Fortnite is getting a new 'powerful assault rifle'

Epic is adding a Kalashnikov-styled Heavy Assault Rifle to Fortnite, and it'll be "most useful when fired in short bursts".

The gun, above, appeared yesterday in the updates feed that opens when you launch the game. It's described as a "powerful assault rifle" that is "coming soon"—usually, that means it'll be in the battle royale game within a week.

The fact it's a "heavy" assault rifle probably means it'll deal more damage than the standard M4. It'll probably be less accurate, hence it being more useful when fired in bursts: I'd expect a fairly big recoil spray if you fire it full-auto.

It's one of the more vanilla additions to the game in recent months—we've had balloons and gargoyles in the last week alone—but I'm interested to see how it changes the weapon meta, if at all.

For the latest on what might be hidden inside Fortnite's mysterious cube, which is about to pop, read James's piece from yesterday.

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Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.