My Current Thoughts on Apex Legends
The latest edition to battle royale genre has taken the gaming world by storm, but how does it fare with a JRPG nut who is shit with guns?
For those who have been living under a rock, ‘Apex Legends’ is yet another entry in the battle royale genre that has gained a lot of attention. It was released 4th February 2019, which was two weeks ago at the time of writing (NOT publishing). The traction it has got in that time has been somewhat impressive, as it gained 10 million players in three days and 25 million in a week.
It was created by Respawn Entertainment, who are the minds responsible behind the ‘Titanfall’ games. ‘Apex Legends’ is actually set in the Titanfall universe, which means very little to me as I have never played those games.
A Disclaimer
Since 2017, there have been two giants in the genre I have mostly avoided playing. They are of course, ‘PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS’ (or the equally vexatious abbreviation, ‘PUBG’) and the more colourful, irritating, cringe-fest that is of course ‘Fortnite’.
I say ‘mostly avoided’, as I did delve into ‘Fortnite’ as it got quite a lot of attention at the time and I was rather curious to see what all the hoo-ha was about. I can see the general appeal of these types of games, as they take the original multiplayer deathmatch idea (which I feel is totally irrelevant to the kids who play games today), but with more players and larger maps (or ‘map’ in the case of ‘Fortnite’). This may sound great, but that actually becomes a problem, as you would then have two players at the other end of the map, waiting for the other to make a stupid move. That is why after every so often, a big ring of death shrinks the map, choking the remaining players to their inevitable death. I think it is fair to say that is the battle royale genre in a nutshell.
My disliking of ‘Fortnite’ is split into three equally cancerous parts:
- Some of the players I have encountered during my 5 hour session were shouting down their headsets some utterly vile language. The first instance of this was some early teen (if I were to be generous about his age bracket) shouting every profanity under the sun when he lost in a team match, his favourite of those words was apparently ‘nigger’ (I believe ‘PUBG’ has just a shameful fanbase if my ‘PUBG’ playing friends are being truthful). Some of the memes around ‘Fortnite’ make me frown with embarrassment and disappointment, a face that resembles a child's drawing of a cabbage.
- Fortnite’s battle royal mode is very clearly a knockoff version of ‘PUBG’. It may have evolved constantly throughout its release, but on that initial release, it is very clearly a free clone.
- I am shit with guns in all sense of the sentence, which is perhaps the most biased of these reasons. I was playing it a few days after it came out, and I was being slapped about like the scrub I truly am. Hand me ‘Bloodborne’ and I will (probably) win a pvp (player versus player) duel. Hand me Kirby in ‘Super Smash Bros. Brawl’ and I will destroy you. Give me a gun…and I will probably lose…badly. With each game, I have to work out if I have to hold the fire button or press it constantly to make it fire bullets, by which point I have died and been looted of my gear by some French kid teabagging me (yes, you twats still do that, I know you are!). That is of course if I manage to find some weapons and gear upon jumping out of the floating bus with my constantly randomised character who is either a male with a chin larger than The Crimson Chin or a woman with large breasts and a more obnoxious bum than Niki Minaj.
As can you imagine, I groaned rather loudly when ‘Apex Legends’ seemingly arrived out of nowhere, as it was taking up far too much of my social media feeds and adverts on YouTube, as it was yet ANOTHER battle royale game that apparently needed my undivided attention. But, with the aforementioned statistics, small amounts of peer pressure and the fact that ‘Apex Legends’ is free, I thought I would give it a go anyway, and see how it differed from the competition and if there was any hope of me having a good time in a battle royal game.
The Review Proper
One thing that I immediately appreciated is that once you boot the game up, there is very little waiting time to enter the main menu and start a match, providing you can connect to a server, something I have struggled with about five times in the last fortnight. You choose the game, both Respawn Entertainment and EA (the publisher for the game) flash their logos at you and you're in the game. It was a bit slower for me on my initial start-up of the game, as I had to create an EA Origin account, but I honestly expected that to happen.
The slightly cautious player would feel…well, cautious at this point, as EA has not had the best reputation recently, with some of their games containing microtransactions galore, as well as their recent convoluted and staggered release schedules for their games (see the below ‘Anthem’ example). ‘Apex Legends’ has nothing to do with EA, in the sense that Respawn Entertainment was the only ones contributing towards the development of the game, which is probably why it is not breaking any country’s laws concerning gambling laws.
