APEX Heroes review: The best Battle Royale on the market right now

On February 5, 2019, Brendan Greene sent a tweet in which the creator of arguably the most popular game genre of the moment, Battle Royalle, praised another Battle Royalle game: APEX Heroes, at this time, not more than 48 hours after the debut of APEX Heroes, but the game has more than 2.5 million registrations, and the peak number of online users reached 600,000.

If it's not possible to understand the magnitude of this figure on a literal basis, we can compare it with the figures of Fortnite, another Battle battle game. As the leader of the current battle of escape game "Fortnite", in the case of the guardian home PVE mode as the basis, the launch of the free battle of escape mode - airborne action in 24 hours to obtain a million player registration, and to reach this number of registration, "APEX Heroes" only took eight hours.

And this miracle was done with almost no publicity.

Before APEX Heroes launched on February 5, aside from some of the sniffy rumors that there would be a "Battle Royalty-style game based on Titanfall," no one knew what APEX Heroes was, and not many people believed that Rebirth Entertainment would make a Battle Royal-style game. "At most, add a chicken mode in Titanfall 3" was the consensus of almost everyone at that time, until the game was officially announced, players accepted this fact, and at that time, not many people felt that this sudden disruptor could shake the current dominance of Fortnite.

But reality is always more exciting than drama, this new "APEX Heroes" in just ten days, has been "Fortnite" and "Jedi Survival: Battle" pulled off the throne, with their own wearing the dazzling jewel of the crown.

And the reason for all this is inseparable from Rebirth Entertainment's research on the game of Battle Escape, perhaps as they reply to Brendan Greene said, "we stand on the shoulders of giants", but they are not just standing up, but standing on tiptoe, stretching their arms, reaching higher places, this exploration, I touched the crown on the giant's head.

The first thing we need to know about the success of APEX Heroes is what is the most important factor in the success of a battle battle game, or any game? In fact, this problem is very simple, with the quality of the game and the player experience can be summarized. The game itself needs to have the right qualities to attract and keep players playing, and the player experience determines how long the player can play.

So how good is APEX Heroes? They're very high. If you know Reborn Entertainment, then you must know that the main members of the studio are from the production of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Infinity Ward, and their previous works are called the "Titanfall" series, regardless of why "Titanfall" has been lukewarm, but there is no denying that if there is no EA's coarsening operation, with the "Titanfall" excellent game quality will never end up like this.

APEX Heroes inherited the excellent game quality from Titanfall, whether it is the fluency of the operation or the shooting feel is very excellent, but the game design level is still slightly different from Titanfall, although the same world view, but this time there is neither Titan nor iron, there is only a legendary hero role.

At present, the game only provides a team of three game mode, players need to choose different legends and teammates to form a team of three, in the King Canyon to carry out a battle of 60 people, APEX Heroes has a total of eight legends available, whether it is offensive, defensive, reconnaissance or auxiliary, each legend has its own unique ability. Lifeblood can release healing robots and summon supply pods, while bloodhounds can find enemies by observing footprints and releasing the Eye of God, APEX Heroes adds different skills to make the entire battle of the battle more varied, strategic and adrenalin-pumping. Much like the chemistry of Fortnite's airborne action by adding building elements to the base gameplay of Battle Escape, this is an organic combination of different kinds of gameplay colliding with each other.

In terms of these gameplay design ideas, APEX Heroes is a little smarter. As we all know, the airborne action of Fortnite is a very good escape game, but its requirements for building buildings are very high, not only the operation needs to reach a certain speed, but also the need to think about the general structure of their own building when they encounter the enemy, which is devastating for new people. The vast majority of new players have encountered opponents a second up tall buildings, they can only stand downstairs staring at the situation, building the building this learning process not only has a certain threshold, but also in the time will be relatively long, it is very easy to cause new players to persuade.

The skill mechanism of APEX Heroes is more simple and clear, a passive skill, an active skill and a trick, and new players have a higher acceptance of this system, and almost zero threshold in terms of difficulty to get started. And, Reborn Entertainment also spent a lot of thought on the design of this set of skills, it can be said that every legendary skill is not brainless release on the line, for the release of time, location and communication between teammates have certain requirements, take the legendary blood hound I gave the example above, the role of God's eye this skill is self-evident, Information acquisition is arguably a very important aspect of a battle battle type game, but can you reliably obtain enemy location information using a bloodhound? Not really. First of all, after the eye of God scans the enemy, it will only leave the location information of the moment the enemy is scanned, and can not keep track of it, and releasing the eye of God will also cause the enemy to clearly observe the screen effect of your release of skills, and expose your location information.

This kind of skill design is everywhere in APEX Heroes, Gibraltar's protective Dome shield can both defend against incoming bullets and block their own bullets; The rapid passage arranged by pathfinder and evil spirits can be used by themselves or by the enemy; The finish can quickly solve the enemy players who open the shield, but it will enter an uncontrollable hard and straight state, which is easy to be attacked; Such a two-way effect of skill design ideas so that every player needs to think about when releasing skills, not only to ensure that the game has enough fun, but also a certain strategic.

In addition to the ingenuity of the skill design, Rebirth Entertainment's design for the messaging aspect of the game is amazing, a simple marking system can be said to be played in APEX Heroes.

