Apex is a hybrid manufacturing-racing game in which you can design your own car, race it (or 80 others) around the game’s 54 different tracks and use money from your car’s subsequent sales to enhance its characteristics or develop altogether new automobiles. The game also offers an arcade mode in which you can jump right into the action, as well as a head-to-head mode for two-player multiplayer racing. In a nutshell, Apex is the complete package, and except for a few bumps in the road, it gives Xbox gamers one smooth, stylish ride.

Gameplay

APEX stands for “Advanced Performance Experimental X-cars,” which, aside from the whole X-cars bit, should imply the premise for the game. You start the Dream Mode by creating a basic model of your own car either from a roadster or sports car chassis, then choosing a name and logo for your company. Although you don’t get to create your logo from scratch, the several dozen logos from which you can choose differ based on the first letter of your company’s name, so if you create several different cars or companies, you can have a different logo for each. The only other customization at this early stage is relegated to the car’s color; more detailed customization comes in later levels and with other, more high-end, cars.

With a basic car model complete, you’ll head for the amateur racing circuit to both test your creation and earn the attention of potential investors. The latter is particularly important, because to develop new cars and enhance your initial model, you need to fund research and development. To get those funds, you’ll have to prove your car’s mettle by performing well on the track. Finish first and you’ll make 16 sales, while finishing second, third and fourth naturally leads to fewer sales. After accumulating enough money, you can really begin to experiment as the game’s name implies.

Ultimately, your company’s success or failure is determined by your success or failure on the track. As you’d expect from a racing game, the controls in Apex are amazingly simple: the right trigger accelerates, the left trigger brakes and the B button uses the handbrake. Similar to Project Gotham, though, it’s the effective use of these controls that means the difference between world celebrity and local mechanic. Go through a corner with pedal to the metal, and you’re going to smash the heck out of your hood. Tug on the handbrake too long, and you’ll hit a barrier with no hope of maintaining your momentum.

But don’t think for an instant that if you’ve mastered the controls in Project Gotham you’ll have Apex down in no time. The physics in Apex are, shall we say, less than arcadey, with each car actually gripping the road and responding to the brakes and accelerator realistically. This provides for some refreshing controls, to be sure.

The various car types (roadster, sports car, super car and dream car) also handle quite differently, which means you can’t charge in with a single strategy and hope to win. Racing through the mountains with a roadster is a completely different experience than taking those corners with a dream car.

As solid as the game is, Apex isn’t without its bumps in the road. For starters, the game suffers from frequent loading between races, and sometimes those load times result in very little content. Although they aren’t long, the load times can interrupt your adrenaline flow from race to race. Secondly, your performance in one race has absolutely no affect on your starting position in the following race. Even on Pole Position, back in the classic Atari 5200 days, finishing first in the time trials meant you started in the pole, while finishing third or fourth meant you started three or four spots back. In Apex, regardless of your performance, you start each race in last place – which is surprising, since Atari published it. Given the game’s tight races, this often makes for some serious challenges to overtake the lead car.

While you’re trying to overtake that car, though, you shouldn’t feel too bad about banging up your own: the game’s real-time damage system has no affect on handling or performance. As a result, there’s no real motivation to avoid colliding with barriers and opposing racers, except to maintain your momentum. In an odd turn of events, if you do collide with an opposing racer, running into his front end may actually benefit you in the long run as the computer rams your rear fender and gives you a slight boost.

Other than the crashing flub, which provides a gameplay loophole, the AI is pretty solid. Although the cars generally pick a single line around the tracks, it’s the same line you end up taking too after racing it once or twice, so that behavior is far from unexpected. The AI also responds to your attempts to cut it off by swerving around to try and make its way around you.

Graphics

One thing you won’t be able to make your way around is the sheer beauty of this game. Hands down, Apex is the most gorgeous racing game on Xbox, and perhaps on any system. The car models in Apex are on par with those in Rallisport and Project Gotham, and they’re also well animated, from the slight lean around a tight corner to the bounce of the suspension when you accidentally hop over a curb. The game also does a wonderful job with real-time reflections on the hood, roof, trunk – even on the rear-view mirrors – and those animations change depending on your car’s level of damage.

But it’s the environments that really push Apex over the edge. Where the buildings in Project Gotham often appeared flat, Apex’s are not only three-dimensional but also have animated billboards and signs around them, a la the real-world Times Square. Where the trees and hills in Rallisport occasionally looked polygonal, Apex’s consistently look rendered, regardless of your proximity to them. The environments also provide some fantastic level design, whether it’s making use of a multi-level freeway overpass to a mountainside village road, the designers did a wonderful job keeping the levels beautiful, varied and well-traveled.

Sound

Sound is where Apex loses a step from its predecessors, but Atari did well to support custom soundtracks. The music in Apex isn’t bad, but it’s not great either, and the lack of a large number of songs means the few tunes that are included can get repetitive. I have a feeling the development team decided from the beginning to support custom soundtracks, hence the limited audio selection, but a little more variety would’ve been a nice touch for “default” gamers.

As far as sound effects are concerned, you’ll hear the screech of metal as you skim a highway barrier (or other racers), and although environmental sounds are limited, the whine of your engine and squeal of the brakes sound spot-on. The game supports all of these effects with in-game Dolby Digital, a nice feature when you’re trying to break your way through the middle of the pack.

Replayability

Since research and development and the progression of your company are reliant upon your racing performance, Apex is certain to keep you playing for a long time. It can take a while to accumulate enough sales to kick off a new development or car enhancement, but the game lets you replay any race as often as you like, so you’ll probably end up playing each track several times. Unlike a game such as Splinter Cell, though, which felt at times like it was imposing a sort of “forced replayability” to extend its length, you’ll actually want to replay the races in Apex, a testament to both the level design and gameplay.

Apex’s replayability is also enhanced by the sheer number of vehicles in the game (at least 80), each of which presents its own handling and racing nuances. Like the controls, mastery of these cars isn’t an overnight phenomenon, and when you take newly unlocked cars into previously completed tracks, it introduces a whole new gameplay and strategy element.

Overall

Despite a few scuff marks in the audio and gameplay departments, Apex is well worth the purchase. Its combination of car-creation and racing game makes the title incredibly deep, and the variety of cars and quality of the environments is simply astounding. Quite simply, Apex turns the corner where other racers are on a straightaway for the discount rack. This game will be on my shelf for a long time, and not to collect dust.

See more screens on the Apex media page
Note: Some screens reflect Apex's orignal name: "Racing Evoluzione". These screens are still representative of Apex