Apex Legends Season 12: Control LTM Preview

Apex Legends has a new Limited Time Mode coming into Season 12: Defiance. I got to play a bit of it before launch and honestly it just makes me wish Titanfall 2 servers were functional again because it’s basically a Titanfall 2 multiplayer mode in Apex. Here’s how the mode works.

Control is basically like Domination. Two teams of nine compete to hold three different points. You’ll be given unlimited Syringes and Medkits to use to heal your base health throughout the match but your shield will regen on its own after eight seconds of you not taking any damage. You’ll have five different loadouts to choose from before spawning into the match and these options will change daily. You can customize the optics for the weapon sets you do choose, like you can in Arenas. These weapons you spawn with will have infinite ammo as well. Control is much faster than Battle Royale or Arenas since you do respawn after a short timer and it’s all about defending or attacking points. Controlling a zone will give you points every second and the more zones you have, the more points you get per second. The first team to reach the score of 1250 wins.

Control is pretty straight forward in terms of objectives but there will also be Timed Events where Capture Bonuses will put a one-time point award on a specific zone and a countdown timer will start. Once that timer hits zero and a team holds that specified zone, that team will earn a big bonus amount of points. Of course, throughout all of this, there will also be Care Package drops throughout the matches with weapons and armor on them but those weapons will run out of ammo like normal Care Package weapons in Battle Royale and Arenas. Controlling more zones also means you get more spawn points but you cannot spawn on the point closest to the enemy’s base. If you own the center zone and your own base, you can spawn on the middle point. But if the point closest to your team base is taken, you cannot spawn on the middle point and will have to spawn at your team base.

If your team owns all three points, the match will enter a Lockout where a timer is started and, if the controlling team can hold the Lockout until the timer hits zero, you can immediately win the game. However if any zone is taken out of control, it’ll cancel the lockout and the game will continue as normal.

In terms of a scoreboard, there’s a Rating system that sets the pace for team upgrades. There are three Rating tiers: Blue, Purple, and Gold. You can earn higher ratings with capturing zones, killing enemies, and assisting teammates. This will help your own rating so you can upgrade your weapons as you play. Unfortunately when you die these ratings do reset so you have to earn them back. If you hit max tier you can still earn more ratings to get more ultimate charges.

The maps available for Control will be Hammond Labs on Olympus and Barometer on Tropic. Tridents will still be available to use to get from point to point and additional zips and redeploy geysers will be strewn throughout the map. With the time I had for it, I honestly really enjoyed it. Control honestly feels like a Titanfall 2 mode and it just makes me want more multiplayer like this from Respawn. Or even just Titanfall 3. But for now, Control is an incredibly fun limited time mode that I hope stays a permanent mode.

Apex season 12 Defiance launches February 8th so be sure to keep it here at IGN for the full breakdown on all the season changes coming soon.