Is Apex Legends worthy of the hype?

Ever since Apex Legends hit the PC, Xbox and PS4 in February, it has already been heralded as the game of 2019. The battle royale title was released with relatively little fanfare by Electronic Arts, and it quickly became an overnight sensation by picking up no less than 25 million players in its first week.

Many critics had been sceptical that Apex Legends was just another lazy addition to an already overcrowded battle royale realm. But with growing numbers of gamers joining the cause, it seems that Apex Legends is set to prove the doubters wrong.

What is Apex Legends?

So if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, what exactly is Apex Legends all about? Firstly it’s a battle royale title that sees you going against around 60 other players in a bid to stay alive. The players are divided into squads of three, and you have to communicate with your team-mates to do things like find weapons and of course, kill off the rival teams.

There are a total of eight different heroes that you can play, and of course, EA have been careful to include a micro-transaction system so that players can customise the appearance of their characters.

Like many other battle royale titles, it features a map whose size shrinks during the course of the game which helps to keep things nicely fraught. And with plenty of elements from the game’s developers Titanfall series, Apex Legends manages to combine many of the best features of modern gaming into a very enjoyable package.

Is Apex Legends actually any good?

It’s easy to be sceptical about the likes of Apex Legends. The game’s developers, Respawn, have actually gone on record as saying that they only created the title in response to the sudden success of the battle royale genre. And a quick look at some of the most popular esports featured at the betting resource, www.esports.net, reveals how there’s no shortage of battle royale titles like PUBG keeping gamers happy.

Worth mentioning as well that by making Apex Legends free-to-play, EA have given us all no excuse for missing out on this game. First impressions are that Apex Legends features an awful lot of the same weapons that you can find in Titanfall, but the fact that you actually die, rather than respawn adds a much-needed dose of drama to the action.

Like many other battle royales, the trick to Apex Legends is to spend your time wisely in looting up and getting the right equipment rather than just blasting everyone into oblivion. At the moment, there is only the Kings Canyon map available for Apex Legends, but there are plenty of heroes to choose from who all have their own pros and cons which makes team-play an essential part of this game. It should also be mentioned that Apex Legends breaks ground for being a little more inclusive in the make-up of its heroes that include two LGBTQ characters.

But perhaps the most striking part of Apex Legends is the communication system. Rather than just shouting down your mic at your team-mates, the game has implemented a great ping system that allows you to set a marker and recommend that your team heads in that direction. And thankfully, the release of Apex Legends came without too many bugs that have made previously promising games into a real headache. Whilst critics may gripe that the game follows on too closely from other battle arena titles, we found that Apex Legends is easily one of the most exciting games of 2019 so far.