**Apex Legends ** may not be the Titanfall 3 some fans were hoping for from developer Respawn Entertainment but it's the best battle royale game on the market. Respawn and publisher Electronic Arts' surprise release is instead a spinoff of the Titanfall series but barely resembles the mech-heavy, wall-running g

This past week was crammed full of AAA game releases, with Friday alone having seen the simultaneous launches of Crackdown 3 , Far Cry New Dawn , Metro Exodus , and, for a select few PC players , Anthem . Despite this incredibly hectic launch window, Apex Legends _ continues to reign over all its newly released competition in terms of both popularity and acclaim. When a free-to-play battle royale title so handily beats back an entire wave of full-priced games, developers and producers alike are left to scratch their heads and wonder what Respawn Entertainment's _Apex Legends has that their titles do

Use the Tagging System - Apex Legends has one of the best non-verbal forms of communication in gaming today with its tagging system. Calling out the location of extra weapons and armor, tagging nearby enemies, and marking ideal drop locations are all possible with this tool. Put it to

Apex Legends is a wonderfully exciting and fun shooter that's easy to play but challenging to master given all of its systems and the gameplay potential they offer. There may be issues of character and weapon balancing, and for some, the long time-to-kill rate may be a turnoff, but for anyone looking to squad up with exactly two friends (again, for free), it's shocking how Apex Legends plays so much better than other games in the mar

Instead, Apex Legends is a multiplayer-only, squad and class-based spin on the battle royale formula that draws inspirations from several other hit games, and adds to them all in player-friendly ways. Apex Legends is not only the best battle royale game currently available, but it may be one of the best free-to-play releases of all-t

This guy shouldn't be considered an option outside of complete and utter desperation, though it is actually proven to be slightly more effective than nothing. But even then, you should swap it out as soon as possible with pretty much anything e

Taking the dubious honor of this list's bottom entry is this unremarkable semi-auto pistol. The magazine size is best described as claustrophobic and it has simply click the following article weakest damage output in the game, barring maybe the melee attack. But even that has redeeming qualit

That leaves only Anthem , whose global February 22 launch will mark the only proper live-service competitor to Apex Legends . Though Anthem is unquestionably beautiful and has thrilling combat and movement that Crackdown developers ought to take note of, there is the unavoidable fact that it is EA's answer to Destiny , and the online loot-shooter genre Anthem 's obvious source material spawned is marred by a series of hard-to-avoid caveats. It does more to ensure that players won't be locked out of certain time-limited content by providing matchmaking in areas that the Destiny franchise neglects, but (as EA has clearly done its homework) it's difficult to not fear that launch content will prove much more sparse than initially expected, much as it was in both Destiny entr

Utilize the Revive Ability - If a friend gets put put to pasture by an enemy, it's possible for a teammate to pick up the deceased user's banner and revive them at a respawn station. Be ready to equip them though, as they'll rejoin the fight without a single wea

Common Loot Havens - Anyone eager to get decked out in the best gear may want to visit Airbase, Bunker, or Pit upon jumping into a game. Pit in particular has a number of boxes that players can crack open, but they'll be very exposed while they harvest all of that precious g

Much like the Hemlok AR, this SMG fires in controlled bursts, but puts out five rounds instead of three. It's incredibly difficult to manage without modifications, as the accuracy isn't great to begin with. Compounding it with an awkward burst setting doesn't do it any fav

It's an all-around terrible weapon outside of the initial loot scramble. Replace it, avoid it, leave it for some other unfortunate soul to struggle with. You've got bigger fish to fry if you're not in immediate dan

Of course, that's impossible to truly ascertain from our experience so far with Anthem 's early hours , meaning players will have to wait and see if they will be undergoing the gauntlet of tedium that constitutes for the genre's standard end-game. However, it will undoubtedly be nigh impossible for Anthem to be able to suitably compete with a free-to-play battle royale like Apex Legends when it comes to keeping players interested with a steady flow of content. For those in the industry seeking to recreate Apex Legends ' sleeper success, or at least successfully leech away some of its massive player base, there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this week's cramped mix of launches. First, consider the option that prolonged marketing and over-exposure might actually serve to hurt games; while not all games can capture the attention of millions overnight, producer's should at the very least take steps to avoid Crackdown 3 's five-year gap between announcement and release. Second, and most importantly, developers should innovate where others have not within their genre, even if it doesn't amount to reinventing the wh