Apex Legends - Titanless battle royale

[t0mby]

:lol:That'll give you some time to play more RDR2.

[Lepo5]

Yeah my next task is to trim my beard. Gripping!!

[Peppermint Lounge]

Origin Access is a hard deal to ignore. $6.99 per month for all those games and 10% off any purchase. Because we all don't have enough to play already.

[lestat]

Origin Access is a hard deal to ignore. $6.99 per month for all those games and 10% off any purchase. Because we all don't have enough to play already.

I have gamepass and humble monthly.

Way too much to play, sometimes I get home and just feel overwhelmed with choice, I end up playing nothing and just browse the net.

The old paradox of choice kicking in.

I've seen the way streaming services have changed consumption habits for music/movies/tv, it's only a matter of time before gaming follows. Already we see the Free to play model starting to overwhelm AAA gaming.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Played a couple of matches last night. It's good. It's fast, snappy, smooth and feels like a AAA game. The guns all feel the same though. Pinging is great. Zip-lining to get around the map or escape an ambush is pretty awesome. Could do with some more training though. There is some rudimentary movement and inventory management training and that's it. Total deep end once in game with experienced players bouncing their legend's abilities all over the joint while we're all fumbling to heal. We still managed a couple of kills.

[Deef]

After a pretty rocky start I have to say I'm getting into this quite a bit. A couple of updates ago the game would randomly crash about every 20 minutes, and I had to tweak a Windows mouse setting to get rid of a borderline unplayable janky feeling the game had.

But with those issues out of the way I'm enjoying it, especially the jump in music. I felt like describing a bunch of its newish mechanics so... yeah.

Sliding, climbing, no fall damage
Crouch while running to slide, taking advantage of any descent you find. Sliding fits into the controls really well, in fact you use it more than you use crouching. It moves you faster and reduces your profile, but mainly it's just fun and smooth. Every hill or staircase you encounter is a little enjoyable moment.

While sliding feels good, climbing (or parkour) feels like a natural part of the game. It is simply a way to scale lowish walls -- about double the character's height. Again it fits with the controls and motion so well it's just a pleasure to use anywhere, and obviously frees up the level structure and your options for getting around.

No fall damage is what it is. I'm only here to remark that it is plain refreshing. I won't say all games should remove fall damage, but in Apex it's really nice to just be free to run, slide, climb, and leap around while only thinking about dodging bullets, not gravity. It's a relief.

Pinging
As Pepp mentioned, pinging is great. Middle click pretty much anything for your character to communicate contextual info to your team, complete with quippy speech and HUD icons. Looting this, enemies spotted, let's go this way, I need ammo, I don't have a weapon, zipline here, spare armour here, and so on. You can also open a selection wheel for more options, or simply hotkey anything you think is useful. I have the "enemy spotted" comment on a mouse button. Super useful. Of all the mechanics I'm mentioning in this post, pinging is probably the most used in the game. Everyone uses it, and it makes games surprisingly un-isolated in feel due to the amount of constructed communication going on. It combines well with the different characters in the game too. You're not just clones barking at each other; instead every ping is a different comment, attitude and accent.

Jumpmaster
A simple idea but a great one. Every new game starts with a randomly selected Jumpmaster for the team. When they jump, the whole team jumps, and the jumpmaster alone controls the fall. Any player can bail and take back control for themselves if they want, and the jumpmaster themselves can relinquish the role to someone else if they're feeling lazy or intimidated. The ultimate point is that landing as a team is now the norm, not the lucky exception. Really good idea.

Recovering banners
Apex uses the down-but-not-out mechanics like other BR titles, but adds an extra layer to that in recovering an eliminated teammate's banner. So if a downed teammate is completely killed, you have 90 seconds to pick up their banner after which anyone in the team can take it to a respawn point and bring them back to life.

That 90 seconds includes the time the enemy spends hanging around looting the corpse, which they then may or may not camp. Typically they don't but it's a neat addition of guaranteed tension to play through. More tension comes from the respawn; they're big obvious locations and once you activate the spawn it's visible to everyone as a dropship flies in for your respawned mate to leap out of... with no items whatsoever.

It's a good method of staving off the disappointment of suddenly dying, keeps you involved with your team even if you were eliminated, still punishes fairly, and dropping in to a location that suddenly got hot is fun desperation.



So that's the 6 main additions I notice in the game. All of them fit the game so effortlessly that I feel like it's going to make other BR games feel a bit pokey and primitive.


To list some downers, I'd say that compared to the simplistic visuals and slower pace of Fortnite, in Apex it's a fair bit harder to spot enemies and generally see what's going on. Pinging definitely helps with the former at least.
Also (and as Pepp mentioned too), after a very simple tutorial there's really nothing else, and for me it has taken a while to get to a point where not every fight is over in less than 3 seconds. The game plays pretty fast and until you get a better knack for the combination of cover, climbing, reloading, healing, and plain hiding, it's pretty heavy on the sudden deaths. Fortunately a new game doesn't actually take long to load, escorted along nicely (ie, hidden) with countdowns, the character select and team display, then the champion team display, before the fly-in starts proper.

Only 60 players is a bit odd too. There's enough space for more so I wish it did have 100 on the map.

But overall, yep enjoying it. Here's that jump in music for an hour hehe.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Needs solo and duo matches.

[Lepo5]

Loving Apex Legends, currently lvl 68. Anyone playing on the Bone let me know if you want to team up.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Apex on a decline? Apparently the updates have been light on and server performance not up to the competition. Twitch viewers going elsewhere, not helped by Shroud broadcasting his intention to quit the game to spend more time on PUBG.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/apex-legends/shroud-quitting" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[lestat]

Shroud is playing Escape from Tarkov these days, also his viewer count is way down too.

To be honest, I'm personally over the whole battle royale concept. I saw BFV BR mode landed with a thud. I much prefer regular MP modes where I feel engaged the whole time, way to much down time in BR which just gets frustrating, especially when hackers come into the picture.