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

But while it's decent at mid-range, it shines at long range, and you'll find that a lot more fights are truly decided in closer quarters. If you absolutely need to have a sniper rifle in your hands, this is a great pick. The ammo's common and you could do a lot worse for DPS. But I'd still suggest something a little more pressure intens

The fact that it takes energy ammunition is both a blessing and a curse. That ammo type tends to get passed up because only two weapons take it, the Devotion and the Triple Take. It also tends to be a little sparse for that very reason, however, so your mileage will vary from match to ma

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 game 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

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

That situation is likely salvageable due to the otherwise full-priced game's instant addition to the subscription-based Xbox slg game beginner guide Pass service, but missteps taken by Metro Exodus publisher Deep Silver have all but overshadowed the launch of the fantastic post-apocalyptic experience when they made the boldly abrupt decision to snub Steam and limit the game's PC release to the Epic Games Store . It's unknown how deeply this last-minute choice made from the top-down has affected Metro Exodus ' sales, but it generated enough online backlash among outraged PC players to drown out any positive news about the g

Grab Everything And Share Everything Else - What's meant by this tip is that it's important to grab whatever is available as quickly as possible. There's not telling which other players may be around the corner and it's better to be safe than sorry. Of course, a player's survival is usually contingent on their team surviving as well, so any gear that's unneeded should be shared with the gr

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

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

Apex Legends has a balanced and satisfying spread of weapons, providing more than enough options to keep things fun and varied, but without going overboard and overwhelming us with sheer volume. The gunplay itself is slick, smooth and fast-paced, being more than a little reminiscent of Titanfall ’s enjoyable shooting mechan

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