Rising to the Apex
New game battles for ‘royale’ positioning with players
Apex Legends, released Feb. 8, is already gaining popularity with avid gamers due to it’s high standard of graphics and by the fact that it is free.
Respawn Entertainment recently released Apex Legends on Feb. 8, which is a free to play battle royale game at a press event. Battle Royale is a game genre that became very popular in 2017 with the release of Fortnite Battle Royale. Battle Royale consists of 100 players dropping on an island without any resources and each person or team has to scavenge for resources and fight to come out on the top.
Following the Super Bowl hype, Respawn Entertainment held a reveal event the next day and released it soon after. But with the excitement, leaks and rumors from many valid sources basically spoiled the event itself. These leaks were allegedly sourced from an event specifically for journalists and YouTube creators to try out the game. Even though attendees of the event were supposedly under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, Youtubers such as “The Quartering” spilled the beans all too soon. Despite the rumors and leaks, fans were excited to see the game come into fruition.
“It was pretty cool because the animations are cool and there’s different legends, unlike other games, making the announcement unique,” freshman Zachariah Assi said.
The game obtained over 1 million unique players in the first eight hours of its inception and 500 thousand viewers on the game streaming platform Twitch.tv. Additionally, they reached 25 million players in the first week it was available.
“It goes to show how good the game is. People really like it, especially famous people and this shows in the numbers,” junior Camden Martin said.
The game has had some backlash and resistance as a result of the developer’s parent company Electronic Art’s notable loot box debacle on games such as FIFA 19 and Star Wars Battlefront 2. The company has also left a bad taste in the mouth of consumers with overwhelming them with microtransactions in all of their major titles. For Apex Legends, this doesn’t seem to be an issue because of its free-to-play nature.
“EA makes good games and I have never had a problem with loot boxes so it never affected me,” Martin said.
Overall the game has received a positive reception and has even been dubbed as a valid contender to Player Unknown Battlegrounds and Fortnite.
“I think that it is a good game for people who are fans of Player Unknown Battlegrounds and like realistic graphics,” senior Jonas Flores said.
