An overview look at the new free battle royale game by Respawn Entertainment. It won't cost you anything but is it worth your time?
At this point it’s a factual statement to say there’s a new battle royale game around every corner. We’re living the era of MOBAs again, but this time it’s battle royale games owning the spotlight. With that hype, a plethora of developers throw their hats into the ring with their own attempts—some good, many not, some low effort cash grabs.
But today is a different. We don’t have just a good new battle royale. We have a great one. Brought to you by an excellent developer with a keen eye for quality games. Let’s take a look and see what’s on offer with this new release.
What is Apex Legends
Myself, like many of you, was completely caught off guard when I started hearing about Apex Legends this week. The game released on Monday (Jan 4th) with almost no fanfare or PR marketing. I’m still scratching my head about the decision made on release, but regardless of their marketing, the product itself is next to none.
Apex is your standard battle royale game but with a few innovations that help breathe new life in the genre. Like other BR games, you drop out of a plane/helicopter with nothing, you search for loot, race to stay inside the slowly closing ring, all while killing everything else that moves to be the last man standing. These standard elements are all there, but this time with a handful of new game mechanics to boot.
Re-imaging the Genre
Likely the first new game mechanic you’ll notice is the use of heroes/legends. Unlike all other battle royale game, Apex doesn’t just have players selecting basic characters who are all the same across the board with no unique skills. Instead, you choose between a handful of Legends all with unique abilities and powers.
People familiar with games like Overwatch or even MOBAs will be familiar with the heroes/legend character game mechanic. By making the game asymmetrically balanced, there is far more strategy when deciding what legends to use and what items/guns to pair with them for the most effective build.
Something else players will cue on quickly is the heightened focus on squad play. There are many mechanics dovetailing into each other that helps build a more squad based tactical game than others in the genre. For starters, you can’t even play solo at the moment. You’ll also notice that when jumping at the start of the game, one party member is made “jumpmaster,” keeping the squad together at the start.
The inclusion of legends is part of this squad mechanic as well. Now gamers have to decide what character they will pick alongside their teammates, making party building a mechanic. Also note, only one player can select a Legend for each party--so no duplicates. This ties into the addition of a robust marking and in-game text system, allowing teammates to easily communicate with each other without mics.
And finally, the player revive system is also new and helps build more teammate focused gameplay. In typical battle royale games that is a perma-death system, meaning you die once and you are dead for the remainder of the game. Instead, in Apex when one of your teammates goes down, you can retrieve a “banner” from his/her body and revive them by making it to a revive portal, allowing users to bring their squad mates back from death.
Needed Improvements
It’s difficult to fine faults with a free AAA game for consoles and PC, but with that said, this are a few elements that I would like to see addressed in future updates, starting with a lack of solo or quad play.
- Currently the only way to play the game is in squads of three. I’m not sure why that was chosen, but you can’t play solo, duo, or quads, which are all standard features in other battle royale games. Even if they don't want to do solo, because of the focus on squad play, they will still need to add duos and quads.
- Locking characters (Legends) behind a paywall. It’s a free game, so I have no problem with micro-transactions and monetization through loot boxes and cosmetics. Frankly, I think Apex did well with their monetization, which is primarily just cosmetic items. It’s not egregious nor pay to win—looking at you Red Dead Online. However, they did lock two playable legends behind a paywall, and I think this is a big mistakes.
Even if the game is balanced in such a way that those locked characters aren’t any better than the any other starting free ones, it still gives the impression that those two characters are more powerful and will make things pay-to-win, even if it isn’t true. It gives that impression.
Additionally, if those characters aren’t any better than the free ones, then why would anyone buy them? If I spend money to unlock these two characters only to find out they suck, then I’m going to be mad that I wasted my money. If they are any better than the free ones, it means the game is pay-to-win, which is also bad. Thus, I don’t see why they chose that path and appears to be a lose-lose situation for them.
Stick to only cosmetics behind paywalls. No guns, no character, no in-game items. Just cosmetics that don’t have any effect on gameplay. The developers should take those characters and put them behind level locks if they want to make them exclusive but not behind a paywall.
My Final Thoughts
I spent last night going through a handful of rounds of Apex with a friend and had a great time. The graphics look great, the art style is unique, and the gameplay is slick. It plays like a dream. The movement and gunplay is addictive. Anyone who played the Titanfall franchise will be right at home here.
Having the chance to be brought back to life after being killed is a huge improvement. At first I didn’t think I would like it, but after playing, it’s a great feature. You’ll find that you generally won’t run into single enemies, but instead, you’ll almost always come across full squads when you skirmish. Watching your teammates fight and try to respawn you after you’ve been killed keeps the game interesting the whole time.
I’m suspecting this game will be very popular if they can expand on what they’ve released at the start while not getting greedy with in-game monetization. They are going to need to introduce more game types such as duos, and quads if they want sustain a large audience. I’d also suggest continually releasing new cosmetic items like Fortnite does to keep people excited.
The games developers, Respawn, are beloved for their Titanfall franchise, and they are off on the right track from the very beginning with Apex. The only question is can they grow the game into something really special—which they struggled doing with previous releases. Nonetheless, the game is definitely worth checking out. It’s free and released on whatever platform you prefer.
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