As season 3 of Apex Legends gets closer to its end, and with the holiday event wrapped up; Respawn Entertainment has introduced another two-week event, the Grand Soiree. If the core experience of Apex Legends has become a drag, the Grand Soiree promises to shake things up with an arcade mode, which has a rotating set of limited time modes. From January 14th to 28th, there will be a new limited time mode for every two days. Unfortunately, by the time you’re reading this, you’ll have missed out on the first event, which was a duos mode where all the weapons were rare weapons that are typically only found in crates.

For today and tomorrow, the “Live.Die.Live” mode is available. The concept of this mode is that if you’re out of the game but still have a living teammate, you’ll automatically respawn next to them when the circle closes. It’s a mode more merciful to players who wouldn’t want to risk summoning a respawn ship and may lead to a more chaotic final circle. On the 18th and 19th is a “Third-Person Mode,” which may make this battle royale a bit reminiscent of Fortnite.

The 20th and 21st will have the “Always Be Closing” mode, where the circle is constantly tightening up without any grace periods. “Armed and Dangerous,” a previous mode where the only weapons were shotguns and sniper rifles, will make its return on the 22nd and 23rd. Speaking of coming back, the original map, King’s Canyon, will be returning in a night time form on the 24th and 25th. The event will then end with “Dummies Big Day,” an event that implies that the training dummies from the firing range, will join the fight.

Interestingly, the third-person mode and the fighting dummies were already hidden away in the game as Easter eggs in the game’s firing range training mode. Respawn has been open about the existence of Easter eggs, so they may have been put in to foreshadow these upcoming new modes.

Participating in these events and clearing challenges will give Arcade Points toward a prize track for some cosmetics. Outside of the prize track, there are a few Art Deco inspired cosmetics that are only available through the game’s store. Unlike past events, there’s no event box system, so the only way to get these is to fork over money, which seems kinda lousy? Outside of the Grand Soiree though, a handful of new cosmetics have been added to the game’s regular item pool. In particular, I really like Crypto’s dumb Hype Beast outfit. It rules.

Honestly, the Grand Soiree seems neat. However, it brings up a problem I had with the game in my review: why not make this new arcade mode permanent? It could be like Overwatch’s arcade mode, with a few permanent fixtures (preferably the solo and duo mode) with other modes rotating in. Like, it feels like Apex Legends could just take the extra step and implement this permanently.

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