and the robots would afterwards support the players throughout the match as AI allies. The supply drones could be shot from the sky and they dropped weapons and superhero abilities (Iron Man in Stark Industries, Wolverine in Weeping Woods and Dr. Doom in Doom's Domain were also dropping hero abilities upon defeating the bosses).
The Iron Man Repulsors were a fast shooting laser weapon. The damage itself was lower than most other hero abilities, but this was balanced by the higher rate of fire and lack of cooldown for the base fire. The Repulsors also allowed players for a short time to use the Iron Man Jetpack and to have a sort of auto-aim with the Repulsors. Both side abilities however had a lengthy cooldown. The other Iron Man ability was Unibeam, which was a single super powerful laser shot, which did 90 damage on players and destroyed all buildings it was shot on. It had a 35 second cooldown. The Doctor Doom Gauntlets shot green energy blasts, which were much slower than Iron Man's repulsor shots, but they in turn also did more damage. The rate of fire was also slower than the Repulsors, but both weapons had no cooldown. The Doctor Doom Mythical Bomb was a large energy ball, which could be thrown at enemies like a catapult. It had a 20 second cooldown and did 60 damage, which seems like a fair trade off. The Mythical Bomb was in my opinion however a bit weaker than Iron Man's Unibeam, because of the slow firerate. Doctor Doom and Iron Man were the only heroes with two abilities each.
The Silver Surfer Board allowed players to launch themselves up into the sky (similar to a Launch Pad) and could be used as a Glider midair. It had a 30 second cooldown and could be cancelled at any point without giving players fall damage, which made it a great mobility item rather than a real ability. The Groot Bramble Shield transformed players into a wooden Ball, which negated incoming damage and even healed the player inside. The Black Panther armour upon activation reduced incoming damage and after a while the armour exploded and damaged all surrounding hostile players. Storm's Whirlwind Blast summoned a little Tornado, which damaged and knocked surrounding enemies back. Venom's Smash and Grab worked as a Grappling Hook, pulling enemies towards the players and giving them damage in the process. Thor's Mjolnir Strike summoned his holy hammer and let it drop to the ground to not only damage players, but also destroy all structures in the target area. The only downside is, that the attack isn't simultaneous and quick enemies got a chance to dodge it. Wolverine's Claws and She-Hulk's Fist are both melee weapons without cooldown. They are obviously only effective in close-range, but very powerful in there. The Claws have a high rate of fire (or in this case rate of punches), but do less damage. Both weapons also have the side effect to slowly heal players over time. The She-Hulk Fists allow her to perform a jump attack, while the Claws enable users after a couple of punches to use a Spin attack.
The involvement of Hero abilities instead of Mythical weapons in this season made a lot of sense, if you consider, that this was a specific superhero themed season. It can be asked, whether this hero abilities were too unbalanced in regular BR matches, but I certainly appreciated their inclusion, if I got lucky enough to get my hands on one of them and they performed the best in modes like Marvel Knockout or Marvel Takeover. These modes really gave players the impression of playing a Superhero videogame instead of regular Fortnite and I certainly enjoyed them. The abilities I liked the most were the Iron Man ones, Thor's Hammer and the Wolverine Claws.
Chapter 2 Season 4 also introduced a new weapon in form of the Stark Energy Rifle, which was dropped only by the Stark Robot henchmen. It was a semi-automatic high-damage energy rifle and I personally very much enjoyed it. It was especially useful in middle and long range distance and a good addition to the Assault Rifle selection. Other new items were the improved blue rated Fishing Rod and the firetrap. On the other hand all the mythic weapons of the previous season got removed and weapons like the flare gun, the hunting rifle and tactical shotgun got vaulted (Since the tactical shotgun is my favourite shotgun I found this especially disappointing... The flare gun would have also deserved more than just one season...). Pump and Combat Shotgun, Boogie Bombs, Jetpacks and Port-a-Forts however were unvaulted for the season. Nonetheless I certainly preferred the weapon/item selection of the previous season.
Fishing became more important and competitive in this season. Fortnite introduced new fish sorts like the Thermal Fish, which gave players temporary heat vision and the game allowed players to compare their collection of caught fishes in the main menu with the collection of their friends (It was even possible to compare the size of the fishes).
Aside from the henchmen, Fortnite also introduced a new enemy type a few weeks after launch. The marauders from the last season had been removed, but now Gorgers (large, but slow moving drones, who shot laser beams) were dropping from the sky. The attacks of the Gorgers were slow, but very powerful. Players had enough time to dodge them, but unobservant players could get wrecked fast. Smaller and quicker enemies named Gatherers could deploy out of the Gorgers and assist them in combat. The Gatherers shot quicker, but also did less damage and were killed very quickly. Gorgers however barely took any damage from standard weapons, but destroyed Gatherers could be used as a laser weapon against them and were much more effective. Players however had to be quick to grab destroyed Gatherers before they were exploding, damaging the players in the process. Defeated Gorgers dropped very strong weapons and many healing items.
