Apex Legends, it’s pretty popular isn’t it!? It seems that all gamers want to talk about lately is Apex, which isn’t surprising given the news that Respawn’s free to play battle royale game reached 25 million players within its first week… But here I sit, a gamer that not only isn’t keen on online gaming, but also has a distaste for most FPS games. So with that being said, what are my thoughts on what may be the biggest game of the year so far; Apex Legends?
I should probably mention that I don’t hate first-person shooters. Whether or not it’s seen as a true FPS game or not; Bioshock stands as one of my favourite games of all time, and I always enjoyed playing the Far Cry games too. But when it comes to your Call of Duty’s, your Battlefields and your Killzones, I have just never understood the hype. Add to that how I prefer to be anti-social and play mostly single player games, you can understand why I would avoid the likes of Destiny, Overwatch and Fortnite like the plague.
So what about Apex Legends? Well it didn’t take me long to decide that I definitely like it more than Fortnite! Just the opening visuals and the main menu felt way more aimed at a player like me than other games of this type. Character selection straight away got me excited, as I read through each characters abilities, I decided that for my first game, Gibraltar is my man!
So what about the game itself? Well first things first, I of course sucked. This didn’t mean that I wasn’t invested though. The first thing I noticed was that when I died, it wasn’t game over. My other two team mates had the opportunity to take me to a respawn point and get me back in the game, which is a really cool feature. Then I started to notice how the ping system worked. By now I am sure everyone is familiar with this, however the short version is that you can communicate with your team mates without actually having to talk and with one press of a button. I didn’t really spend enough time with the game to really get the hang of it, but I can see how this can be a game changer and I imagine it’s just a matter of time before it starts appearing in other online FPS games.
After about half an hour or so of playing, I noticed something strange… I was enjoying myself. Not that I wasn’t expecting to, but I often only play games like this for social reasons before going back to whatever single player game I am currently playing. But this was different, I found myself not having the itch to get offline and actually wanting to better myself at what I was playing. I think the reason for this is simple; Apex Legends is really bloody good!
Maybe it was the fantastic, easy to use controls or the cool looking map, or the fact this felt way more aimed at adults than something like Fortnite. Whatever it was, I was finding it a lot of fun. Although I am yet to jump back in, I find myself wanting to get a team together and forcing myself to get good. I have even found myself talking to friends and recommending they download the game so that we can fail together as noobs. This has confused those close to me because before Apex, there was no way I would ever suggest an online shooter, so that has to be a good sign right?!
So will this stick? Will I become an Apex regular player? It’s hard to say. No matter how good the game is (And it is!), I cant help but always drift back toward offline single player games. What I will say though, if I am to jump online with friends to play an online shooter; it will never be Call of Duty, it will never be Battlefield and it certainly will never be Fortnite again! Apex has become my online go-to, whether or not it will become my overall go-to is yet to be seen.