If you haven't heard of Apex Legends until now, it is high time you do. The new battle royale game developed by Respawn Entertainment (Titanfall series) and published by EA is the hottest title in gaming since its launch early this month. Available for free on PS4, Xbox One and PC platforms, Apex legends has seen an impressive 25 million downloads in the first week after launch. And there is one simple reason for this staggering number, Apex Legends is the best battle royale game out there in the market today.
Battle royale games are usually affected by clunky control systems, confusing UI and communication issues if you are that player who has a problem speaking during online gaming. Apex legends is so well made that none of these issues are present in the game.
The controls are tight and get you up and running right from the get-go. Players can easily transition from running at a fast pace to sliding down the mountain or do a vertical climb. Controls are easy to master and the game also has a handy tutorial for beginners. Shooting mechanics are not excellent but works just fine.
I can talk about the UI design for Apex Legends at length. To put it short, the UI design is incredibly well made and arguably one of the best interfaces among all video games. Before picking up a gear, players can check the details of the gear without needing to press an extra button. Similarly, Apex Legends will prevent you from swapping out your better gear for a worse piece, which makes fast-looting a breeze. It essentially removes the worry of picking up the wrong thing or accidentally dropping that item you desperately needed. It’s nice to have this simple player protection in place. It allows the player to focus on what’s important: finding a weapon to use and engaging in combat.
The ping system in the game revolutionizes communication in online multiplayer gaming. On click of a button, you can communicate various details to your teammates in your own legends voice. This helps in letting them know key details like if there is an enemy nearby or if the area was already visited by enemies earlier. If you ping a gear, the legend even describes the gear details to your teammates. You can also ping enemies so they are visible to your team. The possibilities are limitless and developers at Respawn should be applauded for this design.
As the name suggests, there are different legend classes in the game that makes it unique to other battle royale games. There are eight legends at launch, and each have three unique abilities. A passive ability that is always on, a tactical ability that regenerates after a short cooldown and an ultimate ability that has a longer cooldown. Unique abilities for each legend mean different play-styles within the game. You'll need to spend few games with each legend before you can narrow down your best fit. I would suggest starting off with Bangalore for her easy offensive style.
Being a free game, it’s obvious that Apex Legends is going to live or die by its microtransactions. The game uses something called Apex Coins as its microtransaction currency. So far, only cosmetic items are sold in the store apart from the two legends being locked initially. But players should be able to unlock them with a few games in. Apex legends is an EA game and there is no EA game without loot-boxes. The loot boxes in the game are called Apex packs and their presence makes me a bit skeptical about the future.
For more than a year now, Fortnite has established its global dominance in the battle royale video gaming genre. Fortnite, also a free-to-play game, made nearly $2.5 billion dollars in 2018. Other games like Call of duty and PUBG are known titles in this genre but aren't even close to Fortnite in terms of revenue and player base owing to various gameplay issues. It feels like finally we have a worthy competitor that may dethrone Fortnite in the long run. If you are into battle royale games, these are exciting times.