streamer

Is This the Apex of Battle Royale?

theguildmage, , , Leave a comment

So, looking at my day to day life I have come to realize I just have more time to write and put out better content if I put these blog posts out on Mondays instead of Sundays, so I am changing up my schedule a bit there.

So, as of writing this blog entry the game Apex Legends has been out for exactly one week now and I feel as though I’ve played it enough now to give my views on the game.  This game has completely blown up over the past week and has not dropped from the top spot on twitch all week.  A spot previously held almost entirely by Fortnite.  Last night Shroud alone had more viewers than all of the streamers on Fortnite, with him hitting 130k and Fortnite sitting only at 125k.  To top it all off, there was absolutely no announcement about what this game was or anything beforehand.  Last Monday they just had a stream and said, hey this is a game we made have fun.  At first, I thought they game was just being hyped up because it was so new, and that is why I wanted to spend more time playing it and see what happened with the game over the week before I went to write a review.  I will preface this review with the fact that the only other shooters I have ever played have been Overwatch and Fortnite.

 The first thing I noticed about this game playing it was that it runs very smoothly for a game that was just released.  I haven’t noticed any real lag spikes or any real fps dropping.  The only time I noticed any real drop in frames is during Bangalore’s ultimate.  Other than that, though the game runs as well as I would want it to.  The only other real issue on this front then is the issues they are having with servers.  I have a feeling that they did not expect this game to be as popular as it is and therefore just didn’t plan to support as many players as they have seen so far.  The server will crash a few times a night when I am playing, usually just when you are returning back to the lobby, but sometimes when you are in the middle of a game.  I hope that this will be the first issue that they try to fix because that is the only thing that is drastically affecting the gameplay currently.  Also, a smaller bug being that the voice can be kind of wonky and doesn’t always work.  Most of the time though I am playing with people I know, and we are just using discord to talk anyway so has not been a real issue for me personally.  And in all honesty this game is actually ok to play without any voice communication if you have to due to their ping system.

The ping system is something that once you have used it you really will want in just about every multiplayer game that there is out there.  You can ping locations, enemies, items, objects, and just about anything else you could think of.  The ping system I feel like is so well laid out that if you wanted to you really could play this game well with random teammates without any real issues.  That is one reason I think this game will continue to just do really well, it just makes working as a team that much easier.

The movement options in this games make it a very fast paced game and you really aren’t going to spend much time just sitting in one place.  Matches typically don’t last more than 10-15 minutes and it is rare that I feel like the game is going too slowly.  You really can’t let down your guard for a second in this game and I think that makes this a great game.  There are times in other Battle Royale games where it feels like you are doing nothing but looting and running around but I just don’t experience that as much in this game.  Part of the reason might be because it is a much smaller map than other games and you only have 60 people.

For the most part the guns in this game all feel fairly well balanced.  Yeah, there are a few that you really aren’t going to use unless you have nothing else at the time but for the most part, they all feel good to use.  I enjoy the wide variety of guns in this game also because it really allows you to play the game however you want to.  Personally, I’m pretty terrible when it comes to mid-range combat so I will usually run shotgun/smg and a sniper.    It all really depends on how you want to play, and I like having the options there if I am wanting to try something different.  There have been very few games where I felt like I couldn’t find the weapons that I wanted to use.  The harder part is finding the attachments for your guns but even this is really not that bad.  Overall the looting in this game feels nice, and inventory management is streamlined also.

Looking at the cosmetics in the game so far, they are mostly a little underwhelming currently.  This could be mostly because the game just released, and they didn’t have the budge to make better cosmetics but there are a few good ones.  I do think their “featured” skins in the shop are a bit overpriced for what they are, but you don’t have to actually spend money to get anything in this game.  Every time you level up you get another apex pack which give you three random cosmetics.  There is no chance of getting duplicates and they lay out very clearly the chances of getting certain rarities in packs.  As well as promising a legendary every 30 packs.  Is this the best system, no not really, but it does give you the chance to earn everything for just playing the game which is a breath of fresh air.

Lastly, and I think the most important part of this game, is the different legends that are available to play.  This is what I believe puts this game above the other Battle Royale games out there.  Just giving you the option to play a character that just advances your play style can make the game that much more enjoyable.  This is one option I feel like they will be able to continue to expand in the future and add in more legends to spice up the game from time to time.  They are different enough that they do let you play how you want but not overpowered enough to completely change the outcome of the game.  In the end it feels like this is a much more skill-based game and it is good to see that they didn’t try to make it too crazy with abilities.

