Apex

"Ridge Racer for the XBOX?"

Well, no, not quite but it certainly has a Ridge Racer kinda feel to it in my opinion. Ok, lets get one thing clear before we proceed. If you don't like Arcade racers then you may not like this because it certainly isn't a sim despite the fact that it has real world cars in it from Toyota to Jaguar. It's definitely Arcade bent.

Gameplay.
The Main game revolves around Dream Mode in which you create your own brand of car and see it rise to fame. You'll watch your factory expand, race more races to earn more car sales and the more car sales you earn, the more cars you can develop. You don't get actually make the car yourself, you simply choose which car you want developed from a set of blueprints. You'll start developing a Roadster. Roadsters and Sportscar have 3 variations. Supercars have 2 variations and Dreamcars have just 1. The variations are Street, Evolution, and Racing. You'll start off in a Street Roadster and before you can take control of the Evolution Roadster you must win all the Amateur Roadster races because next up comes the Semi-pro races and these races have you driving the Evolution version of the roadster. You can't choose which version to use in a race or when to develop the next version. This is all done automatically. It goes on like this.

So, you want to develop a Sportscar. Well then you'll have to go race to earn car sales and then once you've hit the required target to develop a sportscar you can then go choose which one you want to develop from the blueprints. The game basically works like this all the way.

There's also Arcade mode where you can have a quick race or time trial. The cars you unlock in Dream mode can be used here. You CANNOT however, use the real world cars in Dream mode but you unlock real world cars in dream mode to be used in arcade mode. Etc.

So how's it handle? Arcadey. It's not like Ridge Racer where you tap the throttle and you start to drift but it's a little like Ridge Racer in the way that the cars feel light and have quite a lot of grip. It's a lot more arcadey than Project Gotham. Once you get used to it, the handling is great. It really is arcade thru and thru though. You can take corners at pretty high speeds.

Graphics.
Superb to say the least. Great car models and real time reflections of your surroundings on the cars look great to. There's also some superb bump mapping which reflects the sunlight of superbly. The road surfaces look sweet. Cars also take visible damage and bits of bodywork will hang down creating a trail of sparks. It's the look of the game that really makes it feel like Ridge Racer. From sprawling metropolis's to drives through villages and mountains, it really does have that ridge racer look, complete with the token suspension bridges. Think Ridge Racer 4 and your on the right lines.

Another thing it has in common with Ridge Racer is the track design. The tracks are superb and once again left me thinking, man, these guys have been taking lessons from those ridge racer guys at Namco. There are over 50 tracks in all, but some of them are variations of others. There's still plenty to see though.

The only gripe I have with the graphics is that it runs at 30fps. It is a rock solid 30fps though with no slow down at all. There's a touch of V-synch break up in one or two places when you have 5 other cars on screen and some huge view or building and sun reflections everywhere but you won't notice it unless you REALLY look for it, which is what I tend to do sometimes. It is smooth enough and fast enough to be honest but I really would of preferred say 40fps. It certainly should be possible. Maybe with Apex 2.

Right, where was I. I've been interrupted and my flow has been broken. K, that'll do for the graphics, I can't think what I was gonna say.

Sound.
The sound is a mixture of good, medium, and bad. Early on, the lower powered cars all seem to have the same drone to them. They're different, but not radically. The engines seem to have a muffled sound to them but it's not a huge gripe. The better cars do sound better and louder. The crashes are limited to this crunchy smashy sound, which is fine. It does the job. Ambient sound is good. You can hear all sorts of things in the background when your whizzing around. From drums to flutes to pneumatic drills, it's all there and it's good. The music, well, I dunno, I turn it off. Fear not though because you can use your own custom soundtracks from the music on your hard drive so that's that solved.

All in all the sounds pretty good. It's just some of the engine noises that let it down here and there.

Overall.
Overall then it's pretty damn good. Plays well and looks great. It's also strangely addictive. You keep on wanting to race more and win more so that you can see your factory get bigger or develop another car. A great arcade racer with some super track designs.

The only gripe I really have with it is that the AI can be unfair. It's a bit rubberbandy. They sometimes seem to catch you up from nowhere and sometimes even out accelerate you in a car that you KNOW is worse on acceleration. Likewise, if you have a really bad crash or spin, you'll soon catch them back up but once you do it's all very close again. I suppose it does make for some tight racing though.

Anyway, that's all I can be bothered typing. Go buy it and enjoy.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/03, Updated 03/01/03