Reviewed: March 4, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Atari

Developer
Milestone

Released: February 18, 2003
Genre: Racing
Players: 2
ESRB: Everyone

9
9
7
9
9.3

Supported Features

APEX is an evolutionary new racing title that blends popular aspects of conventional racers with an underlying business simulation. Pro Race Driver reinvented the racing genre by adding a dramatic storyline and now we merge two new genres to get a unique insight into the world of auto racing that goes on when the cars aren’t driving around in circles.

APEX blows away the competition in just about every way possible from mind-numbing graphics to incredibly deep gameplay. The arcade mode takes a definite backseat to the Dream mode, partly because 95% of the arcade mode is locked down when you first start the game. You will unlock most of the 80 cars and the 54 tracks as you make your way through a career than spans more than 200 races. You can then go back and play with those cars and drive on those tracks in standard arcade racing modes or in a two-player split-screen competition.

But the core of the game puts you in the unique hybrid role that has you racing one minute and manufacturing cars the next. The story starts off simple enough with you and your buddy Mike buying an old abandoned garage. As you are cleaning up Mike discovers some blueprints for some concept racecars. He lets you pick your favorite and six months later you are off to the track in a shiny new prototype.

The business simulation was surprisingly engrossing considering how simple its execution, and it will likely appeal to even the casual racer. You start by picking a brand name and a logo that will appear on your signs, and emblems for the front and rear of the cars you build. As you continue to win races and gain notoriety you will start to sell your cars and expand your production line. You will hire new staff, increase your R&D facility and even install a fully robotic production line. In an interesting twist, your finishing place in each race is directly translated into car sales and the more cars you sell the more resources you have to research and build new product lines.

In addition to the regular 39 racing events you will also get challenged by rival car companies, motor sport magazines, and even a foreign sheik interested in your designs, provided you can beat him in a race. One of these events had my car design stolen and counterfeited and I had to race the counterfeit car to prove my design was superior. Failure would have resulted in lost sales, but I was able to win the race and halt their counterfeit production line.

With anywhere from 3-6 races per event there are more than 200 races in your future. This will give you plenty of time to build a variety of cars, each with varying attributes like top speed, braking, and acceleration that make them suited toward specific tracks.

The most interesting aspect of the game is that if features real-world cars but you aren’t driving them. Instead, you are building these futuristic cars that look like they were stolen from the set of Minority Report and are racing against the traditional line-up of popular name brand cars like Toyota, Lotus, Nissan, etc. If you have ever read about or seen the movie, Tucker: A Man and His Dream, that is exactly how you will feel while playing this game. It’s you and your crew against the world.

There’s only a moderate learning curve when it comes to figuring out how to drive the cars. Handling is really good and you can choose between a drift or realistic driving model before each race. I found the handbrake was overly sensitive which was an overall deterrent to sliding around sharp turns. I ultimately learned how to use the normal brakes to a much more efficient degree and without the significant loss of overall speed.

Control is simple with the stick controlling the steering and the left and right triggers doing the braking and the gas. The A/X buttons shifts the gears, the Y button gives you a quick rear view, and the B button is the handbrake. The black button cycles through numerous camera views, only four of which are actually drivable. I broke out my MadCatz wheel for this game and found a whole new level of control was now available. If you have a wheel I highly recommend using it and if not, you may want to consider picking one up.

The track design is some of the best I have ever seen and covers city, mountains, and stadium track driving. While there are 54 tracks they are all variations of a few key locations. This gives you a bit of familiarity with the tracks, even when you are racing them in reverse, but this can also be a bad thing. I remember screaming around one turn at 134mph confident that a lengthy straightaway was just around the corner only to find a concrete barricade forcing me to make an impromptu left turn into the park. I left most of my paint job on that barricade.

One thing that really annoyed me was the fine line between pavement and the shoulder of the road, which either looks like dirt or grass. If you so much as touch these non-track surfaces with a single tire you will bleed off almost all your speed. This is a great deterrent against you taking shortcuts across chicanes or cutting corners too tight, but it’s very frustrating to be driving down a long stretch and have an opponent knock me onto the shoulder, lose all my speed, and have the rest of the pack blow by me like I was parked.

Opponent AI is handled well enough keeping fun a priority of total realism. Using what I like to call “rubber band racing”, the computer cars will slow down if you wreck or fall behind and conversely will drive at superhuman speeds if you get more than a half-lap ahead. It all boils down to some photo finishes where split times are measured in tenths of a second.

Races come in two varieties, single event races and championship series. The difference between these is that you do not return to the garage between the championship races so you are stuck with the car you picked for the entire series. The single event races allow you to pick and customize your car prior to each race. Additionally, you can go back and replay any of the single races in each event and try to better your score and subsequently increase your sales. You can never go lower in the standings and you only earn new car sales if you improve your rank. You can’t just come in 2nd place over and over and keep getting 16 new car sales, and when you finally do come in first you only get the 4 new sales that separate a 1st and 2nd place finish.

