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Apex
Score: 8.3 / 10
One genre definitely not lacking on the
Xbox is Racing. Among the many motoring titles are quite a few good
games, including Project Gotham Racing (PGR), RalliSport Challenge,
Colin McRae 3, Quantum Redshift, and Test Drive. The Xbox-exclusive Apex
can be added to that list of quality Xbox racers by providing an actual
engaging storyline and a blend of challenging arcade and
simulation-style racing.
Apex was supposed to be the Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (GT3) killer racing
app for Microsoft. The selling point is the ability to not only race
with a garage full of 80 actual real-world cars from Jaguar, Aston
Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Dodge, and
Chevy among others, but to be able to
design, construct, and race your own prototype concept cars. You will be
part of the auto industry by building your own company from the ground
up; however, the hyped-up design and car creation aspect of Apex isn’t
as hands-on as you would be led to believe, which may be a letdown for
those Xboxers hoping for a GT3 similar racing game.
While it’s true you will be in charge of a world-class constructor
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company in the game’s Dream Mode, the car designs are already drawn up
for you. Once you win a certain amount of races required to start making
exotic concept vehicles, you will only have to pick a car design and it
will be built. You have no say on anything involved in the car’s actual
design except for its color and some minor tweaking of the handling
features. Fortunately, the apex of Apex’s Dream Mode is its engaging
storyline, which gets you into the gameplay and keeps you there.
To get through the Dream Mode, you must race through dozens of circuits
composed of multiple races. The further you go, the more cars you can
design and market to grow your auto empire. And you also unlock more
cars for the single-player and multiplayer Arcade Mode. It may seem
repetitive gameplay to just complete race after race, but there are
challenges and championships between circuits that break things up a
bit. If you do accept a challenge, the only way to win is to finish
first. For instance, you may be offered a contract from a city police
force to supply their police cars, but only if your car is the best
available. Or you may be challenged by a rival constructor who stole
your car design through industrial espionage to prove whose model of the
concept car is better, and more importantly, who gets to sell that car
line. These challenges give a well-appreciated break from just racing.
You start off the Dream Mode in an old rundown garage you just bought on
the cheap. Along with your partner, mechanic Mike Collodo, you decide to
start work on a concept car that you can market for your budding
automobile constructor company. Six months later, your first concept car
is built and it’s off to the races to show the world what your car is
made of. If you do well in the races, you will start to sell cars. The
better you place in the races, the more you sell. Sell enough (decided
by a pre-determined quota) of one of your car models, and you can start
building even better cars. There are four types of concept cars:
roadsters (which you must start building first), sports cars, super
cars, and the dream cars. Each model you develop will be upgraded from a
Street model to the better Evolution model to finally the best you can
create, a Racing model capable of burning rubber.
As your company grows, you’ll be able to see the tiny, rundown garage
transform into an ever-bigger auto plant. You’ll also be able to
increase your staff to include a secretary, (Carla Sander, who’s more
curvaceous than even the most twisting of Apex’s racetracks) a research
and development manager, and a production manager.
Championship races offer the opportunity to prove how good your cars are
and the chance win trophies. They are based on a point scale. The higher
you finish, the more points you get. Realistically, you must have no
more than one lower-than-first finish to take home the championship
trophy, which you can only get if you are the first-place finisher after
all the championship races are completed. No trophies for second-place
losers here.
Visually, Apex is incredibly impressive and a real treat for the eyes.
The cars that you can drive, both real-world and the fantasy models in
the Dream Mode, are highly detailed beauties. I’ll even go as far to say
they are better looking than the rendered cars from Project Gotham
Racing, and that is tough to do. The polar opposite of Apex’s visuals is
its weak and nondescript soundtrack. Music heard on the old arcade and
Sega Genesis racer Outrun are better than what Apex offers up. There’s
no way of even changing the radio station as in Outrun or PGR. But
making up for the bad tunage is the ability to use custom soundtracks.
The racing environments are also gorgeous and detailed. There are 54
tracks throughout Apex in city, mountain, racetrack, and speedway
stadium courses of varying degrees of difficulty that make up the Apex’s
racing circuits. Overall, there aren’t too many more impressive
graphical presentations in an Xbox racing game. Another nice visual
touch you’ll find is beams of bright sunlight that hit your car’s
windshield, which, although can be blinding, is a realistic hazard you
could really encounter if you happened to be flying around a race course
at 100-190 mph.
Many of the twisting and turning mountain tracks present a real
challenge, but the racetrack courses are ridiculously easy. The uneven
challenge level is one of Apex’s minor deficiencies, although for most
of your Apex single-player Dream Mode gaming there’s a sufficiently
difficult challenge from the opposition.
Even though the game hits the exhilarating sense of speed, separating
Apex from its attempt at being the Xbox’s ultimate version of GT3 is the
law of car physics that swerves over to the arcade-style versus the
simulation-style that applies to GT3 and even PGR and their necessity to
master power-sliding driving, which isn’t really a problem as long as
you are aware Apex’s racing is leaned more towards the arcade-style just
like Test Drive. Don’t expect a GT3 racing experience, where the cars
perform as they would in real life driving excursions. However, you will
have crash effects on your car if you get too careless and rough.
Apex doesn’t go all the way in delivering on its lofty promised features
of being a title worthy of comparison to Sony’s excellent benchmark
racing game, GT3. Still, with a good story, excellent graphics, varied
tracks, and a whole lot of great racing machines that most of us only
dream of driving, Apex is one of the better racers to be found on the
Xbox.
- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com
(May 3, 2003)
