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

It happens in most games - a particularly overzealous player sees some specks in the distance, pings their location to their teammates, and starts shooting at them with an assault rifle. This is probably the worst thing you could possibly do. Sure, if you have a sniper rifle, then go crazy, but otherwise leave them alone. It's not only a huge waste of ammo, but it gives away your position to them and the squads in the nearby vicinity. Try tracking inst

The game does not however, support cross-play or cross-save in anyway which is one of the lacking features for a game that uses EA servers/accounts across all platforms. Should players unlock cosmetics on one platform, they cannot use them on the other. It's a wasted opportunity that partially holds the game back from truly taking the genre to the next level like Fortnite has in this resp

The game's monetization model involves selling premium currency that can be spent on (very expensive) premium character and weapon skins, and the game's loot boxes (called Apex Packs). The Apex Packs contain everything from skins, to emotes, lines of dialogue for characters, and scrap that can be used to craft cosmetics not yet acquired. The best part of this take on the Overwatch loot formula is that there are no duplicates, and the rarity levels of everything are outlined on the official Apex Legends website. In the future, there will be battle passes for seasons (taking from the Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege playbook) that last three months where limited time cosmetics can be earned or purcha

Generally speaking, some sort of long-range, sniper rifle equivalent would normally be a must-have piece of kit for Hide.Espiv.Net a battle royale match. But while they're certainly not the worst things to have, sniper rifles are a little unimpressive when it comes to Apex Lege

Played strictly in three-player squads across one map (called "Kings Canyon") that supports 60 players total with characters who each have their own unique abilities, right away Apex Legends differentiates itself from the competition. Its class (character) based gameplay that highlights the unique personalities and gear of each character is best compared to Overwatch , and the game also draws its monetization strategy from Blizzard's shooter as well. When it comes to its first-person gunplay however, Apex Legends plays more like Black Ops 4's Blackout mode but with more diverse gameplay and more layers of mechanics and control, including in the game's animati

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

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

But it's not just about improving what already works from the battle royale genre since Apex Legends adds many all-new features too. Matches are fast and usually completed in less than 20 minutes. At the beginning of a given match there's a dropship players jump from, like any other battle royale, but in this one players jump together as a squad and one player is designated the "Jumpmaster" to keep them together. Players can manually separate from the pack of course, but it's a smart change to enforce the idea that Apex Legends is a truly a squad-based game. There currently are no solo or duo mo