I’m enjoying my time with the newly released Apex Legends Mobile, thanks in part to my appreciation for big online mobile games like this, and in part because I’ve spent a year obsessing over the console version.
But I especially like it because it took one key thing from mobile gaming giant Call of Duty Mobile, and it had a very useful feature that I now use to judge other similar mobile games.
I’m talking about a small aspect of the control scheme – while Apex Legends Mobile doesn’t have the most intuitive controls of any of its competitors, it does a good job.
single button method
Controlling games with a phone is a bit more complicated than a typical console controller, because the buttons are all on-screen, so you basically have to rely on your thumb for most of the action (unless your fingers are very nimble).
Since shooters like Apex and CoD share the same key features, all mobile shooters end up having nearly the same control scheme. You can swipe left and right on the right half of the screen to look around, and on the left half to move; tap the button on the left to aim your gun, tap the right to shoot.
The scheme worked, and PUBG Mobile was a key example of it, but it made countless other features more cumbersome. If you want to dodge or stand up, lie down, use healing items, change weapons, equip grenades or anything else, you have to move your hand – which means you can’t do that while aiming and shooting. Plus, if you want to move or look around while aiming, you’re going to have a tough time.
Call of Duty simplifies this in a small but crucial way – when you hit the shoot button, you also auto-aim. This reduces the small amount of time it takes to press two separate buttons, which can mean win or lose in a frenzied shooter.
With this little feature, CoD is my go-to mobile game when I want this kind of gameplay – the whole gameplay feels smoother and more intuitive, and after that it’s hard to play PUBG.
Thankfully, Apex Legends Mobile replicates this feature, and it makes the game feel just as frantic and fast-paced as the non-mobile version.
But while the Apex is so much fun, in part because of this feature, it does suffer from another thing that plagues mobile shooters, which is that Call of Duty is better at it — and that’s the rest of the controls.
too many buttons
While Call of Duty Mobile is inspired by the main Call of Duty game, Apex Legends Mobile is a direct port of both console and PC games, which means it needs to be more faithful to existing controls and features. The base game has a lot of subtle tricks, including swiping and using ultimate skills, that don’t fit on a small phone screen.
The touch controls section of the screen is cluttered with lots of different icons representing different things, making it harder to remember what does what. Which button should I press to slide down the hill? Can I remember to press the “duck” button instead of the “reload” button? A lot of times I end up getting the icons wrong, or having to remember which does what.
The Ping system is an important example. On console and PC, this is a great way to easily point out features to teammates – you can ping distant enemies, useful loot items in boxes, areas to attack or defend. However, with the cumbersome touch controls on a mobile device, I’ve always had a hard time knowing what the ping button will do – sometimes things get pinged when I don’t even mean to.
The same goes for picking up items – sometimes you pick them up automatically, sometimes you don’t, sometimes even if you need them and have storage space, you just can’t pick them up at all, and I can’t figure out the rhyme or reason.
A good example is the chests that players drop when they are killed – these allow you to pick up whatever gear they are carrying, which is often the best way to upgrade your own weapons and replenish ammo. In Apex Mobile, sometimes you just need to get close to automatically collect all the items that apply to you, but sometimes you need to press a small button on the display to start the process – sometimes you need to individually pick the items you want, And the latter option is really time consuming.
Keep in mind that I’m not new to playing their first mobile game – I’ve played a lot because it’s really part of my job. Apex Mobile, then, can be a bit puzzling.
Apex Legends is far from the first mobile game to face the “too much control” issue, and I recently ran into it in PUBG: New State, which kept me from playing the thing. Thankfully, the simple shooter controls make up for the clutter, but I feel like some very simple tweaks make the game a lot more fun to play.
That’s not to say it’s a bad game – in fact, I had a blast and it’s one of the best mobile shooters I’ve ever played (and I’ve played a lot). But now that I know I’ll be spending hours playing this game, I hope it makes more sense.