8 reasons why 'Apex Legends' is the best Battle Royale game available

Apex Legends

Two months after its surprise launch, "Apex Legends" continues to set the standard for the wildly popular — and wildly competitive — Battle Royale game genre.
It is, by far, the best-playing Battle Royale game available today.
As a testament to its success, "Fortnite" has begun lifting ideas from "Apex Legends."
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It's 1 a.m. again, and I'm wearily crawling into bed hours after my partner.

This is the effect of "Apex Legends" on my life — the latest major Battle Royale game to demand the attention of tens of millions of players. Since "Apex Legends" arrived in early February, it's become the standard background game in my life.

Unlike "Fortnite" or "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," "Apex Legends" has its hooks in me deep and I don't foresee them letting go anytime soon. Here's why:

1. "Apex Legends" feels better to play, from gunplay to movement to strategy, than any other Battle Royale game available.

Everything about the act of playing "Apex Legends" feels good, and the more I dig into the game, the more I find to love.

The simple act of moving around is so thoroughly, thoughtfully detailed that it bears praising.

Here's a very basic overview: Every character moves at the same speed, whether walking or running. While running, you can push the crouch button to slide — this offers you a minor speed boost if you're on flat or sloping ground. Every character can jump, and if you hold jump while leaping into a wall you'll clamber up the wall.

It's a very simple set of rules, but the way that "Apex Legends" makes all movement feel so fluid and smooth is remarkable. It's perhaps the most impressive aspect of "Apex Legends": The game simply feels good to move around in. The same can't be said for any other Battle Royale game.

2. It's a tremendously detailed game, despite being straightforward and accessible to anyone.

Allow me an example: For the first few weeks, I rarely used hip-fire (shooting without aiming down the sights). Why would I do that if I could aim more carefully by aiming with a sight?

It turns out there's a massive benefit to using hip-fire shooting in "Apex Legends," and blending your shooting between aimed shots and hip-fire is a crucial component to successful play. Due to the relatively accurate spread of fire, hip-firing is critical for winning close-quarter fights with most weapons in "Apex Legends."

That's one tiny detail of myriad tiny details that make every little thing you do in "Apex Legends" feel so good. It's actually my favorite component of the game: I'm still learning finer nuances of each specific weapon, of how to move through the environment more swiftly, of how to reach a place I didn't know I could.

It's a game that still feels remarkably fresh to me even after dozens of hours played.

3. The way players can interact with the extremely detailed world in "Apex Legends" is a testament to its excellent world design.

On our way to the next circle, my friend pinged a location for me to see — a tiny little hole he'd discovered that could be used to sneakily get away in a desperate Skull Town fight.

It was the most recent discovery he'd made after over 100 hours spent running, sliding, and shooting through the single map in "Apex Legends."

There are dozens of these little quirks to the map, and it's clear that an absurd amount of attention was given to exactly how each area of the map was laid out. There are always more angles to take, or ways to flank enemies, or a carefully placed boulder that'll have to serve as cover — the hands of the game's development team are all over the map if you look close enough.

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