Why was Apex Legends able to rest on its laurels this week while Respawn works on future content? The simplest answer can actually be found in what was likely perceived by EA to be its greatest weakness: it's near-total lack of pre-release marketing. Leaked only a day prior to launch, Apex Legends set the internet abuzz with the immediate promise of an all-new and well-polished experience that players could get their hands on for the tantalizing price of "free." Meanwhile, Crackdown 3 has suffered from a grueling, years-long embarrassment for Xbox Games Studios that began when it was revealed all the way back at E3 2014, greatly reducing the impact of the exclusive's largely overlooked February 15 release d

Picking where to drop in Apex Legends can be a challenge with two other teammates tagging along. It can also be challenging when there's one Jumpmaster ultimately deciding where players will land. Since separating from the group is often a poor decision, convincing others where to drop in order to find the best loot stands out as a good one. There are a number of locales worth exploring for anyone eager to win, but scouting out where teams are dropping and avoiding conflict is an equally strong strat

One thing to be said is that this is a pretty unique rifle, kicking out a horizontal spread of three simultaneous shots per trigger pull, which can really help with tracking long distance targets. You can tighten the spread a bit with the precision choke hop-up mod. But again, it is still a sniper ri

Slide (A Lot!) - One of the best ways to quickly traverse an area is to slide (using crouch) down hills - as sliding on a descent is limitless... and super fast - or across an area. It can be key to winning a firefight and the match its

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

Wraith - Jumping between dimensions makes Wraith one of the trickiest opponents to go up against. She is also able to open up rifts for her teammates, but be careful as other players can go through them as w

Like Dark Souls, Apex Legends contains many "hidden" mechanics, and it expects you to learn as you go. And that's not a bad thing. Unfortunately, this causes a rift between the experienced players and the newbies. How dejecting is it to see your level 5 player with one kill next to a level 85 adorned with achievement bad

Comparing **Apex Legends ** to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 's Blackout reveals two fairly similar gameplay experiences, but what sets the former apart is its major quality-of-life improvements and marriage of the hero shooter and battle royale genres. If the game industry avoided pre-launch gaffes like Metro Exodus ' and changed the answers on its copied homework a bit more than Anthem seems willing, perhaps a free-to-play title wouldn't have so easily trounced so many expensive AAA titles in the first pl

The Hot Zone is the initial area on the map with incredible loot. Naturally, teams flock to it in the hopes of obtaining high tier armor and weapons. And there's nothing worse than a new player going to it and getting downed in the first thirty seconds while their teammates are on the other side of the map. We understand that dropping there makes for a good learning experience, but if you want to train, play with friends and not with rand

Similarly, Far Cry New Dawn feels like an over-familiar and over-priced expansion to last year's Far Cry 5 , a series that has slowly settled into creative stagnation since Far Cry 3 's retooling of the series formula. Jump Force , while not entirely fair to compare with a list of shooters, plays like a fairly straightforward 3D fighting SLG game tips beneath its enticing facade of playing as Shonen Jump's most iconic characters and doesn't do anything radical that hasn't already been seen in the fighting game genre time and time bef

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

As of this writing, there are a total of eight characters (AKA Legends) in Apex Legends to choose from: Bloodhound, Gibraltar, Lifeline, Pathfinder, Wraith, Bangalore, and the two unlockable Legends Caustic and Mirage. Each of these characters act as different classes with vastly different abilities, which means that players will have to test out each one to see what suits their style of play the b