![]() ![]() That smallness extends, in both bad and good ways, to the characters. There is absolutely nothing cooler than a stranger sticking out their neck to respawn you, after you unceremoniously die in the first firefight. It stretches that camaraderie past the grave, and lets even mediocre players (like me) feel needed and wanted. Fortunately the game lets you spawn teammates back in. You really exist as a unit, and when a teammate is lost you feel their absence. ![]() She exists as a means of keeping other players healed up and kitted out. My personal favorite, Lifeline, has a healing drone and can spawn high quality healing and armor items. Many of the character’s abilities depend on other players or give them help or information. Playing any battle royale with a squad will encourage camaraderie and dependence between players, but Apex leans in. Additionally, playing in squads creates a strange kind of intimacy, even when playing with strangers. While you can have firefights at long range, it’s less common in my experience. There are just less people in every Apex match than in other battle royales, 60 total versus the usual 100. Even its port to the Switch exposes its ambition to reach more people. The fact that the game is always played in squads or pairs emphasizes tactics and gives each battle a more dramatic scale. The banter between the game’s characters gives it the hint of universe beyond the moment to moment gunplay. Apex is set in the same universe as the Titanfall franchise, making it part of a network of media properties. ![]() Its twists on the battle royale serve to ground the game to a wider fandom. New characters are added to the roster with each new season. Apex is currently in its eighth season, which shows its ambition to life-consuming scale. Nothing quite defines this curious contradiction like Apex Legends, which dropped onto the Switch on March 5. All that scale comes down to a few spare shots and a couple souls. You exhale or shout joy or relief or frustration or laughter. If you are lucky and/or skilled enough to make it to the end, you play with just a handful of people. It’s easy to make small talk, catch up, or banter as you pick up loot, before the sighting of another player snaps you to attention. In contrast to the rapid-fire respawning of a deathmatch, battle royales have a lot of dead space. Extending into infinity, they all promise that they are the only game you need to play.Ĭuriously though, in practice, these games are most effective in their smallness. Seasons, skins, battle passes, #aesthetics, and unlockables are ever-present in both the play and the coverage of these games. The ones that have survived the market rely on a steady drip, or in Fortnite’s case, a plastic flood, of new content. They take place on huge maps populated by dozens of players. From the first shot, battle royale games seem to be about massive scale. ![]()
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