Apex Legends, the new free to play battle royale game by Respawn, launched earlier this week much to everyone surprise. The title received no form of marketing outside of a few tweets here and there, yet the game has already amassed ten million players in just three days. Even streamers like Ninja, Shroud, and DrDisRespect are getting in on the action making it one of the most viewed games on Twitch ranging from 200 to 500 thousand viewers a day.

It plays similar to how you’d expect it to play: a dropship flies over island sending players plummeting down to battle it out. Looting works similar to Blackout or Pubg, kill an enemy and they drop their player stash. Now, however, the UI will help the player, identify any loot they need or don’t need by simply marking weaker or less efficient items with a red x. This is a major improvement over other titles in the shooter subgenre where you would have to manage different types of ammo, armor or attachments. If it doesn’t fit don’t grab it. Weapon attachments will auto-equip upon being picked up and will even swap out if you already have one in use. They will even transfer to compatible weapons should you drop a gun for a better variant. This is about where the similarities end. Now at the start of each match, you must select a Legend. Each Legend has its own unique abilities. Bloodhound is able to track and hunt down enemy players with his ultimate, which is quite similar to the predator vision. Pathfinder, the recon scout, is able to deploy a zip line for his teammates and can even identify the next zone by hacking into data terminals. This unique touch is what separates Apex from other games like Blackout or Fortnite.

Now for some of the lackluster aspects of this game. In its current state, there is only one mode. No solo, duo or LTM like Fortnite, just trio. You could argue that the game is meant to be more team based since the addition of different Legend, each with their own skills, but the lack of different modes has left a bitter taste in some players mouths. The game still has some dips in its frames even with it being as polished as it is. Add inconsistent crashes and server issues and your overall experience begins to rapidly decrease. As of now, my game has crashed around ten or eleven different times. With that being said I have yet to find any major game breaking bugs or exploits being used by players to gain some sort of advantage.

After about some thirty odd matches I'd like to say that this game is a major breath of fresh air. Many people were skeptical about a new title, with zero promotional ads, in an already over-saturated genre. Apex does exactly what it set out to do: be different and set itself apart from the competition. Is this game perfect? No, not at all. In fact, I would say it’s nowhere near perfect in its current state. Regardless of its flaws, it’s an overall enjoyable game that’s a lot of fun with friends. I highly recommend this game but at the same time offer up a warning about the current stability of the shoot.

I like this game a lot. I don't miss there being a solo or even duos mode, but that's because I've only ever enjoyed this kind of game in squads. But I can see the argument for adding a solo mode to Apex, if only to get the lone wolves out of squads.

@nateandrews: initially my biggest gripe with the game was the overall lack of modes. After playing the game more and more I started to realize that this is meant as more of a team based game.

Can't wait to hop into apex legends. I'd like a frontier defense type mode and then I'll be all in.

The games great. Maybe have frontier defense be a LTM in the future? I'm down.

Good write up! Not much into these games but I can appreciate when one does some things really well.

The game is really really good. It makes so many clever decisions. It's a fantastic platform to build from.

@sparky_buzzsaw: thanks, I started getting bored with Fortnite and Blackout but this game feels so much better than the rest. I personally believe it's the best BR game right now.

@frodobaggins: I was worried a little that the legends might be lame or unbalanced with all the different abilities but the game is really well balanced. It plays so much better than Fortnite or Blackout.

Wasn't aware of the crashes, I'd be interested to know how widespread that issue goes. It reminds me a bit of PUBG on the Xbox One.

@gamer_152: First few days they were bad, crashed about every other game. That's definitely something Respawn needs to fix.

Odd, I played it through the weekend, and more than a few hours yesterday and it only had crashes after I had already died in several matches.

The speed of logging back in is great though, only about 5-10 minutes down time between a match ending and jumping right back in.

i played a couple of matches, having never liked the main concept of battle royale i don't care one bit for this.

after playing and still playing fortnite pve i tried playing the pvp and found enjoyment in a mode that is basically team deathmatch, if they add a team deathmatch mode i might come back to it but the battle royale mode and my dislike for the titanfall art style will probably keep me from doing that

@darkvare: understandable. Some people just don't like the BR type games. I wasn't that impressed with until Apex but that was after play Titanfall 2 which I consider criminally underrated and is one of my favorite games.

Just make Titanfall 2 F2P as well so we can get new blood in there and I won't get completely rekt if I should jump back into it again.

@ripelivejam: they might as well go ahead and do it the games been out long enough.

@ghostyfox: i did played and enjoyed titanfall didn't tried the mp cause i didn't had ps plus but i do agree that it was sad what happend to this game due to it's ill fated release date