Since Respawn Entertainment released “Apex Legends,” a battle royale centered game, I haven’t been able to stop playing it. The game has been around for more than a year, and it never fails to entertain me. When it first came out, I wasn’t very interested in playing it. Still, when my brother encouraged me to play just one match, I wanted to keep playing it more often. My first match resulted in a win, which got me hooked. Apex Legends offers a new take on the battle royale genre because it provides new features, unique events, and characters, also known as legends.
Apex Legends uses a variety of new features never seen in traditional battle royale games. When a new player boots up the game on their console or PC, one of the first things the game offers is a short training mode to get the player into the game’s sense. When I first played the training mode, it took me a couple of minutes to get accustomed to the controls. For example, in traditional first-person shooting games, like Call of Duty, your right bumper on the controller is usually used to throw a grenade. The left bumper is for a flashbang. However, in Apex, down on the d-pad is for grenades (aka ordnance). The right bumper is to ping a location or an enemy, while the left bumper is for your legend’s tactical ability. To give players who don’t have microphones more ways to communicate, you can hold the button or key to ping to provide you with more options for what you are pinging. Such as pinging a disturbed location or pinging an area you are going to watch. It took me a while to get used to the ping system, but it allowed me to have good communication with my teammates, both random and familiar. One of the features that really got me into the game was their unique respawn feature. Unlike in other battle royale games, your teammates can respawn you at a respawn beacon once you die. The only catch is that when you die, you drop a death box containing your banner card that needs to be acquired before a timer runs out. Their weapon attachments is another user-friendly feature that doesn’t require players to continuously play to unlock weapon attachments. Instead, you can find weapon attachments as loot on the ground. There are currently seven types of ammunition: light, heavy, sniper, shotgun, energy, and experimental. Along with these ammunition types are weapons that correspond with them and extra attachments, like extended ammunition magazines. To illustrate, the R-301 is a light ammo assault rifle that has a relatively easy to control recoil and is a typical gun choice for most players. It would take the extended light magazine attachment. These features allow the game to provide a fresh feeling for players looking for a battle royale game different from the norm.
Apex Legends has different events that bring new game modes, skins, and legends into the spotlight if features aren’t what you’re looking for in a battle royale. One of the most popular game modes added was the Christmas express game mode during the holiday season. On the second map, World's Edge is where it took place and centered around capturing a train to win. The legend that received the most attention was “Mirage,” who also announced each game. The game mode also included pre-set weapon classes for each character. It gave the player an infinite amount of healables. It also encouraged players to play aggressively by restricting ammo drops to kills only. In other words, you had to kill another player to receive ammo. I honestly enjoyed this game mode because it gave you the ability to respawn each round and only allowed three teams, nine players, per match. I also liked the idea because I’ve never seen another game include the same details in a similar mode. When I played with my friends, we all agreed that it was one of the best events yet. Another popular event is the Halloween event as it introduced yet another unique event and game mode, Shadowfall. Revenant was this game mode as the legend announcer but wasn’t revealed until season four of the game. In this game mode, the player would spawn solo as a regular legend, and when they die, they will return as a shadow on the shadow team. The objective is to survive and reach a dropship that picks up any players who aren’t shadows. For the shadows: to kill players who aren’t shadows already. There are so many more game modes added to the game according to events and holidays, and each of them provides a fresh experience with something new. The only downside is that they are removed once the event is over.
The main reason I love Apex Legends is because of their edition of special characters known as legends. Just by naming them legends makes me feel cool when I play as them and refer to them. Each legend has a unique ability known as their tactical and their ultimate ability. Their tacticals have a shorter cooldown than their ultimates, and no two are the same in each legend. It makes playing each one unique and allows you to see which legend fits your style. My personal favorite is Octane and Lifeline because I like how you are encouraged to play as them. Octane is more of an aggressive kind of legend, with his tactical being a stim, which allows you to run 40% faster, and rush squads low on health. His ultimate, which is a jump pad, can enable you to get to hard to reach places like cliffs and rooftops. Whenever I don’t play Octane, I play Lifeline who’s tactical is a healing drone that restores health and provides a shield when you revive another player. With Lifeline being a combat medic, I play less aggressively by staying behind my team if they need to be revived while also providing cover or suppressive fire. Her Ultimate is a care package that offers three stacks of healables and two other high-tier loot items. When those two legends are taken, I tend to pick whichever legend I think would benefit my squad. Each squad is limited to three members, so make sure to choose your legend carefully and thoughtfully. All legends have a unique backstory and lore that ties into the game’s main story, which is currently still unfolding.
Apex Legends sets the standard whenever I look at other games in the battle royale category. The creativity behind it and the developer’s responses to community feedback allow me to enjoy the game.