This was just my overview of the game so far.  I may revisit this game once they start to add more to it, like other modes, or a battle pass.  For the time being that is all I have to say about the game.  Until next week.

-TheGuildmage

Fortnite: The Good, The Bad, The Future

theguildmage, , , , Leave a comment

This is a blog post that I’ve been wanting to do for some time now and almost typed up something even before I started writing this blog.  Fortnite is a game that just exploded and is probably the most popular and unpopular game out there right now.  For someone who works with mostly non-gamers it has been interesting to hear just the shear amount of people that are currently talking about the game.  This is why I felt it was a good time to write my take on the game, from someone who has probably put a few hundred hours into the game now.  Unfortunately, I have not played the Save the World mode yet but hope to in the near future.

The Good:  There is so much that this game has done right.  First and foremost, the thing that has really made this game take off in the way that it has is the cross play.  You can play this on Xbox, PS4, Switch, PC, and mobile.  This game can be played by just about every person that has access to any sort of technology.  That is what has made this game really take off in the way that it has.  Being able to play with my friends who are on PlayStation, and Xbox has been great for me because I used to not really be able to play many games with them before.  Since there is also just so many people playing the game it makes it very easy to just hop into a game and not have to wait forever for a match like some other battle royales.  The next big thing that Fortnite has done right is with updates.  They are putting out updates at least twice a week and sometimes doing things that are updating constantly.  For a game to do something like that had really been unheard of up to this point.  Some of the updates even completely change up the map.  The variety in Fortnite is what I believe keeps people playing the game and as long as they continue to big things with it, I can see Fortnite being around for years to come.  Another note on the variety is the weapons and items that they rotate in and out of the game.  One of the advantages they have with Fortnite is they can add literally anything to the game and it just works because of the cartoonish nature of the game.

The recent introduction of the creative mode into Fortnite is something that really just makes the game that much better because anytime you let the players start to design things you are going to have awesome creations.  Just look at what happened with DOTA, it was a simple WC3 mode that turned into one of the biggest games in the world.  Creative mode is also nice to have for times when my friends and I just want to play something different, like some puzzles or deathruns.  For someone like me that has put hundreds of hours into this game, having this different mode to just go mess around in has been a breath of fresh air.  It has even inspired me to start to create my own Block that I’ll submit to possibly get into the game.

The Bad:  The most glaringly obvious downside to this game is that even after about two years of the BR portion of the game being out there are still just constant bugs, hackers, and cheaters.  There are enough cheaters and hackers in the game currently that on an average night of playing I will run into at least one.  I will say that they have taken steps to help prevent this kind of thing and it has gotten better but they are still out there often enough that it is rather annoying.  Now the biggest downside to this game, the shear number of bugs that are still present in the game.  Everything from mics not working randomly to just dying to nothing.  This game has so many bugs to the point that they have even affected the outcome of some of the tournaments that have happened.  This could be forgiven if they game had just come out, but it has been out for about two years now.  Not only that but the game is literally running on the engine that they made.  If anything, that should mean there should be less or even no bugs in this game since they have the people that created the engine on their own staff.

Now looking at non-technical aspects of the game that could still use work, we have to look at the imbalance in some of the weapons in the game.  Pistols for the most part are worthless, except for the deagle, and most of the time you pick them up only if you don’t have anything better to use.  The problem is there are weapons that are just far superior to others in the game to the point that you can lose just off of complete bad luck.  Now for a controversial bad point, the battle pass.  While I’ll agree that the amount of bang for your buck that you get from completing a battle pass is great, the whole design of it is kind of terrible.  More often than not upwards of half the people in your games may not be even trying to play the game and are just going for the challenges to level up their battle pass.  Considering how out of the way some of the challenges are or how locations specific some are it completely changes the point of the game at points.  For example, for one challenge you had to visit certain areas, ones that people normally don’t go to, and dance.  I went to do this one match, and a place that would normally have no one landing at it had no less that 20 people land there.  While doing the challenges can sometimes be fun, it almost feels like they should be in a different game mode.

Something that I don’t really count as bad or good is the building in this game.  I feel like it is something that no other game will really try to copy and is just something that makes Fortnite the game that it is.

The Future:  As long as battle royale games stay popular, and maybe even after they start to die down, I feel like Fortnite will always be a popular one just because of the large variety of people that play the game.  As long as they continue to do the frequent updates and continue to do new things with their game their game then people will continue to play.  Before I would have said there was no other BR that could compete, but Apex Legends just released surprisingly and has really taken off so far.  If it continues to do well, we may finally have another BR over 100k viewers on twitch consistently.  Time will only tell.

-TheGuildmage