The Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Championship 2023 kicks off on September 6, 2023, and the teams are all ready and eagerly awaiting a chance to battle it out with the best Apex Legends players from around the world.
Ahead of the event’s official start, I had the chance to sit down with DarkZero’s Genburten to see how he and the team were feeling with their first match a mere day away. The picture he painted me is one of a team that’s just as strong as it was during the ALGS Split 2 Playoffs earlier this year. One that’s hungry for another win.
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Keep the Vibes up
When we sat down under the warm greenhouse roof of the press room’s more comfortable area, Gen looked at ease with his surroundings, like he’d done this a thousand times. I asked him what the journey between the ALGS Split 2 Playoffs to now had been like, and what the team had been doing since they won the last tournament.
Gen said, “I feel like we still crave to win the Championships. We just still crave winning. Normally people would win and then fall off right? They get lazy, but I feel that I have more drive to win again, and always be the best. A lot of people who win a championship think they’re good enough and sack off, but I’ve never thought that. I just keep myself humble.”
After seeing DarkZero win the ALGS Split 2 Playoffs, I feel like they’re one of the top teams in this tournament, and I’m sure others believe that too. But Gen explains that the team doesn’t let all that go to their heads. “Even my teammates, like Zer0, he keeps me humble.” He explains how they’re all keen to keep each other from getting too ahead of themselves. “Even Xynew, he’s 18, and you know what it’s like when you’re 18. So I try to keep him humble.”
Staying level-headed is one thing, but the pressure of an event like the ALGS Championship can be a lot. I asked Gen what his routine was like for the week compared to when he was training to get an idea of what keeps everything from boiling over. “There’s not much practice we do beforehand, but I just tend to keep my nerves calm. I like to listen to music literally before I play, just to chill. I check with the boys to make sure they’re okay, see how they’re doing, and keep the nerves down so we can have fun. Keep the vibes up.”
It’s this that says it all for me. Even in the heat of a tournament with a $2 million prize pool, this team is here to have fun playing a game they love. Yes, they’re competing, but they want it to feel like every other game, not some insurmountable challenge.
The only other thing that could make an Apex Legends tournament more turbulent is a change in weapon meta and a reworked Legend, which is exactly what happened with Season 18 a month or so ago. I asked Gen if the season had altered DarkZero’s strategies at all, and he seemed surprisingly relaxed about it.
“We never considered Revenant a potential character because he’s a selfish character with an ultimate that gives him health. He’s more of a play-making character not a team-based character.” Revenant was completely reworked for Season 18, but all of his abilities focus on providing a single player with more information and power, not their teammates.
“We like to use team-based characters for all of us, so Catalyst uses wall for all of us, we use Horizon for lifting off and gaining height, and the third is Balgalore, which is smokes. Some teams have been using Bloodhound, who scans for a second, but his ultimate is for himself.” Gen says it’s the gun meta that’s been more impactful to the eSport.
“The Nemesis in the crafter is great because that gun was genuinely broken. No one uses the Charge Rifle anymore because they (Respawn Entertainment) nerfed it really hard. The gun changes are good because I feel like there’s more variety. You can use Repeater, Longbow, Sentinel, R9, C.A.R., you can use anything you want.”
He added what he expected to see in the tournament based on all the practice the team has done since Season 18 launched. “The best combo right now is Repeater/R9. That’s what you hope you find.” The team hasn’t had to re-learn or adjust strategies based on this gun meta change because they simply adapt as they play naturally. They’ve been through that learning curve and are ALGS Championship ready.