Despite knowing this upon starting the game, I still had to poke around the menus as I wanted to see for myself how much of my actual money I could potentially pour into this game if I so choose or, what I was actually dreading, had to in order to stand a chance of being half decent. At the time of writing, there is no not a single whiff of pay-to-win microtransactions to be found on the current versions of the game. Respawn Entertainment actually make it very clear to what you can purchase and how you purchase it, as there are different currencies to be found in this game (see below screenshots for clear(er) clarification).
- The three blue triangles are crafting materials and can only be earned by getting Apex Packs (the loot boxes for this game), which you can buy using the yellow tokens (see below) or, each time you level up. Crafting materials can be used to add skins to weapons, legends (the characters you play as) and a whole host of customisation options to make your banner-card-thing look slightly more unique from others, poses for said banner, and more*. You can only get skins through crafting materials, and crafting materials appear pretty frequently with each Apex Pack, which is good. In my experience, I would get some crafting materials every other level up, usually the common amount of 15. This may seem a small amount, but all the common skins for your legend cost 30 crafting materials, and there are MANY common skins for you. I got 200 once which I thought was very generous.
*Note: These are things you are potentially awarded in Apex Packs as well
- The yellow tokens are the tokens you pay with actual real-life money that can be used to purchase additional Apex Packs, some unique limited time skins (see below) or unlock two of the initially locked legends, Caustic and Mirage. If you don’t want to do this, you can also use-
- -the red tokens, which are earnt each time you level up and are used to buy (at the time of typing) two initially locked legends, Caustic and Mirage if want to ‘earn’ the right to use the locked characters. You can also use the red tokens to buy some unique skins and posters for characters (see below).
Any gamer who sees this amount of detail and information would release a large sigh of relief. I know I did, as the whole ‘loot box’ thing always left a bitter taste in my mouth, as I would get duplicates of things in ‘Fortnite’ and would naturally feel quite annoyed about it. I have also felt that their inclusions in games have been more often than not been incredibly greedy. That said, I personally don’t feel happy spending £16 on a skin for a gun…
Once I finished my investigation and tweaked the options in the menu to suit my shit playstyle, I entered the training mode, as I honestly had no idea what the standard controls were for shooting games for the current generation of consoles. For a complete idiot like me, I thought the game did a good enough job explaining to me how to throw grenades, move, shoot things etc. Feeling somewhat competent, I left the training mode and spent a good few minutes working out which of the six unlocked characters I would enter Kings Canyon, the one map in the game so far, as each character has 3 abilities that can be used in battle.
To use an example when I started, I chose Wraith, as I thought she looked pretty cool and liked it that she had some weird psychic shit going on (technical terminology there).
Her passive ability (called ‘Voices From The Void’) has an internal voice warn you when enemies are pointing their weapons at you and occasionally footsteps can be heard, which you can then use to warn your teammates about potential enemy positions. With the tap of L1 (on PS4), one can activate the tactical skill, which in the case for Wraith, (‘Into the Void’) makes her untouchable and nearly invisible. She also moves a lot faster too, which helped me on one occasion when I forgot of the deadly ring that was closing in on me and I could just run through it for a short time. Finally, there is the ultimate ability, which is triggered by pressing both L1+R1 (on PS4) that allows Wraith to link two locations with portals for 60 seconds, allowing your entire team to use them, which I personally never found at all useful, but I know it can be a potentially life-saving ability, when timed correctly. Each character also can deploy a finisher on a downed opponent (which on PS4 involves holding down the square button). I have very rarely seen people deploy these, probably because they have a rather long animation and you are vulnerable when it happens. I enjoying using them when the opportunity presents itself though, as it makes me look like a smug badass.
I will get onto my preferred character of choice in a moment, but if you do decide to give this game ago, I would encourage you to play as them all at least once to see which one’s abilities fit your playstyle.
