Apex Legends: A First Look at Respawn’s Free-to-Play Shooter

Apex Legends is Respawn’s free to play entrance into the Titanfall universe. It combines the (somewhat oversaturated) Battle Royale genre with the Overwatch popularised Hero shooter genre and pits 60 people, broken up into squads of 3, against each other in a large map.

Though I was immediately reminded how bad I am at competitive shooters the moment I booted it up, I did very quickly get into a game to be verbally assaulted by teammates that were better than me just in case I’d forgot. This didn’t hamper the experience though, because it turns out it’s actually a really competent, fun mash-up of the two shooter genres. The gunplay is meaty and satisfying, and each Legend coming with some pretty neat passive and active abilities. Wraith, for example, has a voice that tells you enemies are nearby, and Pathfinder sports a grappling hook to get you where you need to go.

As of writing there are 8 Legends to choose from, 2 of which you’ll have to unlock with either 12000 Legend Tokens that you unlock by levelling up or 750 of a different in-game currency called Apex Coins you can buy with real world money (about 7.50 dollarydoos). Though so far it doesn’t seem like getting the Legend Tokens to buy the characters should be too much of a chore for normal play but I’m not sure how consistently you continue getting drops of them. That said, the 6 characters you start off with are a lot of fun and I didn’t feel like I was missing out at any point by not throwing money at my TV.

There is also, of course, a multitude of cosmetic items you can collect from loot boxes (called Apex Packs), buying with Apex Coins, or by crafting using ANOTHER in-game currency called Crafting Metals that are obtained through the loot boxes. The odds of getting different tiers of items are actually available in-game and online which is a nice change of pace (100% chance of Rare or better item, 24.8% chance of Epic or better item, 7.4% chance of Legendary item). You get a loot box for every level up to level 45 but after that you’ll need to spend real world money on them.

Overall I had a really great time in Apex Legends, though it definitely became a lot more fun playing with friends rather than (understandably) frustrated strangers. I definitely won’t be surprised if I find myself sinking a lot more time into it as it grows.

Apex Legends is out now for free on PC (through Origin), Playstation 4, and Xbox One.