I love Apex Legends. I feel like I have to remind myself of that sometimes, as I’m so bored off my face with shooters in general, and don’t really play online competitively anymore. I just can’t be bothered with the stress and/or real emotion of it all.
However, Apex Legends, once I get over myself and turn it on, does stuff that pleases my monkey brain quite a lot. Back in 2019 when it released, which feels like centuries ago now, I couldn’t believe how clever, simple, and obvious this hero shooter’s ping system was. How hadn’t anyone done this before? It’s a game that’s built with no-fuss, unobtrusive teamwork at its core. And it makes it a blast for anyone to have fun with.
The roster of hero characters, which is now enormous compared to when I last played it, is hugely varied, and they all have amplified and incredibly moreish methods of traversal. It’s all very zippy, cloaky, boost-jumpy, and very, very fast. The movement and controls and shooting and zooming around collecting stuff endlessly is just as pleasing as the pings. I know you know all of this already, I’m just saying.
Back on Switch 1, Apex Legends managed to arrive feature-complete. However, it was laid low by terrible performance issues. Indeed, I gave it a 5/10, saying it was still fun to play, but had notable frame rate issues, muddy textures, unresponsive and laggy controls…yeah, it was basically a really tragic Switch port.
We don’t have to worry about any of this now, though. We can concentrate on having a good time with what’s surely still one of the very best (if not the best) hero shooter, Battle Royale…eh, thingies out there. It really is that good. I’ve used my unlock tokens to grab all but three of the full roster, and I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole once more.
Because, much like how its ping system originally dazzled me, this Switch 2 port has dazzled me all over again by being perhaps the very first fully-fledged and functionally perfect online shooter that I’ve ever sat and played on my sofa on a portable console. Yes, there are other great online shooter games on Switch, like the majestic Splatoon series, but this scratches a very different shooter itch. And it’s free!
In docked and handheld, performance feels great on Switch 2, and bar the odd hiccup as you load into a stage, this is silky smooth stuff, even during busy firefights. It looks perfectly crisp and clear at all times. Add in motion controls for fine-tuning your snipes, a bonus mouse-mode that’s fun (I’m still using the normal controls, mind), and you’ve got a version of Apex Legends that, despite all of its hard-selling of Apex Points and outfits, is very, very hard to pick a hole in.
In fact, Apex Legends redeems itself on Switch 2. This upgraded version gives us 60fps shooting action with crisp, clear resolutions and none of that juddery, unresponsive, blurry stuff we had back in 2021. It’s still the best hero shooter/Battle Royale out there for me, with amazingly fluid traversal, best-in-class gunfeel, and a ping system that puts proper teamwork and tactics front and centre. The cherry on top, of course, is that it’s free to play, too, so there’s no good reason for shooter fans not to dive right in.