Just like ‘Fortnite’ and any other battle royale game, you begin the match by leaping off a large ship and fall into an abandoned small(ish) map. What differs from these games is that the default (and only) mode (at the time of typing) is that you are in a squad of three and I loved this for the one reason that I could have two people pick up the slack! I didn’t have to worry so much about killing people, because I could have other players do it for me. That doesn’t mean that I am lazy or don’t try, but it is nice to know that, statistically, you are likely to be put with at least one person who is far too good at games like this. When you are jumping out of your ship, you fall as a group, either controlling the syncronised dive or just enjoying the ride. You can suggest places for the jumpmaster to take you, which they are free to do or ignore. You can also relinquish your jumpmaster title to someone else if it is just too much responsibility for. One word of advice though: NEVER land on a supply ship. It is suicide.
The game uses silent communications, known as ‘pings’ which can be used to notify other members of your squad of weapon and ammo types, enemy locations, as well as any armour you may find lying around in supply bins or in an abandoned building. It is a mechanic that encourages kindness and I like these small levels of teamwork. The pace of battle and scavenging for gear is generally faster as a result, as the movements of your teammates force you to be quick and not spend half an hour squatting in the corner of a house, praying that someone won’t notice you, allowing you to take a couple of cheeky shots at them. That said, I was paired with two guys who did just that during a recent match of mine and it was the most boring match I have had yet.
We lost by the way.
Despite my constant deaths, I was beginning to find the game somewhat enjoyable. There was quite the rush dropping into the map and hastily rushing around the area reaping the gear and weapons in every supply bin and building you can find as you are not just fighting for yourself, but for the squad, meaning you have to be on your toes all the time. I loved the tension of knowing that once we run to a new area of the map that any of the 20 squads could pop up and give me grief. Trying to determine whether it’s safe to loot the gear of someone I just killed without being ambushed by his/her teammates was a gamble more often than not I got wrong, but I enjoyed most of these pitfuls. They were my fault, and I would probably do better if I learnt from my mistakes.
After a while, I decided that Wraith was not the character for me, despite spending some crafting materials to make her outfit blue (which is my favourite colour 😛), I did not think I her powers were helping me out. Her passive ability would sound as I was getting shot, the tactical ability stops you from using weapons or picking up stuff (for obvious reasons) and I did not really know how to properly benefit from her ultimate ability. I tried Bloodhound, and I had similar problems with him (yes I know he has different abilities).
It is at this point I would spend £16 to get some of those yellow tokens and unlock Caustic and Mirage and see what their abilities were like. In the following match, I would play as Caustic, whose gas abilities only work in crowded spaces and only benefits whoever is playing him, acting as a hindrance to everyone else. During this match, I was taken down by someone playing Mirage, who tricked me with his ultimate ability, which spawned five doppelgangers of himself, causing me to panic, trying to to work out which one was the real deal, before being taking down by the real one, who had snuck up on me in the confusion. Naturally, I tried playing Mirage after that and immediately fell in love with his little quips, cheeky swagger and his powers. Mirage is now my character of choice.
As his name may suggest, his abilities are all about creating decoys of himself which have been invaluable to me. I cannot begin to tell you how many times Mirage has saved my bacon. With his tactical ability, he can send out one decoy to run and stand at a certain position, which allows me to run into cover for a second whilst the enemy is confused, or trick them thinking that I have blindly run into a room, only for the real me to surprise them. To my knowledge, he is the only one who can use his abilities whilst airborne, as he can send two decoys off somewhere at the beginning, to make an area seem more crowded than what it is really. His passive ability creates a decoy when he is down, with the real Mirage briefly turning invisible, again allowing me to quickly hide. I have already mentioned his ultimate ability, but what I didn’t mention there is that Mirage turns invisible for that as well, allowing for me to make a getaway if needed. I’m pretty sure he is slightly faster during this mode as well.
The way that I see it, Mirage is basically designed for shit players, LIKE ME!!!
