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Apex Teamwork


Ta-metru_defender

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Essays, Not Rants! 364: Apex Teamwork

 

Ever since my brother got himself a PS4 I’ve been paying a bit more attention to online games. Sure, I play my share of online, games like Battlefront and Destiny are a great way to relax while watching The Daily Show, but an online multiplayer component has never been a big draw. Now that my brother and I can play online together, I’m ever on the lookout for a game where we can throw down together.

 

Over the past couple of years, Battle Royale games have very much become in vogue within the online gaming community. I’ve been aware of them, but never really knew what they were (in fact, a few months ago I looked the genre up on Wikipedia to see what the whole buzz was about). Anyway, Apex Legends was released recently, and my brother started playing it. I watched a game or two and figured, ah, what the heck, should be fun, yeah?

 

It is.

 

Each game has twenty three-player squads who air drop into a massive map. Players then scramble for weapons and gear and fight it out as the area of playable space slowly shrinks. You’ve only one shot at this; once your whole squad goes down it’s game over (and you return to the title screen to find another game to repeat the whole thing over again).

 

That gameplay loop necessitates a lot of quick decision making. Where do you land? Do you go to an area with good loot but is sure to be crowded and result in quick violence? Or do you go further off and try and gear up before joining the fray? Most important, however, is the teamwork of the game.

 

My brother and I are in constant communication while playing, each of us keeping an eye out for foes while making plans about how best to navigate the map (always go for the high ground). The fact that death in Apex is permanent makes teamwork so vital; since you can’t just respawn, staying alive together is paramount. Knowing where your opponents are — and keeping your teammates aware of that — gives you that edge up to outlive a squad.

 

Here’s the thing that makes Apex such a delight: its ping system. A tap of a button and you can tag whatever you’re looking at for your squad. Could be an untouched treasure chest, could be your idea of where the team should go next, could be an opponent. In and of itself, this system isn’t anything really new, Uncharted 4’s multiplayer had a perk where you could mark enemies. But it’s absolutely vital in a game like Apex where being able to communicate exactly where something is makes the difference between life and death. See, it’s hard to point in games, and exclamations like "contact right" make little sense when you don’t have that physical sense of presence you do in real life. Pinging helps give the squad a shared sense of space, where "over there" actually means something real.

 

Take sniping and spotting. The ping system means I can be perched high on a building while my brother goes in for a closer look. If he sees someone, he can ping them and I can take potshots at them while he beats a hasty retreat (or uses my covering fire as a way for him to flank 'em). It’s a lot more immediate than me having to search for them myself, or having to figure out what "up the hill behind that rock" means. Teamwork’s encouraged, and I get annoyed if our random third squamate doesn’t ping enemies.

 

I haven’t won a game yet. We’ve been top-three a couple times and come painfully close to being the last squad standing. I don’t really mind, though; I play the game for those wonderful moments when a plan we’ve hatched comes together (or falls apart stupendously). But I’ve never played the game on my own, and I don’t really see why I would. So much of why I enjoy Apex is the teamworkiness of it, and playing with someone I know is a guarantee that that’s in the cards.

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