Apex Legends
PC, PS4, Xbox One
This is how genres evolve, and why gaming needs its copycats. To see Apex Legends’ core conceit written down is to behold a deeply offputting sort of buzzword salad, a game that hitches itself to every popular games-as-service bandwagon of the past couple of years. It takes the hero shooter of Overwatch and Rainbow 6: Siege, drops it into PUBG’s Battle Royale, envelops it in Fortnite’s free-to-play and chucks in every vaguely workable monetisation model it can think of. On paper, it looks like a travesty – until you get to who is developing it. In Respawn Entertainment’s hands, what might have been a disaster becomes something quite transcendent. This is the biggest leap forward for the battle royale since players first set foot on Erangel.
Lest we forget, Respawn has form for this sort of thing – taking an established template and elevating it with a series of what-ifs. In the Titanfall games it introduced AI mobs to online deathmatches to ensure that even novice players could feel useful. In the titular summonable mecha it put killstreaks on a reducible cooldown to ensure everybody got a turn with the best toys. In the Smart Pistol it devised a gun you didn’t even need to aim, and in Burn Cards it found a way to make every life feel different. So it is here. Respawn has looked at every aspect of the battle royale, considered its problems, its pecadilloes and frustrations, and thought about how each might be fixed, improved or redefined.
Everything flows from the developer’s insistence, at least at launch, that Apex Legends only be playable in a squad of three. Previous battle royales have offered a choice of solo or duo play because of the frustration that is inherent in being asked to play in a randomly matchmade team. No one talks – at least not in language you’d like to hear. Perhaps someone decides to jump early and ends up halfway across the map from you. Maybe your teammates die early on, leaving you with a near-impossible fight against the odds. Or perhaps an ally hoovers up the gear and restoratives you desperately need from under your nose. In Apex Legends, despite the enforced squad play, such awkward situations rarely come to pass.
It begins with, well, the beginning. The game randomly appoints one of the team as Jumpmaster, putting them in control of when the team leaves the dropship and the group’s ensuing flightpath. If you’re not picked, you can separate from the leader; doing so just before landing ensures the three of you don’t all try to loot the closest building, but doing it too early is practically suicide. While each character in the currently eight-strong roster has their own passive, active and ultimate ability, almost all have been designed to work with others. Flying solo is rarely a sensible option.
Those character abilities have been finely balanced, feeling overpowered only when used in the ideal circumstances – and even then, only when your teammates are around. Bloodhound’s ultimate, which gives you a brief period of faster movement and both tracks and highlights enemies, is a useful tool that really comes into its own when Bangalore has used her smokegrenade ability to reduce everyone else’s visibility. Gibraltar’s damage-blocking shield benefits from Wraith’s portal, which allows you to retreat at speed should things go south. Lifeline’s healing drone means she’s worth keeping close even before you consider the passive skill that lets her revive downed allies more quickly; meanwhile, Pathfinder’s ability to set up a zipline anywhere on the map creates surprise flanking routes or speeds up your escape from an encroaching zone perimeter. None of this is to say Respawn has designed the concept of solo play entirely out of the game – indeed, Apex Legends is often at its best when the one remaining player beats the odds, dispatching an entire enemy squad before reviving fallen teammates. But characters work so well together that you’d be a fool to assume you’re better off on your own.
Especially when one of you dies. Get downed and bleed out and you drop a ‘banner’, which a teammate can collect and, by taking you to one of the respawn beacons that dot the map, bring you back into the fight. You’ll have lost all your gear, and there’s a risk for your teammates since the dropship that carries you will alert rival squads in the vicinity. But it’s a clear benefit to the formula, ensuring (mostly) that players don’t simply quit out when they die, and creating another route to the moments of table-turning, match-winning heroism that give this genre its unique thrill. The real magic, however, is the ‘ping’ system, which lets you highlight any direction, area or object in the game to other players. During the jump, any player can suggest a landing zone; by pinging the marker, teammates can agree to it. On the ground, you can point out specific loot drops, a waypoint appearing on allies’ screens and a voice line telling them what it is (brilliantly, by pinging it, a comrade can call dibs). You can suggest a new waypoint for the group, be that a certain route or a building that looks unlooted. By double-tapping the ping button, you can call out an enemy’s location, while a long press brings up a submenu with more options. You can even ping icons in your inventory to let allies know that you’re looking for a particular ammo type, weapon attachment, gear piece or restorative. This is Respawn at its best, an idea you can’t believe no one has had before that you feel certain will become a new genre standard.
The game’s inventory management is another leap forward. Attachments are automatically applied to weapons as you pick them up, and if they fit on a newly acquired gun will be auto-transferred. Ammo comes in four colour-coded variants, a glance at the HUD
This is the biggest leap forward for the battle royale since players first set foot on Erangel