Everything happens fast in Apex Legends. Players are slotted into squads of three, then ejected onto an alien landscape of hi-tech industrial buildings and dramatic mountain ranges. Within seconds, they’re probably being attacked by another group, and within minutes half the squads will be dead. This is the battle royale genre pitilessly trimmed to its wildest moments, where every encounter is a riot of explosive jump-cut hyper-violence. It is not for the faint of heart or slow of trigger-finger.

But what else should we expect from Respawn Entertainment, the Californian development studio founded and staffed by the people who created perhaps the most important online shooter of all time – Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare? That game’s sleek energy, its streamlined systems, its luxuriously oiled mechanics, are all re-employed here to scintillating effect. Getting from one place to another in Apex Legends involves swooping across the sky on rope slides, or skidding down a hill, or vaulting over objects – you feel light and fast and capable.

This lack of resistance is repeated throughout the design so, for example, when you’re searching buildings for useful weapons and add-ons, the game tells you what you already have, or if the thing you’re about to fit on your gun is actually better than the thing that’s already there. Unlike Fortnite or PUBG, where you have to keep fiddling with your inventory bag like a fussy tourist, here you sprint about, grabbing stuff, letting the game system work it out.

Respawn is an expert at “gamefeel”, that elusive, complicated quality that gives a solid, pleasing heft to every action. Take the guns. Apex Legends offers a familiar mix of SMGs, LMGs, assault rifles, snipers and shotguns, but each model feels chunky, dangerous and individual. The R-99 is a submachine with such a pulverising fire rate it sounds like an out of control power tool; the Triple Take is a cruelly efficient sniper rifle that shoots three projectiles in a line, greatly improving the chances of hitting a moving target; and the R-301 Carbine, with its high accuracy, high stability and arrow-like beauty, is the assault rifle’s assault rifle.

Firefights are an ear-bleeding EDM concerto of bullets, explosions and voice-over commands. The game’s clever “ping” system lets you point your cursor at any area, object or enemy, before pressing a shoulder button to let your squad mates know exactly what’s there. In this way you can create reasonably complex tactics without ever having to use a mic – a feature accentuated by the way in which the special abilities of the characters enhance and expand your possibilities rather than completely dominating gameplay. Wraith’s warp tunnels (which let her sneak invisibly into and out of hot zones), Bangalore’s air strikes and Bloodhound’s sensory scanners all give you super powers for a few seconds, but only when they’re skilfully aligned within a group strategy will they really help you out.

The map in Apex Legends is one of the tightest in the current battle royale lineup and there’s barely any rural spread between key architectural sites. This means every time you hit a hydro dam, military complex or river village there’s a very good chance someone else will be there. This makes for an incredibly intense experience, and with the lethal weapons on offer, you’ll spend your first hours in this game getting your arse kicked from here to the map’s mountainous boundary. This is not the battle royale game for complete beginners or nervous campers, it demands the extent of your attention, reflexes and responses at all times.

Counteracting this is the game’s generous respawn system. An initial bout of lethal damage will knock you down, as in Fortnite, but if you’re then killed outright, team-mates can pick up your banner token, take it to a specific respawn point and have you shipped back into the fight. Those precious seconds where you’re rushing to reincarnate a pal as an enemy team closes in are amongst the most intense in the game, and add a whole different layer to combat encounters.

The Apex Legends map offers a combination of swampy rural areas with military industrial buildings and swooping canyons. Photograph: Electronic Arts

Visually, Apex Legends comes in between the muddy realism of PUBG and the cartoon theme park of Fortnite. It offers good scenic diversity between sloshy marshlands and towering sci-fi edifices and everything is crisp with colour and detail. Levelling up your character gives access to a vast range of weapon and outfit customisations – all cosmetic and all also available through paid micro-transactions that sit unobtrusively in the background.

Apex Legends is something of a triumph for Respawn Entertainment, a studio that saw its excellent narrative shooter Titanfall 2 all but disappear amid a barrage of bigger-name rivals. Fans may be annoyed that we probably won’t be seeing Titanfall 3 now, but with a potential battle royale audience of tens of millions you can’t really blame this talented team for shooting at the biggest target in modern gaming. And with Apex Legends, it scores a direct hit.