Is “Apex: Legends” Worth the Hype?

As many of you know, Apex: Legends is the new battle royale on the market. Before release Apex gained a lot of hype, and with new features, gameplay elements, and amazing graphics it met and surpassed my expectations. Some of the new features are original and some are new to battle royale. This includes things like respawn beacons. After someone dies, instead of being out like most other battle royales, another player on your team can collect your player “banner” and bring it to a respawn station where they can bring you back to life. When respawned you will not keep any items you had before death, which is understandable. The main new element, completely new to battle royale, is character choice. Different characters have special abilities to aid in battle and passives that help the player in different ways depending on the character. For example, Bloodhound’s passive is to be able to track other players.  Enemies will leave tracks or clues, and depending on how recent the clue is, you can tell whether or not there are enemies in the area, as well as using tracks to tell which way they went.

Apex has also slightly changed and added features of gameplay, making the experience feel new. For example, one character, Pathfinder, is able to tell where the next ring is by scanning a “survey beacon” found in different areas around the map. Another small change is the addition of a “Jumpmaster.” Everyone is paired in teams of three and one player is randomly chosen to be the jumpmaster, meaning they will drop and the other players in the team will automatically follow them. It is possible to stop following them by pressing “E” in case you want to land somewhere else. Apex: Legends also comes with a wide selection of very different guns from any other battle royale, with full auto shotguns (which actually exist in real life), energy weapons, shotgun pistols and more.

Apex: Legends, while being a new experience and an interesting take on a battle royale, has just enough familiar aspects, like airdrops, which are called care packages in Apex, to still appeal to fans of other battle royales like PUBG, or Fortnite. Apex: Legends is a great game, an interesting take on battle royales, and provides a new experience. I would suggest checking it out, playing a couple rounds, it is a free to play game so you can try it out without paying a single penny!  I hope to fight you in the ring, and in the words of Bloodhound: “The hunt begins.”

Konrad Smith ’23

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