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Apex Legends was at EA Play 2019 this year. Specifically, Respawn was there to discuss their second season of content for the battle royale shooter.

Legendary Hunt


The last event of Apex Legends first season is The Legendary Hunt. From now until June 18th, players are eligible to receive event specific weapon and character skins through challenges that are tracked through various game modes. As it is with all games in this genre, the in game store will have a rotating stock of cosmetic items in addition to the ones available by achievement.

The Legendary Hunt itself is available as an “elite queue” event, where availability opens only to someone who makes a top 5 finish in any game mode. While the elite queue is not something that is readily accessible to the family and/or casual gamer, the circulation of experienced players through this elite queue will create matches elsewhere that have less experienced players overall, and create a better experience for the family gamer.

In addition to the weekend of E3 providing double XP for base and battle pass experience, this event gives any player who top 5’s a match in any game mode an immediate level on their battle pass.

Several Character and Weapon Skins are achieved with the following Milestones:

  • Logging in with a battle pass during the event
  • 2 wins in any game mode
  • Top 5’ing any one game
  • Getting to level 15 on your battle pass before the event ends

Season 2: Battle Charged Announced

July 2nd will be the release date for the second season of Apex Legends. While all the details for the upcoming season were not announced, they were pretty comfortable with some baseline announcements:

  • New Legend (Which we go over in the next announcement)
  • New Weapon: The L Star: A fully automatic weapon that shreds through enemies and terrain that can only be found in precious care package drops. Its weapons speed is balanced by the nasty habit of over heating.
  • New Map Events
  • New Game Modes
  • A New Ranked Play Mode, with cosmetic rewards based on performance
  • Weapon and Legend Rebalancing based on community feedback
  • Possible colossal monsters in the maps

The biggest announcement relevant to Battle Charged and the family gamer is a significant change to the daily and weekly challenges and to materials granted through the battle pass and core level progression.

Daily and Weekly challenges will stack so that multiple challenges can be active at the same time. No word yet as to how many of these challenges can stack at once. Because challenges now accumulate as opposed to one overwriting the other, this creates an environment where players who can only play a limited amount of time in the week/month can get the full benefits of the challenges and their rewards. The maximum rate of leveling has become faster, allowing level 100 to be reached much faster, and crafting materials has been increased so that players can create at least one legendary skin for free with the crafting materials they acquire through regular play.

New Legend: Wattson

Scientist, Engineer, and Smartest Women on the Frontier

Wattson is the character for Apex Legends with a familiar style of play if you prefer defensive or construction based classes in your first person games. Her active ability builds electrified barriers that your allies can freely pass through. Her ultimate creates a permanent structure on the map which deflects incoming missiles, grenades and other havoc while also speeding up the cool down on her active skill (so she can put up more barriers). As a support class in Apex Legends, she has access to a consumable which lets her charge the ultimate abilities of her allies. Between the structures and the power to fuel your allies best abilities, this character is built with the strategist in mind, unless you just want to electrify all of the things. Science!

What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

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The newest edition of Madden NFL is set to drop on 8/2 with all the bells and whistles that Madden fans have come to expect.  Everything is beautifully rendered, consistent game play, player accurate celebrations etc. As always EA has worked to move the needle with their tweaks to the game and new features.

The newest twist to the Madden Franchise is the introduction of the Superstar and Zone abilities, basically football superpowers, to the best of the best players in the game.  The top 50 players in the game will have access to special Zone abilities that give them the status of actual game changers on the field. A few examples that we saw at EA Play were:

  • Tier-1 Superstar Abilities
    • Escape Artist– Increases speed and agility when scrambling
    • Red Zone Deadeye– Perfect passing accuracy in the red zone
  • Tier-2 Zone Abilities
    • Bazooka– Increased passing distance up to 80 yards
    • Fearmonger– Increase pass rush pressure

The list of players will change with updates and with franchise mode but will not exceed the 50 player cap limit.  

This new feature also has the side effect of creating two new player rankings “Superstar” and “Superstar X-Factor”.  The former having access to the more mundane superpowers while the latter are the 50 player tier that has access to the Zone abilities.  It appears that they will also be changing how draft evaluation will work as you will be able to see that a draft pick has Superstar and Superstar X-Factor rating but will not know what that particular football superpower will be until the middle of the first season.

Madden has also taken steps to update its playbook to more accurately reflect the current state of the NFL with the introduction of the RPO  and trick plays (220 new ones in fact). There is also the promise of midseason playbook updates as the actual NFL changes and adjusts to the game.

Finally, EA also appears to be leveraging their “Face of The Franchise: QB1” mode to bring back more of its NCAA connection by allowing you to drop directly into the College Football Playoff, similar to how they did with Longshot, by taking over as QB1 one of the following schools:

  • Texas
  • Oregon
  • Florida
  • LSU
  • Clemson
  • Miami
  • USCS
  • Oklahoma
  • Florida State
  • Texas Tech

Your performance in the playoff will impact your draft stock and ultimately your career as you level to try and win Superbowls.

All in all this appears to be yet another solid installment in the Madden franchise and will undoubtedly be scooped up Madden loyalists and really anyone that wants to play NFL or really any kind of football game as Madden has cornered the market.

Please be sure to check out all our E3 coverage as we will update you if and when we find out anything new.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Make sure to keep your eyes on Engaged Family Gaming for all of the latest news and reviews you need to Get Your Family Game On!

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EA Play is here and rolled out the latest edition of FIFA 20 to PS4 and Xbox 1, unfortunately the rollout was long on description but very very short on actual gameplay.  However, the headline and really for soccer fans is the introduction of Volta Football. In essence this is backyard and pickup soccer where the pitch is anywhere and everywhere, from a cage in downtown London to a rooftop in Tokyo.

From a gameplay perspective Volta appears to be in addition to the year over year standard league modes that we have come to expect with this series.  This will allow you to play 3v3, 4v4, or 5v5 games with various other options, such a with or without goalies or co-ed. That last detail was one of the highlights from the release.  You will now be able to create male and female characters and outfit them as you see fit.

EA also spoke glowingly about the changes that they have made to the actual gameplay system to pull the focus from more automated and team based play to a focus on one on one interactions, offense to defense.  In essence they appear to be moving even more toward making FIFA a true simulation.

While all this sounds like it is great news for all the FIFA fans out there, I am concerned that the additional complications they are adding to the interface may put the game out of reach for the casual fan.  However, I do have hope, as outside of the EA Play presentation, it was announced that there will be a version of FIFA 20 available on the Switch. There currently aren’t not any details out there on what this means, but I am hopeful that it is a paired down version of the game that may keep it simple. Ultimately though we really need more visuals and gameplay information in order to make a real determination on what FIFA 20 is all about.

Please be sure to check out all our E3 coverage as we will update you if and when we find out anything new.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Make sure to keep your eyes on Engaged Family Gaming for all of the latest news and reviews you need to Get Your Family Game On!

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