Apex Legends (Nintendo Switch) Review

For anyone unfamiliar with the battle royale genre, Apex Legends fits into the faster-paced variety. Essentially, up to sixty players - split into teams of two and three depending on the mode - will hunt for loot and, more importantly, hunt each other as an ever-encroaching circle of death gradually pens everyone in, until only one squad survives.

Dumping the building mechanics of Fortnite and the slow-paced tactical combat of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Apex Legends is all about the action. Zip-lines, sliding, jumping, respawn points and unique abilities available across the 16 characters: all these things come together to make the core gameplay exhilarating.

There was a reason to be hopeful about this port. Panic Button - the team responsible for the ports of DOOM Eternal and Rocket League - was tasked with translating this graphical powerhouse to the more modest specs on the Switch. Those aforementioned titles might have sacrificed a good chunk of graphical fidelity but in turn gained more than respectable levels of performance.

It is unfortunate, then, that at the moment Apex Legends's performance on the Switch renders it very close to being unplayable, at least against other platforms when using cross-play. In theory, cross-play with PC and other consoles was a fantastic idea because it means there are always matches to be played. Sadly, with the current state of the Switch version, it is almost impossible to compete with people operating at much smoother performance and with slicker controls.

Let's dig into the issues here. Graphically, this port operates at 720p while docked and 572p when handheld. On its own, this isn't a major issue; from a static view, Apex Legends on the Switch actually looks decent enough. There are some fairly impressive shadow effects and, considering the size of the battlefield, the draw distance is pretty impressive. A consistent 30fps is the target here and when jumping into the game's tutorial, it seems like the title might actually run smoothly.

Sadly, it is when things actually start to move that there are some glaring issues. Textures are very blurry and muddy, meaning that the low resolution is a problem when playing on a big screen. The larger screen exposes how much of a compromise is being made here. Additionally, the Switch struggles on many occasions to load textures, at least all at once. On many occasions, objects throughout the battlefield will have a delayed load-in - or not load in at all.

When adding in the poor field-of-view, being able to see what is happening during a match is a struggle at times. In addition, while the frame rate does target 30fps, very often in the heat of battle this can dip below, and trying to function within such a fast-paced battle arena while being crippled with the frame rate makes things difficult. Playing Apex Legends portably is a super cool idea but it struggles even worse than when docked, making handheld play simply impractical.

When playing Apex on a console for the first time, especially when coming from PC, the controls would usually be one of the concerns. The funny thing is they are actually pretty decent here. The Switch version also comes with some gyroscopic control inputs which is handy for finer aiming. Unlike some other battle royale titles, there's not too much fiddly micromanagement here. Picking up weapons and attachments is so simple and playing on the Pro Controller makes the experience even better.

However, where the problems with the controls come in is again linked to the frame rate, which leads to some tricky aiming latency. In fact, aiming at distant targets is almost impossible on the Switch version at present. Then comes close combat encounters. While the built-in aim assist is generous, close combat fights are still rendered completely manic affairs in which any sense of skill is reduced. Ultimately, this amounts in combat that often amounts to who can cope with the poor performance the best.

To add to this, there was regular crashing throughout the time this reviewer spent reviewing this title. This is probably something that will be fixed with a patch, but it did make it very hard to actually sit down and play when matches were repeatedly interrupted due to being booted back to the Switch's home screen. Add in some rather strange audio bugs involving voice chat, and there is a lot on the technical side that needs addressing.

If there was one piece of advice Cubed3 could give the team at Panic Button, it would be to actually sit down and rethink what they are trying to achieve with the visuals. At the moment, the visuals operate within a 'half-way house' approach. The graphics can never compete with PC or the more powerful consoles but they still attempt to. The single best thing that could be done is to strip away some of the fancier effects in order to simply nail a consistent frame rate. A cleaner visual display and resolution would make a world of difference, even if the result looks more dated.

The crazy thing is, though, that even despite the multitude of issues, there is so much fun to be had here. The core gameplay is solid and the idea of playing it on the Switch is a dream. This could turn out to be a winner in the future, as other battle royales have managed to establish themselves on this more modest console. Shootouts and the wildly cool abilities of the characters, as well as how this all interlinks within diverse squads, can and should work very well. Indeed, the best and most consistent fun came after turning off cross-play and just playing against those also on Switch.

Finally, it is important to note that as of yet there is no cross-progression between systems. Anyone who was hoping to jump from PC to the portable Switch will be disappointed, but this may be remedied in the future.