As you make your way through the massive Dream mode you will unlock most of the licensed cars, but oddly enough you can only drive them in the arcade modes. As you earn research funds and sell more cars you will have new concept cars become available. You get to pick and choose which ones to build, but most of the stats start looking the same after awhile and you will probably find a favorite car and stick with it.

Each car goes through three design stages starting at street, then on to evolution, and finally race mode. These stages can be cycled in the garage so if your Swagger has reached the race stage you can still regress it back to a street model if you want – not that you would. One minor complaint is that once a car reaches the race design you can no longer customize the paint job. As I said, it’s a very minor complaint because the color schemes they do give you are pretty awesome.

APEX has some wonderful lighting but there are times when a lack of available sunlight casts the track into shadows that make the game downright unplayable. You’ll be staring intently on the screen as you race around the “dark side of the moon” then you round that one turn where the mountains are no longer blocking the sun and you could fry an egg on the glare from the pavement and your retinas are scarred from the lens flare on the screen. For all I know this may be very realistic lighting BUT many of these tracks have street or stadium lights and my cars have headlights. If I’m racing on a stretch of track where I can’t tell where the pavement ends and the grass begins I’m going to be turning on my lights. Even playing in a totally dark room there are still a few sections of a few tracks where I have had to memorize the curves, as I simply can’t see the track. There is no gamma adjustment within the game and I’m not about to readjust my carefully calibrated TV.

But that is only one small issue that is overshadowed (pun intended) by the rest of the glitz found in this game. Let’s start with some of the best looking cars to ever grace a racing game then move on to the best looking tracks you would ever want to race them. The cars all look phenomenal whether they are actual licensed cars or futuristic concept designs coming out of your factory. Each car is modeled with up to 11,000 polygons and the surfaces of these cars are high gloss offering real-time reflections that are so distracting I had to stop using the view with the hood.

Speaking of views, there are plenty to choose from including several that you could never hope to use in a race. For driving purposes you can choose from a bumper cam, hood cam, and far and near chase views. I found both of the chase views to be totally uncontrollable. The car handling was way too twitchy and the entire game took on an arcade feel. The hood cam gives you a slightly elevated view of the pavement ahead which helps in a few of those low light conditions, but for the most part I stuck with the bumper cam that has you skimming the track. The only problem with this camera is when you start drafting a car and it totally obscures your view.

The cars do take damage but it appears to be only a visual effect. I never suffered any degradation in performance no matter how many times I kept smacking the wall in that hairpin turn. You will see a bit of crumpled metal and possibly some sparks trailing behind you in the rear view but it’s all for show. You don’t even have to pay to have your damage fixed, so there is no real incentive for clean driving, which is why I am still a big fan of the “kudos system” in Project Gotham.

The levels and track design are breathtaking, but you will only have time to appreciate them in the replays. With up to 500,000 polygons per track there is so much complexity and multiple layers of detail present that this is one of the few games that borders on the photo-realistic. There are bump-mapped textures that give the pavement a pitted look and buildings and cars all cast realistic shadows. Even the screenshots hardly do this game justice.

And finally I must give props to the amazing interface design that disguises boring menu items in a 3D virtual world that is constantly changing. You get a great sense of accomplishment as you move from a dirty little garage to a shiny high-tech R&D lab and robotic production line. Trophies start to accumulate in your lobby and your options shelf has all sorts of racing knick-knacks on it.

This is without a doubt, the best looking racer and one of the top ten most visually impressive games on the Xbox, ranking right up there with Splinter Cell and Panzer Dragoon: Orta.

Sound effects are okay for the most part. The engine noises are all high-tech, high-performance whines; so don’t expect any throaty muscle car rumbles or roars. If you’ve seen the movie, The Fast and the Furious then you have an idea of what to expect for engine noises. The rest of the sound package consists of screeching tires as you go around tight turns – sorry, but traction assist means no burning rubber off the line – the occasional police siren (don’t worry, they’re not after you), and a few crashing noises that sound more like two trash cans banging together whenever you hit something or sideswipe another car.

There is a respectable amount of voice acting and it’s all very good quality. Mike is the eternal optimist who congratulates you even when you come in 2nd, and then you have Rebecca in production who settles for nothing less than first place finishes. There is the sexy Carla who works the front desk that even inspires a humorous exchange between you and Mike right after you hire her, and the Einstein-looking R&D manager, Benjamin. It’s a very well rounded and complimentary cast of characters that creates a pleasant atmosphere.

The entire sound package is wrapped up in a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix that merely enhances just how average the entire sound presentation of this game really is.

And by the time you have finished your career as an automaker you will have around 80 cars and 54 tracks unlocked included plenty of real-life licensed vehicles that you never get to drive in career mode. There are plenty of reasons to keep on playing this game even when your career is over.

While the actual racing doesn’t stray too far from genre norms, the emphasis on fun vs. overbearing physics and realism combined with the sheer scope of tracks, cars, and racing events makes this one of the most competent and comprehensive racing games you can play.