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Blog entry by Olive Smalley

Move over Fortnite , there's a new king in town. OK, maybe it's too early to be saying stuff like that, but there's no denying the impact that Apex Legends has had on the gaming community. According to the latest report, the SLG game Building guide has amassed 25 million players, but that number has likely expanded. It's also the top individual game on Twitch, and it has bumped Fortnite to third place (behind League of Legend

Why was Apex Legends able to rest on its laurels this week while Respawn works on future content? The simplest answer can actually be found in what was likely perceived by EA to be its greatest weakness: it's near-total lack of pre-release marketing. Leaked only a day prior to launch, Apex Legends set the internet abuzz with the immediate promise of an all-new and well-polished experience that players could get their hands on for the tantalizing price of "free." Meanwhile, Crackdown 3 has suffered from a grueling, years-long embarrassment for Xbox Games Studios that began when it was revealed all the way back at E3 2014, greatly reducing the impact of the exclusive's largely overlooked February 15 release d

Generally speaking, some sort of long-range, sniper rifle equivalent would normally be a must-have piece of kit for a battle royale match. But while they're certainly not the worst things to have, sniper rifles are a little unimpressive when it comes to Apex Lege

Similarly, Far Cry New Dawn feels like an over-familiar and over-priced expansion to last year's Far Cry 5 , a series that has slowly settled into creative stagnation since Far Cry 3 's retooling of the series formula. Jump Force , while not entirely fair to compare with a list of shooters, plays like a fairly straightforward 3D fighting game beneath its enticing facade of playing as Shonen Jump's most iconic characters and doesn't do anything radical that hasn't already been seen in the fighting SLG game story guide genre time and time bef

The Hemlok fulfills the role of the standard, three round burst firing assault rifle that you're probably familiar with from every other FPS game. While it manages to succeed in playing the role, it doesn't tend to do it overly well at any po

The game does not however, support cross-play or cross-save in anyway which is one of the lacking features for a game that uses EA servers/accounts across all platforms. Should players unlock cosmetics on one platform, they cannot use them on the other. It's a wasted opportunity that partially holds the game back from truly taking the genre to the next level like Fortnite has in this resp

This lightweight sniper rifle has a few advantages that help to combat the drawbacks of its weapon class, but ultimately still has a difficult time overcoming them. It kicks out bullets faster than its counterparts, keeping a little more utility as you track your shots and the enemy closes

Caustic's gas traps are one of the most frustrating things to encounter in the game. Finding yourself in the middle of a gas maze almost always results in elimination, and the traps can seem way too OP as a result. Luckily, there IS a way to counter the traps (aside from utilizing tactical abilities). Simply shoot the red portion of the trap (located near the bottom) in order to disable it, allowing safe passage for you and your team. Easy pe

That leaves only Anthem , whose global February 22 launch will mark the only proper live-service competitor to Apex Legends . Though Anthem is unquestionably beautiful and has thrilling combat and movement that Crackdown developers ought to take note of, there is the unavoidable fact that it is EA's answer to Destiny , and the online loot-shooter genre Anthem 's obvious source material spawned is marred by a series of hard-to-avoid caveats. It does more to ensure that players won't be locked out of certain time-limited content by providing matchmaking in areas that the Destiny franchise neglects, but (as EA has clearly done its homework) it's difficult to not fear that launch content will prove much more sparse than initially expected, much as it was in both Destiny entr

Save The Peacekeeper For The Last Round - The Peacekeeper shotgun is rather useless early on in the match (though it can be charged for a stronger shot), but in the final circle, it can be quite dea

Of course, that's impossible to truly ascertain from our experience so far with Anthem 's early hours , meaning players will have to wait and see if they will be undergoing the gauntlet of tedium that constitutes for the genre's standard end-game. However, it will undoubtedly be nigh impossible for Anthem to be able to suitably compete with a free-to-play battle royale like Apex Legends when it comes to keeping players interested with a steady flow of content. For those in the industry seeking to recreate Apex Legends ' sleeper success, or at least successfully leech away some of its massive player base, there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this week's cramped mix of launches. First, consider the option that prolonged marketing and over-exposure might actually serve to hurt games; while not all games can capture the attention of millions overnight, producer's should at the very least take steps to avoid Crackdown 3 's five-year gap between announcement and release. Second, and most importantly, developers should innovate where others have not within their genre, even if it doesn't amount to reinventing the wh