The famous Helicarrier from the Avengers movies also made it into the BR game, it was however no real part of the map and instead functioned as the prematch lobby area. The Helicarrier played a role in the Galactus event, but not involving it into the regular BR matches felt like a wasted opportunity to me.
While some of the previous seasons have been a bit too cautious with the involvement of LTMs, CH2 S04 on the other hand kept players busy the whole season long. There were multiple LTMs featuring Superheroes, some new unique ones and a good mix of returning classics.
The best one was probably Marvel Knockout, which feature teams of either 2 or 3 players facing of against other teams in a tournament style (comparable to Operation Knockout). There were four rounds total and two hero abilities were randomly selected to each player every round. The two team's abilities were however mirroring each other, so that no team got an unfair advantage through the abilities. I found this mode to be particularly fun in order to try out all of the different abilities. Marvel Standoff and Marvel Takeover were rather similar. In both modes teams of 15 players were battling each other. Every player started with one ability and could find a second one through meteors, who crashed on the ground. In Standoff the aim was simply to score more kills than the other team, while in Takeover the teams had to secure reactor checkpoints for a longer time.
The unique LTM i liked the most was Tilted Taxis. In this mode players had to drive taxis and deliver passengers to points across the map within a set timelimit in order to achieve stars. The basic concept was very similar to the Crazy Taxi games, but players could also leave their taxis and eliminate their taxi competitors in order to steal their stars. For me Tilted Taxis was a very nice diversion to the BR mode.
The Battle Pass of Chapter 2 Season 4 featured with Thor, She-Hulk, Groot, Storm, Mystique, Dr. Doom and Iron Man a good variety of the most famous Marvel Superheroes (Okay, She-Hulk might not be as well-known as the real Hulk, but the point still applies). Wolverine was the 'Secret Skin' (who was, once more, a famous part of the season promotion) of the season and started to appear as a boss NPC after a few weeks in Weeping Woods. The superheroes are designed after their comic versions and not the movie adaptions, which I think does make sense. The Battle Pass featured individual Gliders, Contrails, Harvesting Tools, Wraps and Backblings (Only downside is, that a lot of them are locked to the individual characters and can not be used to mix costumes). A pretty cool feature of this BP were also the individual Built-In-Emotes, which allowed the characters to switch to alternative versions within a match through the use of emotes. The only annoying aspect is, that you have to use the emote at the beginning of every match and can't just select a dedicated style before the match.
The Built-In-Emotes I liked the least were Thor's and Groot's. Thor turned through 'God of Thunder' just to a blue version of himself, which in my opinion simply didn't look that great. Groot's 'Battle Brother' allowed him to have Rocket (his companion from GotG) flying around his back, which definitely did look cool, but honestly distracted me a bit too much, since Rocket is constantly moving around. Storm's 'Gale Force' allowed her to summon a cape, which is actually not that impressive and She-Hulk could through 'Gamma Overload' leave her human version of Jennifer Walters behind and unleash the beast inside. Dr. Doom got 'Victory von Doom', which allowed him to pose on a monumental throne after achieving a Victory Royale. This emote is actually really cool, but can sadly only be used after achieving a win, which makes its usage rather rare. Wolverine also had a emote to use his Claws as his harvesting tool. Tony Stark on the other hand transforms through 'Suit Up' to Iron Man, which looks really cool and is generally an extraordinary good skin. The Nr. 1 emote however has to be 'Shape Shifter', which allows Mystique to copy the skin of the last enemy she defeated. This is not only very fitting to the Character of Mystique, but generally entirely unique and a very cool idea.
Every of these built-in-emotes required players to perform 3 challenges in order to unlock them for the characters. In Addition to that, players could also unlock alternative costumes for She-Hulk, Wolverine, Dr. Doom, Storm and Mystique through completing enough weekly challenges during the season (Wolverine was also unlocked through the completion of weekly challenges, similar to previous seasons). I however have to state that I only really liked the alternate style of Dr. Doom, all others didn't look that great (if you ask me).
Overall Iron Man, Dr. Doom, Wolverine, Thor and Mystique were in my opinion really great skins. Storm was also alright, but I didn't like Groot and She-Hulk too much (That may however just be a matter of personal preference since I did see many other players using them as well). I would definitely rate this Battle Pass as one of the strongest (Especially if you consider, that the game usually sells this superhero skins for 15-20 Dollars each in the ingame shop).
