Apex Legends

Multiplayer shooter in the "battle royale" genre with a first-person view set in the Titanfall universe. Gameplay revolves around teamwork, where you can choose one of the characters and fight in a squad of 3 people. The project borrowed weapons and some equipment from Titanfall 2, but lost a number of advantages — there are no titans, double jumps, or jetpacks here.

Apex Legends is not an original project; it uses many solutions borrowed from competitors. A match features 60 players divided into 20 teams of 3 players each.

Among the classic mechanics of "battle royales," one can note: speed and dynamism of gameplay; a huge map with a shrinking open area; a wide selection of weapons and the ability to install modifications on them; dropping in anywhere on the map; the need to constantly search for weapons, ammo, medkits, armor; periodically dropped high-class loot.

Additionally, performing any action takes from 2 to 5 seconds. Like in PUBG: Battlegrounds , the carry inventory is heavily limited; you can take a couple of medkits, batteries, grenades, and several magazines for each of the two carried "guns."

Among the alternative mechanics to the genre: choosing a specific character with their role before the match begins, which connects Apex Legends with Overwatch; each character has three abilities that have a greater impact on gameplay; team play — players who help each other have a better chance of winning ; close combat is practically useless.

Items in Apex Legends are divided into quality levels: common (gray), rare (blue), legendary (purple), and epic (gold). The higher the quality, the better the tactical and technical characteristics. There are only 2 types of armor — for the body and for the head, and this is not a vest, but a shield that can be recharged.

When a character's shield and health are fully depleted, they do not die but fall to their knees and bleed out. While teammates rush to revive the bleeding fighter, they can crawl away or defend themselves by deploying a knockdown shield. However, the enemy can take advantage of this vulnerable position and perform an effective fatality in close combat, and a box with the character's inventory will drop out.

In this case, there is still an option to revive the fallen comrade — for this, you need to pull their respawn beacon from your inventory and load it at a special recovery point, after which they will reappear, but weapons and gear will have to be searched for again.

The events of Titanfall 2 ended several centuries ago, after a devastating war between IMC and the Militia, the known worlds of the Frontier were plundered and abandoned — both factions fighting for control left them.

The action of Apex Legends takes place in the Outlands, an even wilder and unexplored region of space than the Frontier was. The few survivors created the "Apex Games" — a bloody entertainment in which legendary fighters from across the galaxy participate.

Before the drop, players are on a dropship and can suggest different drop points. Each territory can have loot of varying levels, and a support ship flies above the ship with particularly valuable items.

After landing, squad members must find weapons, ammo, and gear as quickly as possible, which are scattered everywhere and found in well-visible crates. It's essential to keep moving — the quality of loot in untouched areas increases, and you can find missing components or replace them with higher quality items.

The developers of Apex Legends are not rushing to create a large set of massive maps, but are gradually adding them. Within the same territory, the most fantastic landscapes coexist: swamps, rivers, deserts, forests, meadows, mountains, and canyons, snowy fields, and lava flows from volcanoes. They combine different types of buildings; in the game, you can encounter everything from shanties and wooden sheds to reinforced concrete metropolises and ultra-modern scientific and industrial complexes.

Players met the release at the beginning of 2019 on the "Kings Canyon" map — an industrial world with small patches of swamps, forests, and deserts. In the second season, it was refined and diversified with new objects and some interactive elements, such as the Leviathan giants hiding good loot, as well as the Flyers carrying a supply container in their claws.

The start of the third season took place on the "World's Edge" map — a warm place with geysers, "steam vents," and wide meadows, whose inhabitants used the energy from the lava flows of the supervolcano for heating. The fall of an icy meteorite rendered this area uninhabitable but suitable for the "Apex Games." Thus, a new icy biome appeared in the game. An interactive element was a train carrying valuable loot.

However, "Kings Canyon" was not forgotten; it was used for Halloween 2019 as an arena for the "Shadowfall" event. There were no teams; players fought to the death, but upon dying, they resurrected in the ranks of the army of the dead. Shadows killed any living character with a single hit but themselves died from a couple of shots. When only 10 legends remained, they united into a single squad and headed for the evacuation point, while the undead needed to stop them before they could escape.

At the end of 2019, Apex Legends had 11 characters, 6 of which are available immediately, while the others can be purchased for in-game currency or real money.

The division into classes (support, assault, soldier) is quite conditional — in battle, they all handle weapons and shoot equally well. Nothing prevents giving the fragile Wraith two machine guns, while the sturdy Gibraltar can wield two pistols. Moreover, all characters have the same running speed (with weapons stowed) and health pool, and shields of equal level provide equal armor.

Each character has three abilities: a passive ability, a regular active ability, and a super ability that can be activated only a couple of times per match. A good understanding of one's character and their abilities will make a player a valuable team member.

Not all classes are ready to offer a unique playstyle; half of them are similar to each other and are ordinary positional shooters. And so, victory depends on the ability to win in local skirmishes.

Some classes stand out, for example, Pathfinder with his grappling hook and the ability to set up zip lines will be a valuable team member capable of assault, escape, and reconnaissance. Caustic relies on his gas canisters and can be very useful for defense in closed spaces, but becomes an ordinary fighter in open areas.

Structurally, the battle royale in Apex Legends is not much different from other projects in this genre, except that a bit of luck is also required. We choose a character, drop in as a team at a point, search it for loot, and hope that it will be good and that there is no one nearby. From there, it’s simpler — a cyclical repetition between searching for loot and gunfights.

However, the game does not encourage killing — you can end up in the top three teams just by avoiding combat until the end. Many take advantage of this. To win, you will need photographic knowledge of the map, attentiveness, the ability to tactically manage every combat moment, and the old-fashioned skill of accurate shooting. The quality of the gear you and your teammates have will also affect the outcome of the battle — gold items have additional and extremely necessary bonuses in combat, which cannot be said about common and uncommon items and upgrades.

During the fight, you need to adapt, change weapons, and find modifications for them. The choice of weapons is large, everyone will find something to their liking, although there are actually few truly effective "guns," and some modifications can cause more harm than good. The balance between weapons is very well calibrated.

You can increase your chances of victory if team members help each other, do not separate and run far away, and also signal about danger — a separate menu has been created for this, which is convenient in every situation.

For all activities during the match, players earn experience, which translates into levels. For each level, one in-game Apex container is awarded. In it, you can find cosmetic items for changing appearance, weapon skins, greetings, and fatalities. However, unique character skins and other cosmetics can only be purchased with real money in the in-game store.

Over the past year since the release, Apex Legends has received numerous changes:

Developers often experiment. For instance, one event introduced a solo mode where each of the 60 players fought for themselves. Another event featured a mode with 30 teams and a couple of players in each squad. None of these have been introduced permanently yet, but they may appear in the future.

For the New Year, players were delighted with an event where three squads of three players captured a point. There were also dozens of unique cosmetic items as rewards for participation and victories.

Throughout 2019, the leveling system was revamped. The maximum level increased from 100 to 500, and the number of Apex Packs earned during leveling was raised — 59 for the first hundred levels and an additional 140 on the way to 500. Players also receive 600 tokens for each new level, and for every hundredth level, a cool ranking badge.