The Good
-Map design is much bigger and combat between Spartans is much more spread out, it’s very clear that you could see pockets of conflict all over the map. It was cool to see Greenskull come over a hill in the Scorpion, bullets flying and plasma mortars arcing overhead while a Phaeton’s gunning down his allies.
-REQ system looks okay, some minor concerns but it seems balanced enough on the map presented. Couple of cool weapon variants.
-Some bosses are actually placed in areas players pay attention to, causing some intense battles.
-Scorpion redesign is the one of the first that I’m actually content with. They really only changed the turret shape and size, and it’s more beefily armored. Gonna miss that shell ejector thing that was added in Reach, but it still looks cool.
-The beach areas do give off a Silent Cartographer vibe as promised.
-The Warden Eternal boss looks dope. He has a variety of attacks and they all look cool and devastating. It’s also funny how he mocks Palmer, which gives him even more rep from me. Most interesting boss in Halo since Tartarus from what I can tell, though maybe he could move a bit more rather than soak up bullets from both teams.
-Blood in Assassinations!
The Bad
-This game’s art style continues to bust my balls. This map is Halo at its fakest-looking. It’s saturated to insane levels and the environmental details like the grass, static foliage, and low-res roads look pretty awful.
-Same base designs from ARC. This worries me as it could add a bit of repetitiveness to Warzone if all the maps start with “clear out the curvy white UNSC facility then take all the shiny forerunner buildings”.
-Armor Mods (Perks) are permanent. Not really sure how I feel about that, guess it depends on what perks are available.
-Mongoose physics are janky AF. There’s a part where Greenskull lands it on the front right wheel and it clips through the ground and slides awkwardly for like ten feet. I really hope that doesn’t represent driving physics for wheeled vehicles in this game and it gets fixed soon.
-As I said, Boss placement is much better on this map than ARC, but AI is still generally inconsequential to gameplay. Patrolling low-tier enemies would be noice.
-The Loadout system is very jarring, I’ve grasped most of it this far but I feel it could have been designed a bit better, and I hope there’s a “choose previous” option because it looked like he had to set up his class every time he died (or maybe I wasn’t paying attention).
-Voice Audio has been acting up in the past few videos. When the Warden does the aforementioned taunt, he cuts Palmer off a bit and breaks the effect. I’ve noticed in Arena games that Spartans also tend to randomly yell out “Teammate stuck, get back!” for no reason while no one has even thrown a sticky. Hope that gets fixed.
The Verdict
Overall I think the map flow in Apex-7 is fantastic and actually feels like a big Warzone with multiple small battles peppered throughout instead of glorified Big Team, and I hope all remaining maps were designed with this philosophy.
That said, the map and gametype are still VERY rough, and it troubles me this close to launch.