Apex Legends, the newest Battle Royale game and the reason your nephew won’t talk to or look at you, is taking the gaming community by storm.
As a sometime player and all-time loser of Apex Legends, I’ve assembled this handy guide to help you fail as spectacularly as I do.
Rule #1 – Get the Mozambique
Grab this triple-barreled whip cream dispenser as soon as your boots hit dirt. Grab two of them. What they lack in magazine size or stopping power they more than make up for with horrible range and shitty handling.
Rule #2 – Don’t Ping Anything (Ever)
In Apex Legends, you’re not alone. You win and lose as a squad, which is why you absolutely must neglect your ping button.
If you let your team members know where valuable armor and weapons are, they’ll use them to survive and help you secure kills. This could inadvertently lead to success, so let’s nip that in the ass straight away.
You can even double-tap the ping button to alert your team to the location of an enemy combatant. But why act on solid battlefield intelligence when its a lot more fun to shoot wildly into a wall of jungle ferns like the muscular crew of hardasses in the original “Predator.”
Rule #3 – Go Right for the Supply Ship
See that hovering white mechanical turtle cruising far below the dropship? It’s packed with weapons and gear, and the best part: everyone else knows about it too.
Much like the big metal cornucopia in the Hunger Games, a fast, coordinated run on the supply ship is a sure-fire way to get slaughtered like geese on Christmas.
If you like to bleed like a hemophiliac vampire thrown into a chipper-shredder, the supply ship is where it’s at.
Rule #4 – Never Check Your Inventory
In Apex Legends, the right tools can lead to victory. That’s one way to go. Another is to just scoop shit up randomly and never check your backpack for garbage you don’t need or want.
Instead of dropping unused equipment to pick up some Heavy Ammo for your Wingman, just go with that one mag. It’s not like you’re going to run out of ammo – that would require you actually seeing an enemy before they dropped you like a politician’s campaign promise.
A better strategy for efficient defeat is to just pack your inventory with every scope and stock you can find, whether or not it has any relevance to the weapons you’ve scrounged up.
Instead of winning, you can tape those six sniper scopes together and see far enough to spot the grandmother you never visit.
Rule #5 – Never Use Your Special Abilities
Unlike PubG or Fortnite, the characters in Apex have their own unique passive, active, and ultimate abilities. These powers require a cooldown between uses, which may encourage you to hoard them the way a red dragon hoards gold coins or how your mother hoards disappointment.
This is a strong play. Dropping Lifeline’s healbot or Gibraltar’s dome shield may turn the tide of a pitched battle in your favor, gleefully fucking up your dedicated campaign of auto-homicide.
Better to die with all abilities ready to roll, like a gentleman.
Rule #6 – Verticality and Mobility are For Dickheads
You may have noticed that King’s Canyon is positively festooned with zip lines, fast-ascent ropes, people-launchers, ladders, staircases, and low walls to climb over. These allow your opponents to attack you from hundreds of impossible fucking angles.
Whatever you do, do not take advantage of these mobility options. In fact, when engaged in a firefight with an opponent, it’s best to keep firing from the same window or piece of cover.
Firing and moving would deprive your deadly opponent of your exact location, only slowing down your inevitable perforation.
Rule #7 – If a Teammate Goes Down, Rush to Revive Them Immediately
It’s happened — the trusty rando at your side has taken a Longbow shot straight to the thought-goo in their brainbox.
Luckily, in Apex Legends, you are empowered to revive your friends after they’ve grown tired of living. A player who wanted to win the game might first locate the sniper and eliminate the threat BEFORE putting themselves in the line of fire.
This isn’t very heroic. Instead, rush out into a wide open field with only your superior sense of morality to shield you from the grim projectiles of the hateful twelve-year-old on the other end of that scope.
Then, when you are similarly pierced while trying to help your friend, you will perish with a full heart, comfortable in the knowledge that you have achieved nothing.
Rule #8 – Don’t Take a Look at Your Legendary Knockdown Shield
The knockdown shield is going to become your new bestest friend — you’ll spend more time holding it than your dad ever spent holding you.
If you notice (you won’t), when you’re downed while holding a golden shield, you can press a button to bring yourself back to life, much how Jesus Christ did after He was julienned by Mastiff fire.
It would be base hubris to re-enact His holy miracle. Instead, just die. Die already, like God intended.