I shouldn’t be feeling this nice. Apex
Legends is a lot like most battle royale
games. You drop from the sky onto an
island, sweep the floor for weapons
and gear, and scramble to stay inside
a series of ever-
shrinking circles
pressing 60 people
towards inevitable
conflict. But Apex
Legends is also the
product of the genre’s
failures so far, a patient
and refined response
that makes for the most
accessible, uncompromising battle
royale experience yet.DRAWING OF THE THREE
Apex Legends is set in the Titanfall
universe, but plays nothing like it—
every gun has ballistics, titans are
gone, and so is wall-running. The
guns feel responsive and peppy, and
taking distance and drop into account
in the same split-second formerly
used just to take aim makes me feel
like a mathematical savant when
shots connect.
Almost every gun has a unique
personality, but the main thing is
there’s something for everyone:
Semi-automatic rifles, automatic
rifles, LMGs, and SMGs. Weapon
stats are improved by finding and
equipping attachments scattered all
over the map, which is where I
thought Apex Legends would lose me.
Inventory management is still the
worst part of battle royale, but Apex
auto-equips anything better than
what I already have on a compatible
weapon. You can dig around and
swap some attachments between
weapons, or opt for a lesser scope ifyou prefer it, but I love that I can let
Apex run on autopilot and choose
what’s best.
If everything sounds familiar so
far, that’s because Apex doesn’t
deviate much from the
PUBG formula. It’s
Respawn’s particular
interpretations of those
ideas that make Apex
feel so special.
Communication is
probably the best
example of this. Apex is
a shooter that
encourages kinship between
squadmates, whether it’s
concentrating fire on a single target,
coordinating abilities, or donating
the Devotion LMG you just found to
a friend in need.
Enter the ‘ping’ system, an
ingenious tool used to draw attention
to locations, items, enemies, and
objects that might be of interest to
your squadmates. I don’t want to go
back to Fortnite or PUBG or any
game unless the entire industryagrees to implement something like
it in all multiplayer games forever
and ever, amen. It’s that simple.
You’ll use it most often to mark
where you’re headed, but if the
reticle is over an enemy, the marker
will turn into a red crosshair and
your character will note they’ve
spotted someone.
Ping an open door and they’ll
remark someone’s probably been
there. Your character will spit out a
different voice line if you ping an
opened loot container or if you ping a
closed one, and all eight characters
have lines for every item and weapon.
You can even ping pings to
acknowledge them.
Pinging’s darkest magick is its
ability to make playing with strangers
as worthwhile as playing with
friends. My first few wins came from
playing with calm, quiet enigmas
who coordinated movement, called
out enemy locations, and shared loot
without speaking or typing anything
at all. This itself is a boon to
accessibility and a salve to toxicity,
but atop it, Apex features a text-to-
speech comms option for players
with difficulty speaking or worried
about harassment, which feels like a
revolutionary act when multiplayer
games like Anthem and Fallout 76
release without text chat at all.
To go from being routinely
debased by legions of preteen racists
in Fortnite to notching wins with
strangers in utter silence in Apex
Legends is a videogame miracle.ANOTHER ROUND OF FUN
Typically the most anxiety-inducing
part of learning a new battle royale
game, the drop gives one squadmate
control while the other two hang on
until they’re ready to let go, which
might be never. And that’s OK,
because every squad leaves behind a
colored contrail, making it simple to
see which way the competitive wind
is blowing. Calling out where other
teams are landing is more important
to surviving the ensuing gauntlet
than where you land.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A F2P battle royale FPS
set in the Titanfall
universe
EXPECT TO PAY
Free, with optional
cosmetic
microtransactions
DEVELOPER
Respawn Entertainment
PUBLISHER
EA
REVIEWED ON
Intel i9-9900k, GeForce
980 Ti, 16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
Three-player squads,
60 players total
LINK
http://www.ea.com/en-gb/
games/apex-legendsA shooter that
encourages
kinship
between
squadmatesW
e press H to pay respects now. My good friend
JohnnyBadNews, who I’ve never met, just let me know
they found a level-three scope for my Longbow DMR.
The selflessness—they found it in a dead player’s
inventory, noted that I was using a Longbow, and let
me know it was there—all without saying a word. I pick it up and a prompt
appears on my screen, “Press H to thank JohnnyBadNews.” My index
finger hits that H with the firm yet gentle assurance of a hug. I think we all
now know what the H stands for.PING PONG
APEX LEGENDS is the best version of battle royale so far, a cooperative shooter that
reinvigorates the genre and reinvents how we communicate in games. By James Davenport
GET THE DROP
How to land faster than your opponentsIf you want to
drop further
and faster, note
the advice of
Reddit’s u/
TheBigSm0ke.
Fly straight
down to build
speed, level
out, and repeat.Drop straight
until ~145Glide until
slowing to
~1 30-1 35GlideDropDropREVIEW