Apex Season 4 is live, new Legend has an infuriating off button
The cursed sound of silence
The wheel of time has turned around World's Edge, bringing a new Season's worth of changes to Apex Legends. The frozen city has been cleft in twain. The Turbocharger attachment has been done away with. There's a new sniper rifle, and a new Legend called Revenent, skulking around with a button that turns other abilities off. I am not a fan of that button. The other stuff is cool.
Let's start with a closer look at Revenent. We already got acquainted with the cyborg killing machine in the Season 4 launch trailer, but now we know his abilities. They come in different flavours of annoying: his regular ability does some damage and disables enemy abilities, while his ult is a resurrection totem that he and his allies teleport to when they'd normally be knocked down. His passive lets him crouch walk faster and climb walls higher.
Presciently, I railed against off buttons this very morning. Stopping stuff from happening isn't just boring, it creates an unwelcome sense of helplessness. Non-events are less exciting than back and forths. Revenent represents everything that is wrong with cancel culture.
I do like the lava. World's Edge is now overrunning with the stuff, most excitingly, right down the middle of Capitol City. You can jump into the big lava-filled crevasse and float to the other side, albeit very slowly and after taking a little damage from the heat. I just did that and nearly died by getting myself trapped under a bridge. There's also a train crash, a multi-leveled planetary harvester, and a new cluster of buildings. World's Edge is getting messy.
Guns! The new Sentinel sniper rifle sounds interesting. It's a sniper rifle that you can energise with shield canisters, sprucing up the damage it does to shields. Sniper rifle ammo has been dragged off into it's own category, too, while the Turbocharger attachment has been mothballed. The Devotion is now a crate weapon that comes with the speedy-uppy turbocharger baked in, while the L-Star has been ousted from those special crates and be found in the regular world. That's because Developers Respawn realised a kitted out Devotion was one of the best weapons in the game, though I think it's a shame. I liked running around with a Devotion while constantly looking for a Turbocharger. It gave matches more of an arc.
There's plenty I haven't mentioned in the patch notes. The Scout rifle is an assault rifle now, for instance. Weird.
Guidesman Ollie has already got stuck into the changes.