With shooting games taking center stage in the gaming industry, here is one from the Electronic Arts Stable. Apex Legends, an award-winning Battle Royale shooter game developed by Respawn Entertainment, was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
The ever-growing roster is made up of legendary characters possessing powerful abilities who team up to conquer the Frontier. The game involves tactical and strategic gameplay, requiring players to constantly adapt to the crew’s overall strengths.
This multiplayer game features squads of three players while alternate modes have been introduced allowing for single and for two-player squads since the game’s release. Usually, there are twenty teams each with their respective three-player squads. When a player enters the multiplayer gameplay, they can either join their friends in a squad or they can be matched with other players randomly.
As the match begins, each player gets to select one of the 14 characters. Each of these characters has a unique set of attributes with respect to design, persona, and abilities. This helps players pick a unique mix of attributes. The teams are placed in an aircraft that is shown to fly over the map of the game.
Each squad assigns one of their teammates as the Jump-Master. In concurrence with all team members, the jump master’s role is to decide when the team jumps off the aircraft and decide the landing area. Nonetheless, this does not restrict players from choosing their own path. Once the Team lands on the ground, players can quickly look around nearby buildings and crates around the map, for weapons, armors, and any other equipment. The team also looks out for other squads and communicates using a non-verbal ‘ping’ feature, using their game controllers. Squad members can ping directions, weapon locations, enemies, and game plans through the ‘ping’ system.
Character movement options are included. However, certain gameplay features from older Titanfall games are packed in as well. These include the ability of a character to climb over short walls, inclined surface slide downs, and using zip-lines were available for quick travel.
In the event of a player being knocked down, a squad member can revive the player. Even if a player is killed, the game offers a feature wherein a respawn banner appears at the spot where the player died. Other squad members have to collect this banner to resurrect their dead teammate and bring them to one of the beacons on the island. There, however, is a time limit on collecting the banner, beyond which the player is fully eliminated.
The game offers a safe zone which is a randomly selected point on the map. As time passes into the game, this safe zone keeps diminishing. Any player outside the boundaries of this safe zone is prone to damage and might be killed unless they reach the safe zone on time.
With elimination being the prime motive, the squad with any of its members left alive in the end is crowned as the ‘Apex Champions’ of that particular match. The in-game currency is distributed to players based on their team’s overall rankings along with a combination of experience.
Apex Legends uses micro-transactions and loot boxes as monetization avenues, which enables players to use both real currency and in-game currency on frill items, such as outfit options for the Legends and color options for weapons.