Chapter 2 Season 4 also featured two major events (after Chapter 2 Season 3 disappointingly didn't host any events). The first one was the yearly version of the Halloween Fortnitemares spectacle. Fortnitemares replaced all regular playlists for an entire two week period (Which I think was a bad move. They should have just introduced it as a Squad LTM instead of removing all regular playlists for 14 days). The abandoned Authority turned into the even more decrepit and more dismantled Ruins. Shadow Midas was spawning there as a boss enemy surrounded by his loyal Ghostly Ghost henchmen (Who look and act pretty much like regular Ghost henchmen). Upon defeat Midas dropped his golden drum gun. The two twists of the Fortnitemares mode were for one, that the entire map got covered by a thick purple fog and secondly, defeated players respawned as Shadows. Shadows can move much faster than real players and also jump a lot higher, but they are incapable of using any other weapons than their fists. Shadows, who stand still for a couple of seconds will become invisible till they move again and injured Shadows can heal themselves by consuming loot. Shadows only have one life each, which is quite different than in Apex Legends Halloween modes for example, but they can get a Nightmare Royale (Win), if they manage to defeat all living players in the match. 2020 Fortnitemares also brought back the famous Halloween Rocket Launcher, a demonic crossbow and various candies, that have similar effects like the different food items or fishes. A new item were the Witch Brooms, which sadly functioned absolutely identical to the Silver Surfer Board. Their inclusion was certainly fun, but the lack of innovation for this highly promoted item was disappointing.
Nonetheless, I actually like this version of Fortnitemares quite a lot, since it doesn't overpower Shadows (only one life, no weapons), but manages to strike a good balance between regular BR and LTM.
The main story event of the season however was 'The Devourer of Worlds', which is better known as the Galactus Event. This season there have apparently been fewer problems for players to login and participate in the event, than in Chapter 2 Season 2, where the majority of the playerbase had to skip the event because of technical problems of the Fortnite servers. The event itself started by Galactus destroying the helicarrier and unleashing the Zero-Point, which was hidden beneath the former Authority/Agency. The players were rescued by Iron Man and travelled with him through a black hole into space, where they armed an army of Battle Buses with explosives. The players had to navigate the Battle Buses and shoot down drones and Gatherers on their way towards Galactus. Thor, Wolverine and the other superheroes were supporting the players and during some of the gameplay parts, the players even had to dodge obstacles and barriers (even though there was no life status and therefore no real threat of failure). Galactus in the end was blown away by the thousands of exploding Battle Buses.
Overall the Galactus event was pretty entertaining. It was nice to for once being able to actually interact within the event instead of having to just spectate. It however also needs to be stated, that these gameplay elements were of course very limited and on rails. There is certainly still room to improve, even though this was definitely a step in the right direction. The developers also didn't do themselves any favours by promoting the Galactus event as the best and most spectacular event by far. It was certainly one of the best, but the Events in Season 6, 8, 9, CH2S02 and Season X were probably of the same quality.
The only two other aspects I want to talk about are the seasons length and the victory umbrella. On the one side I am a bit disappointed that the CH2S04 victory umbrella has a totally different shape and design than all the previous victory umbrellas, who might have had different patterns, but the same universal shape and form. On the other hand the design of the umbrella is rather stylish and menacing with dark energy streams coming out of it. In regards to the season's length, there was at least only a delay of 3 days this season (far less than CH2S01 and CH2S02), but the season was with over 3 months once again one of the longest by far. CH2S03 had the perfect length of around 10 weeks, but lacked a story event. I ask myself why Fortnite after Chapter 1 hasn't managed to at least once provide a 10 week (2,5 months) season with a story event and multiple map changes. They used to perform much better in this area...
Pro:
(-Marvel Cooperation?)
-Superhero abilities
-Good selection of LTMs
-Upstate New York
-Galactus Event
-Fortnitemares
-Battle Pass Skins were pretty good
Contra:
(-Marvel Cooperation?)
(-Surprising abandonment of all Ghost vs Shadow Storyline)
-Very few new map locations/ Unnecessary removal of older locations without replacement
-Gun/Item selection a bit unbalanced
-Season Length (Again!)
Result:
Chapter 2 Season 4 was probably a bit of a controversial season. Dedicating an entire season to a Superhero crossover wasn't appreciated by all players. Even though I also believe that Fortnite should be careful, to not do too many of the cooperations, I still enjoyed this out of the ordinary season. The hero abilities were a great addition and especially in the LTMs gave players the immersion of playing a real superhero. The Battle Pass was also of very high quality and a lot of people will probably be angry about having missed out this season. The biggest disappointment however was for me the lack of new locations, the completely needless removal of great map additions of former seasons and the abandonment of the entire Ghost vs Shadow storyline without any conclusion of it. The season was also a bit too long again and the gun/item selection not as great as in previous seasons. The Upstate New York area and the two strong events thankfully overshadowed these downfalls a bit (I haven't even talked about technical issues in this review, but there once again were very noticeable ones this season).
I have to conclude, that I still enjoyed this season a lot, but there were even more unforced errors and unused potential in this season than in the previous two. Therefore I would rate this season a bit lower than CH2S02 and CH2S03, but leave the overall Fortnite Score at the same level.
Chapter 2 Season 4: 7/10
Fortnite Battle Royale overall: 7,5/10