Presumably everyone must have encountered communication problems in such games, such as PUBG: The solution given by Battle "and" Fortnite "is real-time voice call, but the language barrier and teammates are not convenient for voice is very common, this time basically between teammates will be in a zero communication situation, which is not a good thing for important battlefield information exchange.

APEX Heroes this marking system solves this problem well, without the use of text and voice communication, the rich features of the marking system can almost support the communication between teammates throughout the game, in addition to the basic wheel information exchange, whether you find weapons, accessories supplies or enemy whereabouts, You only need to point the marking button at the corresponding position to press it, the system will automatically issue the corresponding voice and graphic logo according to your marking to help teammates understand your meaning, and in addition to marking the found things, you can also express your request through the marking system, whether it is a weapon missing parts or ammunition, need medical kits or armor kits. Can communicate with teammates through the tagging system.

In order to perfect this very adaptable marking system, the employees of Rebirth Entertainment conducted a month of anonymous game testing without voice or text communication, and it is this attitude of putting themselves in the perspective of the player that has made them successful in making such a good marking system.

Of course, if APEX Heroes only had smooth operation rhythm, excellent shooting feel, clever skill design and practical marking system, then it would not reach the height of today, the pursuit of player experience is the real reason for its success.

Rebirth Entertainment completed the development of Titanfall 2 in 2016, and at this time, the battle escape type of games have begun to emerge, presumably since then, the prototype of APEX Heroes has begun to take shape, which can be seen from the ending animation of Titanfall 2 single player story mode.

And what did Reborn Entertainment do for such a long time? They have stood on the shoulders of giants and optimized the experience for players in accordance with Titanfall design concepts.

The purpose of playing the game is nothing more than to get fun and a sense of accomplishment, and the great escape game can bring you fun and a sense of accomplishment must not be the process of collecting, running poison and hiding all over the mountains for a long time, fighting, killing, obtaining trophies and winning is your excitement, but for most players, In a hundred people to survive and win the game is not a simple thing, more is after a long process of collecting and running poison nothing, and finally their hard to search for the complete set of equipment to hand over, and at this time, the player will feel great frustration, because his pay is not proportional to the return.

And Reborn Entertainment noticed the problem.

In APEX Heroes, only 60 people participate in each round, radically increasing the probability of winning the final round. In the game, Rebirth Entertainment has a strict setting for Time to kill (time to kill a bloodied enemy, abbreviated as TTK) and Bullet to kill (number of bullets required to kill a bloodied enemy, abbreviated as BTK), in the case of incomplete weapon accessories, The time and bullets required to kill an enemy who also has no defensive equipment are high, and the advantage of this setting is to avoid the sudden death and crouching attack situation that occurs in many battle escape games, giving players more opportunities for guns, running positions and using skills, and in order to avoid the situation of not fighting because of high TTK. Although the game has cancelled the iconic flying into the ground parkour in Titanfall, it still retains the sliding shovel and wall climbing operation. In the case of no fall damage, the fast-paced combat brought by high mobility makes the skirmish have a more compact battle rhythm, and the enemy and I will compete more around the battlefield in marksmanship, consciousness and teamwork.

The game's design for firearms is also based on this consideration, in PUBG: Battle of Escape and Fortnite, whether near, medium or long distance will have the corresponding colorful guns, these colorful guns have the ability to quickly kill the enemy, and among them, sniper rifles are even more important, hiding their bodies, low risk and high returns, thousands of miles away to take people's heads is a common thing. However, many players hate the experience of being killed by a sniper rifle, and this kind of defenseless death is actually a destructive destruction of the game experience.

APEX Heroes adopts another solution, first of all, naturally, the high TTK is not easy to sudden death, and then the sniper rifle's low risk and low return. In the game, in addition to the air-dropped golden Klebel sniper rifle with a limited number of bullets, it can be killed with a shot to the head, as long as you wear defensive equipment, you will not be easily killed by other sniper rifles. The unbreakable helmet and armor can be quickly restored with supplies, further reducing the threat of sniper rifles. Because of this, the high risk and high yield shotgun is more favored by players, and the combat rhythm of the entire game is more inclined to medium and close range high mobility against the gun.

See here, you will notice the "sudden death" that I mentioned many times above, right, the most terrible thing about the battle battle type game is that you are separated from your teammates, so that there is always one party will fall into the "watching the movie" session with nothing to do, and there is no game experience at all. APEX Heroes solves this problem by picking up teammates' flags and reviving them. Whether it is fleeing with teammates' flags or reviving teammates after defeating enemies to enjoy the fruits of victory, all teammates are involved in the whole game. This kind of close-knit team combat is much better than a group of people watching one person hide in the finals.

In fact, having said so much, you should have a more comprehensive understanding of this game, the quality of the game itself is very good, the player's game experience is very pleasant, can only say that the rebirth of entertainment is not old, the only thing you may need to worry about is that EA will not have any SAO operation, After all, I still remember offering up Titanfall 2 as a sacrifice.

If you want to try a battle Royale game now, then APEX Heroes must be your best choice at the moment, and why? Easy, because it's probably the best Battle Royale game out there right now, and it's free, except for the difficulty of downloading it.