Five years ago, the battle royale genre was barely existent. Titles like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite catapulted the new craze to heights unheard of.Skill is of the essence, as are patience and good communication. When playing in squads, the need to speak into a microphone, if only to facilitate teamwork with complete strangers, adds a dollop of anxiety to each scenario.
Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends is no less challenging, but it is more inviting. Set in the Titanfall universe (but conspicuously lacking the signature Titans, falling or otherwise,) a match of Apex Legends is relatively small scale: 20 teams of three compete in a last-team-standing competition on a gradually shrinking, sci-fi-infused map. If Apex Legends has one thing going for it, it’s the feeling of being complete–something, not every battle royale game can claim. The shooter sub-genre’s huge popularity means there are lots of games that do last-player-standing competition well, but with a few troubles along the way. Some well-established shooters are adding battle royale to their offerings, fitting their existing gameplay into its framework. Other battle royale games are constantly struggling with balancing issues and bug fixes, adding and removing elements as they figure out what works and what doesn’t. And still, others started life as something else and managed to retrofit their mechanics into the battle royale mold, with some ideas fitting better than others.
The first-ever battle royale with heroes has pushed and shoved its way onto the battle royale scene like Wal-Mart shoppers trying to be first in line on Black Friday, but now we’ve spent some time with the game, Apex Legends fully deserves to be there. Our Apex Legends review covers exactly why the new free-to-play title is such a welcome addition for over 25 million players worldwide, along with how it shakes up the genre as we know it.I’m genuinely amazed at how advanced this incredibly simple-to-use system feels. I’ve marked unassuming enemies closing in on our location and watched as my teammates converged on their location from different angles, flanking them without so much as a single word spoken.
Apex Legends Minimum System Requirements
OS: 64-bit Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core i3-6300 3.8GHz / AMD FX-4350 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor
RAM: 6GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 / Radeon HD 7730
VRAM: 1 GB
Storage: Minimum 22 GB of free space
Verdict
The very concept of becoming the last combatant standing is a core tenet of battle royale games, but it has also kept the genre intimidating for rookies. Even with a significantly smaller number of players per session in Apex Legends, the game features a steep learning curve, while it’s tutorial level is a tad inadequate in familiarizing newcomers with the game. It all takes place in Kings Canyon, which is a fascinating sci-fi map that leads to tense encounters filled with all of the pristine gunplay and polish from the Titanfall series, and its free-to-play setup doesn’t pressure you to pay to keep up. Apex Legends has the goods to be a true challenger to Fortnite’s dominance. There’s very little that detracts from the Apex Legends experience. Not earning more Apex Packs once you reach level 50 is a kick in the teeth, but there’s nothing to really cause an uproar about because they are just cosmetics.
