The first Season of Fortnite Chapter 3 has introduced plenty of interesting things for players to do and see. The massive, dinosaur-like Klombos can be adorable or terrifying, with the options to feed the creatures and use their blowholes as transportation adding a new layer to gameplay. A fresh map has been introduced, and seeing the snowy area thaw out to reveal classic locations like Tilted Towers has been a lot of fun. Vaults, sliding, and a first-person Assault Rifle have been great additions, too, but nothing is as flashy as Spider-Man’s web shooters.
Spider-Man himself joined the absurd roster of crossover characters in Fortnite, and his addition brought plenty of things for fans of the webhead to unlock. From a meme-inspired emote to numerous suits for the hero, the character was worth the wait. However, the wallcrawler is also one of the few crossover characters to have a meaningful impact on gameplay, as his web shooters can be picked up and used as a mode of transportation. With the web shooters being so well-designed, it would be a shame to see the item vaulted next season.
Why Fortnite’s Web Shooters Are Worth Keeping Around
The most obvious upside to keeping the web shooters is the fact that they are so fun to use. Many have said that swinging in Fortnite is better than it is in Marvel’s Avengers, and for good reason. The web shooters are far from a novelty item tacked on to celebrate Spidey’s cameo, as Epic Games put in the time and effort to design a deep physics system for the web shooters.
Instead of having players swing from the sky, they must manually attach their webs to surfaces like trees, buildings, and cliffsides. Once they have done so, they will throw themselves into the air, having a brief window to find a new point to attach their webs so that they can continue swinging. In the current version of Fortnite, few things are as satisfying as chaining multiple swings together, with players sure to feel a sense of accomplishment when they swing for long periods of time. Clever touches like Spidey-inspired animations when swinging and the option to hang off moving cars only make the system better.
Web swinging in Fortnite is not only fun to do, but incredibly useful as well. Players that get the hang of Spider-Man’s web shooters can fly across the map with incredible speed, and they can reposition to the top of opponent structures to cut off their building. Players can swing to the top of a tree and gun down an opponent standing below, or they can grab a downed teammate’s reboot card and swing to a far-off reboot van. The web shooters in Fortnite are excellent mechanically, and they provide a new level of strategy to gameplay. Without them, players would be a lot more limited in how they can approach high-up or far-off enemies.
Yet another upside to the web shooters is that they far outclass similar items. Fortnite’s Grappler was far more limited, lacking the momentum that comes from the web shooters and the rewarding gameplay loop of chaining swings. The same could be said for Batman’s Grapnel Gun, as Fortnite has yet to have a movement item that provides gameplay as smooth as web swinging. With traversal in battle royale games being important, keeping this fun method around permanently would be beneficial for Fortnite.
With the backpacks that hold Spidey’s web shooters making unmarked areas more interesting than they would normally be, too, the list of upsides to the feature is massive. Obviously, Fortnite is constantly changing, and it would be strange to keep a specific character’s item in the game permanently. Still, the web shooter mechanics are something that should stick around, even if Epic reskins the item to remove its Spider-Man theming. For example, some IO gauntlets that allow players to swing in a similar fashion would be a great alternative, allowing the excellent gameplay of the web shooters to remain even when the focus on Spider-Man content has come to an end.
Fortnite is free-to-play on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.