Apex Legends Review: The New Best Battle Royale

<br>This strange, triple-barreled shotgun-pistol hybrid handles poorly, and necessitates frequent, sluggish reload animations. The only upside is that if you come face to face with another poorly equipped looter in the early game, you’ll be able to kick out surprising amounts of dam<br><br> <br>Of course, that’s impossible to truly ascertain from our experience so far with Anthem ‘s early hours , meaning players will have to wait and see if they will be undergoing the gauntlet of tedium that constitutes for the genre’s standard end-slg game dlc. However, it will undoubtedly be nigh impossible for Anthem to be able to suitably compete with a free-to-play battle royale like Apex Legends when it comes to keeping players interested with a steady flow of content. For those in the industry seeking to recreate Apex Legends ‘ sleeper success, or at least successfully leech away some of its massive player base, there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this week’s cramped mix of launches. First, consider the option that prolonged marketing and over-exposure might actually serve to hurt games; while not all games can capture the attention of millions overnight, producer’s should at the very least take steps to avoid Crackdown 3 ‘s five-year gap between announcement and release. Second, and most importantly, developers should innovate where others have not within their genre, even if it doesn’t amount to reinventing the wh<br><br> <br>On top of being initially perceived as a somewhat desperate attempt on EA’s part to chase market trends, Apex Legends launched on February 4 with almost no fanfare leading up to its surprise arrival. Nevertheless, Apex Legends has ballooned into nothing short of an enigmatic triumph for EA and developer Respawn, shattering player count milestones at speeds that would have made Fortnite wince. On its surface, it would seem that Apex Legends does little to nothing that this week’s major releases don’t, lacking the graphical spectacle of Metro Exodus and Anthem , the open-ended sandboxes of Far Cry New Dawn and Crackdown 3 , and the pop culture mélange that Jump Force provides. But it stands out from the throng, largely thanks to its simple-yet-enthralling gameplay loop, well-refined Titanfall gunplay and movement systems, and refreshing additions and improvements to the battle royale form<br><br> <br>The game does not however, support cross-play or cross-save in anyway which is one of the lacking features for a game that uses EA servers/accounts across all platforms. Should players unlock cosmetics on one platform, they cannot use them on the other. It’s a wasted opportunity that partially holds the game back from truly taking the genre to the next level like Fortnite has in this resp<br><br> <br>It’s not a bad weapon after you’ve obtained a few upgrades for it, but getting there is going to be a slog. The locked burst fire really drags it down in terms of DPS, limiting its ability to maintain pressure and remain useful inside of mid-range. There are definitely better ways to make use of the heavy ammo it consu<br><br> <br>Like Dark Souls, Apex Legends contains many “hidden” mechanics, and it expects you to learn as you go. And that’s not a bad thing. Unfortunately, this causes a rift between the experienced players and the newbies. How dejecting is it to see your level 5 player with one kill next to a level 85 adorned with achievement bad<br><br> <br>Players love to execute each other. It’s a nice way to rub your victory in their faces, and it looks cool to boot. But there’s a time and a place for executions, and the middle of a gunfight is not one of them. You’re better off shooting a downed enemy, because performing an execution leaves you wide open for attack. Plus, the animation is slow, so you’re only wasting precious time by showing off. Save the execution for the last pla<br><br> <br>That leaves only Anthem , whose global February 22 launch will mark the only proper live-service competitor to Apex Legends . Though Anthem is unquestionably beautiful and has thrilling combat and movement that Crackdown developers ought to take note of, there is the unavoidable fact that it is EA’s answer to Destiny , and the online loot-shooter genre Anthem ‘s obvious source material spawned is marred by a series of hard-to-avoid caveats. It does more to ensure that players won’t be locked out of certain time-limited content by providing matchmaking in areas that the Destiny franchise neglects, but (as EA has clearly done its homework) it’s difficult to not fear that launch content will prove much more sparse than initially expected, much as it was in both Destiny entr<br><br> <br>Apex Legends is a wonderfully exciting and fun shooter that’s easy to play but challenging to master given all of its systems and the gameplay potential they offer. There may be issues of character and weapon balancing, and for some, the long time-to-kill rate may be a turnoff, but for anyone looking to squad up with exactly two friends (again, for free), it’s shocking how Apex Legends plays so much better than other games in the mar<br>