Whilst I am on the topic of Mirage, this would be a good point to mention my criticisms with the game itself and not how some people are just too good at the game. The first of these complaints is that it annoys me that the eight core characters are locked behind these microtransactions. Sure, you can grind you’re way through the game to get these characters with the generously awarded in-game red tokens, but I have been playing somewhere between 10-20 hours and still don’t have enough red tokens to purchase either of them. As I said earlier, you can only get these tokens whenever you level up. The better you play, the more experience points you get. I lose far more often than I win, often without even shooting someone, so it is probably taking me much longer to level up than other players more accustomed to FPS (first-person shooters) games. I only made the commitment to get that instant gratification of having all the Legends unlocked and wanting to play as Mirage and Caustic because I was generally enjoying it and wanting to do my bit to support the developers in the creation and expanding of this game. I know a game like this has to make its money somehow, but whilst I can reluctantly shrug off purchasable costumes and weapon skins, I don’t like it that two characters are obtainable like this. Because of how they are obtained, I have not seen many people play as Mirage, and even less as Caustic. I am curious how this will carry over to any other legends that the devs will add and balance into the game. I hope any new legends are not overly powered, putting over players at a disadvantage, or are even more expensive to obtain. Time will tell of course…
I have also encountered some rather interesting glitches during this game. Supply bins have gone flying off into the distance and death boxes (what you become when you die) flying into players, one of which was a teammate who was on their way to revive me It was both hysterical and incredibly frustrating because it killed him/her! When you die and are waiting to be rescued, you can spectate the game through the eyes of one of your teammates and sometimes, the camera doesn’t line up with the 1st person perspective correctly, meaning that every so often, the back of their head, hair and eyeballs pop into view. What is weirder, I have only encountered this with Wraith and Bangalore players. Finally, sometimes the map doesn’t load properly when you are spectating, just showing the strangely blurry ocean below the map.
I am also not terribly moved by the score, composed by Stephen Barton. Now, I totally understand why the big, bombastic, melancholic orchestral soundtracks I love so dearly was avoided and the music is rather minimal for the obvious reasons of not wanting to distract the players with action music galore. As a musician and a lover of video game soundtracks, I am not moved by the cues. As it stands within the game, it serves its purpose and serves it well. It is good enough to get me pumped to enter another round of ‘Apex Legends’ but it does nothing else beyond that to make the music particularly memorable (in my somewhat biased opinion anyway).
Coda
I’ve had lots of fun playing ‘Apex Legends’, which I was honestly not expecting when I first booted the game up. It’s quick, slick and highly addictive. You don’t need to have friends to play this game, or a PS Plus account to enjoy the adrenaline of fighting a squad of three with two other strangers, not knowing who is going to come out on top. Despite its simple and unoriginal concept, there are enough small changes to make it very engaging with each match being just as fresh as the last.
Will I put more of my money into it? Probably not, as I think the exclusive weapon skins and banners are not things I personally care about. Sure, if something amazing comes along, I may reconsider, but not if it means spending £15. At this moment in time, I am happy with what I have and how the game’s weapons and characters are balanced. Knowing that the game may change (hence the word ‘current’ in the title), my perspective may be altered somewhat, which may mean ‘Apex Legends’ may get a follow-up blog or two.
It is also nice that the players themselves are either mute or somewhat helpful when talking down their mics/headsets, something I never got out of ‘Fortnite’. I will admit however that I was in one match with two guys, one sounded my age, and another was a kid, probably no older than 10 who was very jolly, presumably on some sort of sugar rush as he was singing every Queen chorus at five times the speed. When we died, seconds into the match because of his stupid behaviour of dashing off on his own he decided he would scream ‘fuck this! It’s your fault <<insert my PSN name here>> that I died you stupid cunting fuckwit’.
I could only laugh at this, as not only did this kid have some strange bipolar-esque moment, but it was such a British insult that I found it more hilarious than I did offensive. That, and I am used to strangers calling me a cunt.
If I were to rate this game out of 10, I would rate it You Just Got Bamboozled/10, as that is just as useful as any proper out of 10 score.
To conclude this blog, I wish to share with you the footage I captured of my first victory, which was decided by me, as I had the killing blow. I know it may not seem a big deal to some, but I am terribly proud of this, especially as someone who is very accustomed to lengthy stories and melee combat found within most JRPGs and rather shit at guns, points I have made several times throughout this blog (and several ones before this). On a slightly less arrogant point of view, it might be worth watching if you have not decided to give this game a go, just want to see what the gameplay is like…if you haven’t looked it up on YouTube already that is.
Have you played this game yet? If so, what are your thoughts on it? Who is your favourite Legend to play as and why? Do you think it is king (or queen) of the battle royale genre?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
